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to that that would be reached in one year's work beyond the present entrance or certificate requirements. This proposal has very much in its favour, and its adoption would undoubtedly benefit those who actually enter the University after passing the Entrance Examination. Another possible solution is to dispense entirely with a University Entrance test; this would enable the University teachers to maintain their first-year work at a uniformly satisfactory level, the responsibility of determining his fitness to cope with the work resting with the individual student himself. The proposal is not without its commendable features. The demand for higher-leaving certificates continues to remain at a level much lower than that prevailing when the certificate entitled the holder to a University Bursary. It was expected that with the re-opening of the Training Colleges last year and the possibility of better prospects in the teaching profession there would be a marked increase in the number of pupils studying for the certificate, as it undoubtedly provides the most effective preliminary qualification to young people wishing to enter the teaching service. The number of candidates has, however, shown a slight decrease. A possible explanation lies in the fact that the increase in business activities during last year drained the Sixth Forms of a,n unusually large number of pupils by offering them suitable positions in commerce and industry; it was noticeable, too, that in some schools many pupils, both boys and girls, preferred to concentrate upon an accountancy course, which precluded their qualifying for the certificate. Only 688 certificates were awarded in 1935 to pupils from departmental secondary and combined schools, and an additional 132 were awarded to pupils from endowed and registered private secondary schools. The lower-leaving certificate is no longer awarded. University Bursaries. The disquieting features in connection with University Bursaries that, were referred to in my last report have become no less pronounced. The Bursary Examination is in evident disfavour, especially in centres outside the University towns. Candidates who sat for the bursary alone have'become fewer and fewer during the four years in which the examinations have been held; last year there were only 56 such candidates, a decrease of nearly 20 per cent, from the preceding year. The number who sat for the Bursary and Entrance Scholarship concurrently remained about stationary (232). As was pointed out last year, the value of the bursary (a little over £8 per annum on the average) is so small that it is of very little assistance to the student who is compelled to live away from home in order to attend a University College. Of the 183 candidates who qualified in 1935, only 58 took up their bursaries in the following March; so far as can be gathered, only seventeen of these came from homes outside the four University centres. These figures speak for themselves, and merely serve to emphasize the fact that the present bursaries are not sufficiently valuable and are not an adequate reward for a selection based on a severe competitive examination. I have only to repeat the hope that I expressed last year—that steps may soon be taken to make the University Bursary more attractive and of more assistance to the country student. Bound up with this question is the vexed one of " terms students "—that is, the practice of giving tuition in secondary schools to students _ preparing for degree examinations. Attention has been drawn by more than one Professorial Board to the abuse of the privilege of exemption from University lectures on the part of secondary-school pupils. There is no need to repeat that it is not in the students' best interests to pursue his University studies whilst still at school, but it must be recognized that for many a student there is no alternative; his financial resources may be so straitened that it would be impossible for him to pay his way whilst attending lectures at a University away from his home town. The addition of a moderate boarding-allowance to a University Bursary awarded on a competitive basis would, in my opinion, do much to mitigate any tendency to abuse the existing system of exemption from lectures. Classification op Teachers. In my report for 1933 I dwelt at length on the present systeni of classification of teachers in secondary schools —its development, its manifold benefits, and its defects, especially in a time of arrested expansion of school enrolments. The situation referred in that report had not appreciably changed last year, and there was still considerable dissatisfaction among the younger male teachers especially, many of whom found themselves blocked from promotion to a Grade C position in their own school and with very little prospect of securing advancement on the staffs of other schools owing to the now commonly adopted practice of internal promotion. Of the 298 male assistants who were employed last year in puiely secondary schools, 54 per cent, held positions below the grade corresponding to their own personal grading; 40 per cent, of the women were in a similar position. (In neither case are D Grade teachers included.) The dissatisfaction among C Grade teachers is aggravated by the knowledge that in combined and technical schools all salaries up to the maximum C Grade salary depend entirely on the teacher's personal classification. If any amelioration is to come, it must be in the direction of removing the existing bar between C and D Grade salaries. Homework. The vexed question of homework appears to be always with us, but a somewhat vigorous recrudescence of the old controversy has again been in evidence in some centres in New

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