Hadow (1933)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Analysis, Preface, Introduction
Chapter 1 History of the development of infant education
Chapter 2 Physical development of children up to 7
Chapter 3 Mental development of children up to 7
Chapter 4 Age limits and organisation of the infant stage
Chapter 5 Medical supervision, education and training of under 5s
Chapter 6 Training and teaching of children in infant and nursery schools
Chapter 7 Staffing of infant and nursery schools, training of teachers
Chapter 8 Premises and equipment of infant and nursery schools
Chapter 9 Summary of principal conclusions and recommendations
Appendix I List of witnesses
Appendix II Anatomical and physiological characteristics of 2-7 year olds (Harris)
Appendix III Emotional development of children up to seven plus (Burt and Isaacs)
Appendix IV Notes on typical nursery schools and classes
Appendix V Manchester's student nurse scheme for 'helpers'
Appendix VI Practice in Europe and US
Index

London: HM Stationery Office

Chapter 1 Sketch of the history of the development of infant education as a distinct part of primary education in England and Wales from the beginning of the 19th century to the present time
[pages 1 - 46]

Part I: The development of infant schools and departments down to 1870.

1. Organised infant education in England and Wales has gradually come into existence within the last 120 years. It is true that the importance of the training and teaching of very young children was recognised by several great thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Thus JV Andreae in his Christianopolis (1619) (1) and JA Comenius in his School of Infancy (1633) (2) both discuss the training of infants, but they and later writers (e.g. Leibniz, Richard Edgeworth, Maria Edgeworth and Pestalozzi) down to Froebel, viewed infant education up to the age of six as the training of children within the home.

Froebel (1782-1852), working under the influence of Rousseau and Pestalozzi, was the first great educator on the Continent who endeavoured to provide a coherent scheme of infant education based on the nature of the child in order to improve and supplement the training given by the mother and the nurse.

The infant school sprang into existence in three different places during the last 160 years, each of its founders being probably ignorant of the work of the others. The first of these schools was founded at Waldbach in Alsace in 1769, the second in the small factory town of New Lanark in Scotland in 1816 and the third in the village of Blankenburg in the Thuringian Forest in 1837. From these, and more particularly from the two last named, the infant school of Great Britain has sprung. It is generally believed that the first public infant school in Europe was that established in 1769 by JF Oberlin (1740-1826) who was for 59 years pasteur of Waldbach, a remote parish in the Vosges in Alsace. With the help of Sara Banzet and later of Louise Schepler, an infant school was opened in 1769 at Waldbach in which the young children played together under the charge of conductrices while the older children were learning to spin, to knit and to sew. The elements of Scripture and natural history were taught by means of pictures, and much attention was given to drawing and map making. In fine weather the conductrices took the children for walks, and encouraged them to find the flowers which had been described to them in school. Infant schools were established in France, Switzerland and in some of the German states largely on the model of Oberlin's school at Waldbach. For instance, Princess Pauline of Lippe founded an infant school (Paulinenanstalt) at Detmold in 1802, which is still in existence. (3)

2. So far as is known, the first school in Great Britain designed expressly for infants was that established in 1816 by Robert Owen (1771-1858), as a part of his New Institution at New Lanark in Scotland. Before giving an account of this school, which marks the opening of a fresh phase in infant training, it will be convenient to describe briefly the general provision for primary education available in England and Wales in the early decades of the 19th century.

Apart from private venture schools and dame schools, the most important means of popular education were the day parochial and charity schools, the Sunday schools, and the monitorial schools established under the influence of Bell and Lancaster. None of these, except the dame schools, made much provision for children under the age of six. The Sunday schools which had originated in 'the dame Sunday school for ragged and turbulent boys,' established by Robert Raikes at Gloucester in 1780, made no special provision for infants till the middle of the 19th century, and such parochial and charity schools as existed throughout the country admitted children for the most part at the age of seven. The monitorial schools did not originally make provision for children under the age of six. The British and Foreign School Society founded in 1808, and the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church, founded in 1811, supported the monitorial systems of Joseph Lancaster and Dr Andrew Bell respectively. The chief aim of these systems was to impart to children of the age of six and upwards the rudiments of religious knowledge and the 3Rs with a little needlework for the girls. One of the rules of the British and Foreign School Society was that no child under the age of six should be admitted to a British School. In practice, however, children under that age were admitted to many of the British Schools, (4) and it is known that children of the age of four were admitted in many districts to the monitorial schools connected with the National Society. It would, therefore, seem that the age of admission depended largely on local conditions and the size of the school. As time went on, and as the monitorial system failed to realise its early promise, the average age of pupils in the British and National Schools tended to fall. In 1850 approximately 50 per cent of the children in attendance at the 'elementary schools' were under the age of eight. In general, and where there was room, young children were admitted lo the monitorial schools, but the teaching given to them was not to be commended. Thus, Matthew Arnold, in his Report for 1852, writes: 'In the institutions which I have visited during the past year, I have continually felt the want of infant schools. It seems to me that more good schools are clogged and impeded in their operations by a mass of children under 5 years of age at the bottom of them than from any other cause.' (5)

The traditional dame schools were, in a sense, infant schools. (6) Older children were admitted, but it would seem that the majority of the pupils were children between the ages of two or three and seven. At their best (as will be seen from the summary of the Report of the Newcastle Commission of 1861 in Section 9 below) the dame schools discharged the function of public nurseries for very young children and served as places of security as well as of education, since they were the most obvious means of keeping the children of poor families out of the streets in towns, or out of the roads and fields in the country. The teachers were often elderly or invalid women, who were frequently very ignorant. The rooms in which these schools were held, were in many instances, ill-ventilated, ill-kept, and unhygienic. (7) Some of them, however, especially those in villages, were fairly efficient, (8) and in some cases were encouraged by the local clergy, who desired to do something towards promoting education in rural areas. For instance, in 1839 the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury contributed to the support of a dame school which the Vicar of Herne Hill had established at his own expense at Dunkirk in Kent. (9)

3. The first infant school in Great Britain was that established in 1816 by Robert Owen at New Lanark in Scotland. Children were admitted at the age of three and cared for while their parents were at work in the local cotton mills. Owen described this infant school in his evidence given on 11 June 1816, before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, which under the chairmanship of Henry Brougham was enquiring into 'the education of the lower orders of the Metropolis'. He explained that the children were received into a 'preparatory or training school' at the age of three, in which they were constantly superintended, to prevent them acquiring bad habits, to give them good ones, and to form their dispositions to mutual kindness. 'The school in bad weather is held in apartments properly arranged for the purpose, but in fine weather the children are much out of doors that they may have the benefit of sufficient exercise in the open air. (10) In this training school the children remain two or three years, according to their bodily strength and mental capacity. When they have attained as much strength and instruction as to enable them to unite, without creating confusion with the youngest classes in the superior school, they are admitted into it, and in this school they are taught to read, write, count, and the girls in addition to sew.'

Owen's son, RD Owen, in his Outline of the System of Education at New Lanark (1824), states that the infant classes from two to six years 'remain in school about half the time (about 2 hours). During the remainder of the time they are allowed to amuse themselves at perfect freedom in a large paved area in front of the Institution under the charge of a young woman ... By this means these infants acquire healthful and hardy habits.' (11)

In 1818 a group of advanced Whigs and Radicals including Lord Lansdowne, Brougham, James Mill and others, combined to establish an infant school on Owen's lines at Brewers Green, Westminster, (12) placing it in charge of James Buchanan, a weaver, who had been specially brought from Owen's New Institution. (13)

4. In 1820 Joseph Wilson opened the second infant school in England at Spitalfields, placing it under the charge of Samuel Wilderspin, who was a friend of Buchanan and had visited the infant school at Westminster. (14) Wilderspin elaborated a system of infant education, which left its mark for many years on the curriculum and buildings of infant schools and elementary schools. (15) Wilderspin, like Owen, used the playground not only for physical exercises and recreation, but also for mental and moral training.

He was closely associated with the short-lived Infant School Society, which was founded at London in 1824, with JP Greaves, the friend of Pestalozzi, (16) as its Secretary.

Wilderspin published a series of books expounding his system of infant training, (17) and by frequent journeys throughout the country did much to popularise the movement for infant schools. To him these schools owed the 'gallery' and a mistaken zeal for introducing children to formal instruction at too early an age. The philosophical basis of his system was crude and vague, and he persistently confused education with instruction. Nevertheless, he realised the importance of making the infant school bright and cheerful, and accordingly adapted his instruction in order to amuse the children. He laid great stress on the importance of physical development, to which end a playground was essential, and games had to be devised. Care had to be taken not to keep the children too long in one posture. Teaching was provided by means of pictures and objects, and in theory at any rate the infants were supposed to be left free to examine, compare and express what they saw. Such was Wilderspin's theory, but in practice many of the infant schools established under his influence tended to adopt mechanical methods of teaching and repressive forms of discipline, and to aim at producing infant prodigies.

5. Another pioneer in the field of infant education in Great Britain was David Stow, who began his philanthropic work in Glasgow about 1810. Stow, who visited Wilderspin's School at Spitalfields in 1820, founded the Glasgow Infant School Society in 1827, and in 1828 established a model infant school in the Drygate at Glasgow (which was moved to the Saltmarket in 1834). He outlined a graded system of elementary education, viz. initiatory departments for children between the ages of two or three and six, and juvenile departments for children between the ages of six and fourteen. His infant school is described in his book entitled The Training System adopted in the Model Schools of the Glasgow Educational Society (1836). It was limited to 140 infants, and was to be in charge of a master and mistress. In general arrangement it resembled Wilderspin's infant school, with its playground, its long main room with a gallery (18) at one end, and its small classroom. It was called the Initiatory Training School, since the teacher's chief aim was not to be instruction, but training, whereas the ordinary infant school of the period tended to stress repetition and 'the old rote work'. The principal object of the training was the development of aptitudes and the formation of habits. The teacher was to see that the children were acquiring ideas, not mere words and to this end stress was to be laid on 'picturing out'.

The following description of the Model Infant School in the Saltmarket from the Glasgow Herald of 15 June 1835, (19) (written probably by Stow himself), gives a vivid, though perhaps unduly favourable account of the aims and methods of his system:

'The physical health and habits of the children are attended to in the playground - everything is fully explained, and the understanding is fed by the eye upon every picture and object which surrounds them in their airy schoolroom. The children are taught and trained to habits of cleanliness, order and obedience to parental authority, and to those set over them; also kindliness to one another, and, above all, their duty to God ... They seldom sit on their seats more than fifteen minutes at a time without exercise. All is joyous activity - only pictures and objects are in use, and one third of their time is spent in amusements in the playground, (20) in swinging, running, singing, building castles with wooden bricks, etc., or examining the beauty and variety of the flowers.'

Through the efforts of Stow and Wilderspin, large numbers of infant schools were established in England and Scotland. A Prospectus of the Model Infant School in the Saltmarket issued by the Glasgow Infant School Society in 1835, states that infant schools were instituted in the interests of the children of poor parents who in their struggle for existence could not afford the means of education, nor devote the time necessary for the careful rearing of a family. The infant schools, which were evidently what would now be called 'nursery schools', were intended for children of both sexes from the age of two to that of six. Young children were to be taken from the risks of the streets and from the strife and wrangling not uncommon in their own families, and the infant school was regarded as the most suitable protection against such evils. (23) Though the chief aim of these schools was to provide religious and moral training, secular instruction was not neglected. Furthermore, the infant schools provided amusement and occupation equivalent to amusement. The children were encouraged to exercise their powers of seeing, hearing, and touching, in a way that afforded them at once information and pleasure. (24)

6. The training of teachers for infant schools was first seriously begun by the Home and Colonial Institution, later known as the Home and Colonial Infant School Society, which was founded in 1836 to establish infant schools and to train teachers for work in them. The principal promoters of this Society were the Rev. Charles Mayo (25) (1792-1864) and his sister Miss Elizabeth Mayo (1793-1865). Mayo had come under the influence of JH Pestalozzi (1745-1827) with whom he had lived at Yverdon from 1819 to 1822. The Society originally intended to train teachers for children under the age of seven, but later extended its scope to prepare them to deal with pupils up to the age of ten. Its first Report, dated February, 1837, states that 'to guide and govern an infant school well calls for wisdom to discern, versatility to modify, firmness to persevere, judgement to decide ... No uneducated or undisciplined mind can supply the incessant care, the watchful diligence, the unwearied patience necessary to manage small children'. The Society set out to reduce infant instruction to a system, and to that end founded a model infant school and prepared and published a set of books for the use of teachers. (26) Mr Tufnell, an Inspector of the Education Department, who visited this school in 1847 was favourably impressed. He writes:

'The usual course of instruction is to produce to the children the cast or picture of some animal, or mineral, or plant, or some specimen of manufacture, which is made the subject of the lesson. The chief object in the method of instruction adopted with the youngest classes is to cultivate the faculty of observation ... The principle is, that the child should first be exercised in forming clear notions, and then taught how to express them. Thus the perception of colour is first exercised by showing the class a sheet containing patterns of various colours, and desiring them to pick out from a heap of cards of different colours such as correspond with any particular colours pointed out on the sheet. In a subsequent lesson they are taught to affix the right appellation to the qualities they have discovered. It must have been observed by all who have paid much attention to schools, and the remark has been made in the Reports of several of the inspectors, that there is a want of harmony between infant schools and those for children of maturer years. I believe it would be a truer, though less polite statement of the case, to assert that while in most infant schools, something was taught, in most other schools, at least in the lower classes, nothing was taught'. (27)

7. It will be seen from the brief account given above of the work done by Owen, Wilderspin and Stow, and by the Home and Colonial Society under the influence of Charles Mayo and his sister, Elizabeth, that the infant school took shape and form at a time when there was a widespread movement towards the provision of 'elementary' education on a large scale. (28) From the very inception of that movement there was a tendency to differentiate the provision made for infants under the age of six from that of children over that age. The progress of the industrial revolution in the early part of the 19th century led to a general and insistent demand for child labour. Any formal education that was given in the dame schools, the parochial schools, and the monitorial schools associated with the National Society or with the British and Foreign School Society, began early, and it was regarded as expedient that the schooling of the majority of children should end about the age of ten. The need of the time was for an institution that would combine the functions of school and nursery. The early infant schools such as those described above were expressly designed to fulfil the dual function of (a) a place for taking care of children while their mothers were at work, and (b) an initiatory school where the elements of reading, writing and arithmetic might be acquired. Owing in no small degree to the writings of Robert Owen, and the example of his infant school at New Lanark, to the influence of practical teachers like Buchanan and Stow, and to laymen like Henry Brougham, the movement for the provision of infant schools laid stress from the outset on physical well-being, on training the affections, and on the formation of good moral and social habits. The infant school was to be a happy place, a scene of ordered activity where little children might develop under the guidance of adult teachers, acquiring a certain knowledge of nature and of the world around. (29) The following passage from Brougham's Essay Practical Observations upon the Education of the People (1825), shows the important position which infant schools, as distinct from elementary schools, (30) had attained at that date:

'You are aware that these (observations) contain a portion of a larger discourse ... upon the important subject of popular education, in its three branches, infant schools, elementary schools (for reading and writing), and adult schools.'

'Infants' schools contemplate the training of children between the ages of two and six years. They receive infants from the parental roof to become to them "father, and friend, and tutor, all in one" ... Every device which the most judicious parent or well-experienced teacher can worthily employ in promoting the welfare of a child committed to their guidance, must be put in requisition in these schools or they will ill deserve the expressive title given to them by Lord Jeffrey of "well-regulated, systematic nurseries". The home and the school are to be in them united; the kindness, the love of the indulgent and faithful mother, is to be blended with the intelligent firmness of the enlightened teacher. The bodily health and strength are to be sustained by such appropriate and varied exercises as will tend to the equal development of every part of the physical system. The moral dispositions and habits are to be conformed to the standard of the Christian Scriptures by every example that can be made to bear upon their elucidation, ... Things rather than words, or, at all events, things and examples before words and explanations, must be the course of the infants' school teacher if he would be successful in his labours.

'Constant cheerfulness must reign in an infants' school; occasional excitement is good, but the frequent recurrence of such a stimulant becomes a burden to all. The school must not be allowed to become a plaything, nor the frequent scene of light and frivolous amusements, nor yet an exhibition room for the display of a few acquirements which surprise the multitude, but which neither improve the minds nor the hearts of the children.'

'One especial object, then, with every infants' school, should be the physical welfare of the children. Their health is to be sustained and improved; everything conducing to such improvement, as food, clothing, cleanliness, exercise, must be made an object of care and watchfulness ... Physical exercises are best carried on simultaneously with the development of the reasoning faculties, in the pauses which are needful for the repose of these faculties; they afford that relief which is so essential when the mind has been actively engaged. The means in use at some of the infants' schools, and others that are recommended, are, first, a well-ventilated and lofty schoolroom; second, muscular motion, introduced both into their lessons and their amusements; third, easy gymnastic exercises, adapted both for the open air and for the schoolroom; fourth, social games, or plays; fifth, useful employments, to accustom them early to habits of industry. ... we would also suggest an open shed, for shelter and exercise in wet weather.' (31)

'It is not that we regard moral training as an object of secondary value; but that the condition of health is indispensably necessary to the culture of the moral and social affections and the intellectual powers.'

In the later part of his paper Mr Baker discusses in some detail the 'intellectual system' of infant schools. He expresses the opinion that valuable knowledge may be imparted during infancy, without endangering the health of the pupil, provided sufficient time for recreation be also given. 'But this knowledge must be of a nature within the capacity of a child to understand; and it must be present at such times and in such a manner, as to be acceptable, and even received with eagerness.' (32)

8. The first Minutes issued in 1839-1840 by the newly appointed Committee of Council on Education show that the idea of infant schools, as distinct from elementary schools, was already well established, and that the Secretary, Mr James Phillips Kay (afterwards Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth), fully appreciated the importance of having separate infant departments, or even separate infant schools where possible. The collection of sixteen model plans for schools of varying sizes appended to the Minutes in question includes no fewer than ten plans showing distinct provision for infants, e.g. a school for 30 children and 20 infants; a school for 300 children and 150 infants; a separate school for 110 infants.(33)

The following passage from the Minute explanatory of the plans of school-houses (20 February 1840), shows that the importance of infant schools was recognised by the Committee of Council on Education: 'The value of infant schools is daily rendered more apparent, by the evidence which transpires of the extent to which elementary education is interfered with, by the employment of the children in assisting their parents at an early age, not less in the agricultural occupations of rural districts than in the manufactories of towns.' (Minutes for 1839-40, p. 47.)

The Inspectors' Reports published in the annual Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education from 1840 to 1861, show how lacking in system was the whole organisation of primary education.

Indeed on a broad retrospect of the development of state intervention in education during the 19th century down to the publication of the report of the Newcastle Commission in 1861, it is true to say that parliament was largely concerned with the rescue and protection of young children from premature employment in factories and mines. The Factory Acts (1833 to 1867) and the Mines Act of 1860 contain various educational provisions applying to children working in factories and mines. Nevertheless, the years between the establishment of the Committee of Council on Education in 1839 and the publication of the Report of the Newcastle Commission in 1861 were a time of vigorous and significant educational experiment. The monitorial 'systems' of Bell and Lancaster and the infant 'systems' of Wilderspin and Stow, were undergoing considerable modifications in practice.

The establishment of infant schools on a wider scale was undoubtedly retarded down to 1870 by the traditional dame schools. (34) Nevertheless, as the more enlightened ideas about infant education deriving from Wilderspin, Stow and Mayo gradually spread, infant schools were established in many places, sometimes as independent institutions and sometimes as departments or classes attached to the monitorial day schools. (35) In some instances, the infant school was established before the elementary school. This sometimes happened in parishes consisting of a main village (containing an elementary school), with several outlying hamlets, since the parents in these places were naturally reluctant to allow children under the age of six or seven to walk any considerable distance. Small infant schools of this type were frequently established in connection with mission halls and Sunday schools. (36) Owing largely to the work of the Home and Colonial Society infant schools were from the first better staffed than the day monitorial schools.

In 1854 the Committee of Council on Education issued a Minute designed to encourage training colleges to educate mistresses for infant schools. No college could obtain the benefits offered unless it provided a special course of study for intending infant teachers. Pupils who went through this special course extending over a year were at first examined as registered teachers and, if successful, were afterwards examined before Her Majesty's Inspector in respect of their practical ability to teach young children, and obtained a first or second class certificate.

These Regulations were modified by the Minute of 24 April 1857, which offered Second Class Queen's Scholarships to pupil teachers who had been apprenticed to the mistresses of infant schools, and also to a limited number of other young persons whom the inspector at his annual visit considered by their manners and address suited for dealing with very young children.

9. An important stage in the development of both infant and elementary education is marked by the Report of the Royal Commission appointed in 1858 under the Chairmanship of the Duke of Newcastle 'To enquire into the state of public education in England', 'and to consider and report what measures, if any, are required for the extension of sound and cheap elementary education to all classes of the people'.

In their Report, published in 1861, the Commissioners classified the institutions for the education of the independent poor in reference to their objects as 'infant schools or schools for children above infancy, day schools or evening schools, weekday schools or Sunday schools'. The Commissioners pointed out that the infant schools received children up to the age of seven, beginning with the earliest age at which they were able to walk alone and to speak. They discharged the function of public nurseries for very young children and were of great utility as places of security as well as of education, since they were the only means of keeping children of poor families out of the streets in town, or out of the roads and fields in the country. The Commissioners distinguished two classes of infant schools, viz: private or dame schools, and public infant schools, which frequently formed a department of the ordinary day school. The dame schools were very common in 1861 both in town and country. They were frequently little more than nurseries in which 'the nurse collected the children of many families into her own house instead of attending upon the children of some one family'.

These dame schools, which were generally taught by elderly women, might be useful in remote villages, but were generally very inefficient and were often ill ventilated, crowded and dirty. (37)

The public infant schools presented a different appearance. The Commissioners pointed out that great attention had been bestowed on their organisation, and in the best infant schools much was done, and much even was taught. The Commissioners after quoting from various official reports and from their own evidence, stated that, in their opinion, infant schools formed a most important part of the machinery required for a national system of education, inasmuch as they laid the foundation in some degree of knowledge, and in a still greater degree of habits which were essential to education. The value of infant schools depended almost wholly on the tact, patience, sympathy and ingenuity of the teacher. They considered that more training colleges were required for infant school mistresses. 'Their office requires a special qualification and, therefore, special education'. The Commissioners recommended that scholars under the age of seven should not be examined, but that the amount of the grant should be determined by the average number of children in daily attendance.

10. It devolved on Robert Lowe (afterwards Viscount Sherbrooke), as Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education, to make certain administrative changes to meet the criticisms of the Royal Commission on existing arrangements, particularly in 'day schools'. The Revised Code of 1862 accordingly instituted a system of six standards, corresponding to the six years of school life between the end of the infant stage and the age of twelve. Grant could not be earned by children above that age, and as the first standard examination was for children of six to seven years of age, the younger children or infants were not officially brought under the drastic conditions of the Code. Nevertheless, the Code had an important indirect effect on infant schools and departments, since the strain of preparing children of the age of six to pass into standard I reacted on the teaching of children under that age. This determined for a long time the definition of infants - they were children below standard I. Even in schools where, for reasons of organisation and economical use of space the pupils in standard I were retained in the infant section or group, standard I was still subject to the Code requirements, and it was only later that teachers ventured to apply to children in that standard some of the freer and more appropriate methods of instruction in use in infant classes. Thus, though in a sense the infant school or department was more free to develop than the 'graded' school for older pupils, this freedom was within narrow limits, since the children had to be prepared for the standard I examination, and most teachers still held the traditional view that their principal duty was to teach the 3Rs even to the younger children. It is evident however that the Education Department, even at this period, fully recognised that the training of infants required special methods and qualifications. Thus Paragraph No. 29 of the Instructions to Inspectors for 1862 pointed out that, as the great part of the children in the infant schools would obtain grants without individual examination, and instruction in such schools required above all special methods and qualifications, it was reasonable to bring them, when they exceeded the dimensions of a class, under a general rule whereby principal teachers were required to be certificated.

Part II: The development of infant schools and departments from 1870 to 1905

11. Broadly, it may be said that by 1870 infant schools formed part of the core of English primary education, though, as has been shown, the monitorial schools did not originally contemplate introductory departments, since they admitted their pupils at the age of six. Thus when 'elementary' schools were being founded in large numbers by voluntary effort throughout the country in the early decades of the last [nineteenth] century, the infants were in many cases accommodated in a separate school. Nevertheless, when the state began after 1839 to take cognisance of elementary day schools and to allocate grants, infant departments or classes were already established as natural adjuncts to many such schools. Up to 1870, the general development of infant schools and 'elementary' schools with their higher classes, where such existed, had been very uneven and irregular. The passing of the Elementary Education Act of 1870, directed attention for the first time to the problems involved in providing suitable accommodation for large numbers of children, and school boards were authorised to frame by-laws making attendance at school compulsory for children between the ages of five and thirteen. This provision was only permissive, and such by-laws were subject to many exceptions. A plan of school organisation to meet the new conditions was outlined by a committee appointed by the first London School Board in 1871, under the chairmanship of Prof. TH Huxley. This committee pointed out that public elementary day schools might conveniently be classified into infant schools for children below the age of seven; junior schools for children between the ages of seven and ten; and senior schools for older children. (38) The committee stressed the importance of schools for children under the age of seven, since in a properly conducted infant school children were not only withdrawn from evil and corrupt influences and disciplined in proper habits, but received such an amount of positive instruction as greatly facilitated their progress in the more advanced schools. They recommended that infant schools should be mixed, and that as a general rule women teachers only should be employed in them. These suggestions were largely incorporated by the London School Board in their Regulations for the Management of Schools. (39)

This general scheme of organisation for public elementary schools was copied with modifications by various other school boards, especially those in urban areas, and it became the common practice to provide a distinct department for infants in the larger board schools. Thus, one important effect of the Act of 1870 was to make infant departments or schools an integral part of the new system of public elementary schools both in town and country. As a consequence, most of the dame schools which had survived in large numbers, (40) both in towns and in rural areas, disappeared in the early seventies.

12. Particular interest attaches to the lower age limit for possible obligatory attendance at school which was fixed at 'not less than five' for children in England and Wales by Section 74 of the Elementary Education Act of 1870. Up to 1870, apart from certain educational provisions in the Factory Acts (1833-1867) and in the Mines Act of 1860 which only applied to children working in factories and mines, there was no general legal compulsion on parents to send their children to school. The Education Act of 1870 conferred on the newly established school boards power to make by-laws requiring the attendance of children between the ages of five to ten with power to retain them at school to the ages of eleven, twelve or thirteen, (41) subject to the provision that such by-laws must grant exemptions on certain conditions to pupils over the age of ten. The Education Act of 1880 turned this power into a duty. The Reports of the Parliamentary Debates on the Elementary Education Bill of 1870 show that Mr WE Forster was willing at the committee stage to make six years the minimum, but Mr Disraeli, the leader of the opposition, said he 'was prepared to support the proposition of the government whether the age was 5 or 6'. (42) In 1872 the Education Department fixed three as the minimum age at which children in attendance at school might count for grant, though children under the age of three might still be admitted to school.

The infant school in England and Wales (and it may be added in Scotland) appears to have no exact parallel elsewhere. Since the early [eighteen] seventies the three year old child in England and Wales has been permitted to attend school where there was sufficient accommodation; when he attains the age of five he is in most areas compelled to attend school. In most European states, in the states and provinces of the British dominions and in the United States of north America the obligatory age for attendance at school is six, or even seven. Thus in England and Wales since the passing of the Education Act of 1870 the infant school has formed an integral part of the system of public elementary education, organised in many instances as a relatively independent department with a mistress of its own and offering a distinct course of training and teaching for children below the age of seven. Attention has frequently been called since the early seventies to the unique character of infant education in England and Wales. Thus the Rev. Dr JH Rigg in his National Education (1873) writes:

'In Germany the infant school system is no part of public education. The school age there begins several years later than in this country. I cannot but regard that as a radical defect. In America, as I have already stated, infant schools are little known. Our English infant school system is one of our chief educational advantages.' (p. 336).

'The infant department of a group of English public elementary schools has no real counterpart in other countries ... Other nations extend a kind of half recognition to this early species of training, but only in England is it carried on in the same building as one department of a public school and regarded as part - a very important part - of the national educational system.' (p. 180). (43)

ER Robson, in the work already mentioned, states on page 191 with reference to the board schools in London, that an exercising or marching ground and a playground are both necessary adjuncts to an infant school. 'The former should be covered, and if not in communication with the school door should be connected therewith by means of a covered way'. On page 181 of the same work, Robson writes:

'No infant school, however small, can be regarded as complete which does not at least provide a separate room for 'babies' apart from the general room ... The babies' room should have direct access to the covered playground and latrines without the necessity of passing through the schoolroom. A pane of clear glass should be provided in the wall of division to enable the mistress to see how these youngest children are being interested.'

The system received wider publicity from Charles Dickens, who expounded Froebel's ideas in an article in Household Words in 1855. In 1860 the system was introduced into the Model School of the Home and Colonial Infant School Society in Grays Inn Road, London. After 1870, the kindergarten movement developed rapidly. (48) The Froebel Society was founded in 1874 and began its examinations in 1876. In 1874 the British and Foreign School Society established a model kindergarten and training department in connection with Stockwell Training College. In 1884 the same society founded a training college for infant teachers on kindergarten lines at Saffron Walden.

After 1871 several of the newly established school boards, e.g. London and Croydon, introduced kindergarten methods into their infant schools. Thus in 1871 the first London School Board included in its regulations for infant schools a provision that instruction should be given in object lessons of a simple character, with some such exercise of the hands and eyes as is given in the 'Kindergarten system'.

In 1873 the London School Board appointed an instructor in kindergarten exercises, who in the following year began a system of classes for teachers. In 1875, she was authorised to issue a certificate to each teacher whose personal application of her kindergarten knowledge reached the standard required by the instructor. In 1878 the instructor reported that she had experienced difficulty in trying to secure that the principles of the kindergarten system should be infused as far as possible into the general instruction in infant schools, and that the teachers too frequently looked upon kindergarten as a subject of instruction rather than as a principle to be applied, wherever possible, in every lesson. In 1878, the school board altered her title to that of 'Superintendent of Method in Infant Schools'; and in 1888 it asked the Froebel Society to suggest an examiner for their training classes. In 1888 the National Froebel Union was founded as an examining body.

The Froebelian apparatus was gradually introduced into infant schools by other school boards and by managers of voluntary schools in the seventies and eighties, but it may be surmised that it was often used in a mechanical way far removed from the true Froebelian method. A circular to HM Inspectors, issued by the Education Department in 1882, points out that 'it is of little service to adopt the gifts and mechanical occupations of the kindergarten, unless they are so used as to furnish real training in accuracy of hand and eye, in intelligence and in obedience'.

In another circular to Inspectors (6 August 1883) the Department refers to the provision of 'appropriate and varied occupations' for the infants as a requirement for the receipt of merit grant, and states that the exercises usually known as those of the kindergarten may be so used as to fulfil the purpose of this requirement, but are not indispensable.

Article 108 of the Code of 1885 states that infants should be instructed suitably for their age, and in the Code of 1889 this phrase was expanded to read 'suitably to their age and capacity'.

15. Increasing knowledge regarding the mental and physical development, tastes, aptitudes, and interests of very young children, deriving largely from the kindergarten movement described in the preceding section, gradually directed public attention more and more to the need for improved methods in infant education. The influence of these new ideas is reflected in various documents issued by the Education Department in the early nineties. For instance, Sections 5 and 6 of the Revised Instructions to Inspectors (6 February 1891) mark a distinct advance. Section 5 points out that the infant school contemplates in the length, variety and character of its lessons, the training of scholars whose delicate frames require very careful treatment. 'It is essential, therefore, that the length of the lesson should not in any case exceed 30 minutes, and should as a rule last only 20 minutes, and that the lessons should be varied in length according to the Section of the school, so that in the babies' room the actual work of the lesson should not be more than a quarter of an hour. Each lesson should also be followed by intervals of rest and song; the subjects of lessons should be varied, beginning in the lowest Section with familiar objects and animals, and interspersed with songs and stories appropriate to the lesson; the spontaneous and cooperative activity of the scholars should form the object and animate the spirit of each lesson'. (49)

An even more important advance was made in 1893, when the Department issued a special circular to HM Inspectors on the Training and Teaching of Infants (Circular No. 322, dated 6 February 1893). This document, which was reissued in successive years and finally incorporated almost verbatim in the first edition of Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers issued by the Board of Education in 1905, registers a most important development in official ideas regarding the education of infants. The circular, after stating that the Department desired to give further encouragement to the employment of kindergarten methods, points out that the circumstances of infant schools had altered considerably in recent years. As the numbers in the lower classes of schools had increased, a full four years' attendance at the infant school would be the rule and not the exception.

'Two leading principles should be regarded as a sound basis for the education of early childhood:

(1) The recognition of the child's spontaneous activity, and the stimulation of this activity in certain well-defined directions by the teachers.

(2) The harmonious and complete development of the whole of the child's faculties. The teacher should pay especial regard to the love of movement, which can alone secure healthy physical conditions; to the observant use of the organs of sense, especially those of sight and touch; and to that eager desire of questioning which intelligent children exhibit. All these should be encouraged under due limitations, and should be developed simultaneously, so that each stage of development may be complete in itself.'

After entering a warning against mere repetition of the same exercises and lessons, the circular states that pictures and flowers have been wisely introduced into infant schools and have added much to their cheerfulness and attractiveness. 'They should be frequently taken down into the class and made the subject of conversation.' The children should be encouraged in every way to give expression in their own words to what they know, what they want to know, and what they think. 'It will be found that the elementary subjects when taught on right methods can be treated with greater variety; reading becomes a kindergarten lesson through pictures and word building; writing becomes a variety of kindergarten drawing; elementary exercises in number are associated with many of the kindergarten occupations.' Appended to the circular are lists of varied occupations for children (a) between the ages of five and seven; (b) between the ages of three and five.

The gradual abandonment from 1890 onwards of payment by results and of individual examination by the inspectors of pupils in public elementary schools from standard I upwards had indirectly a salutary effect on the teaching in infant schools and departments, which were now no longer to the same extent expected by the head teachers of the 'senior' schools to bring their pupils up to a certain minimum standard in the 3Rs (see Section 10 above).

16. Since the Education Act of 1870 fixed the age for obligatory attendance at school at five, and the Code of 1872 fixed three as the minimum age at which children in attendance at school might count for grant, the ages of three and five have had considerable administrative significance. It has been long customary among teachers to divide infants into two groups: 'younger infants or babies' between the ages of three and five, and 'older infants' between the ages of five and seven. (51) This time honoured classification appears in the first edition of the Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers published by the Board of Education in 1905; and has been retained in the latest edition of the Handbook of Suggestions (1927), though the nomenclature has been slightly altered. The stage up to the age of five is now described as the 'preliminary or nursery stage', while the second stage, from the age of five to that of about eight, is called the 'infant stage'.

The following statistics show that since the passing of the Elementary Education Act of 1870, considerable numbers of children below the age of five have been in attendance at public elementary schools:

Successive Codes and Instructions to Inspectors from 1871 onwards contain many references to children between the ages of three and five and to baby classes.

The Final Report of the Cross Commission (1888) contains some interesting references to children under the age of five. Mr Cumin, the Permanent Secretary of the Education Department, told the Commissioners that the Department had no uniform rule in regard to accommodation for these young children.

'What we say is, generally, that you are to consider the children between the ages of three and five as capable of going to school, and capable of bringing a grant; but it does not at all imply that the accommodation in every case is to be supplied for every child between the ages of three and five.'

There is no reference to infants in the Recommendations of the Majority Report of this Commission, but the Minority Report states that it is important that there should be ample accommodation for infants, and that the attendance of children under five years of age should be encouraged. (53)

The Revised Instructions to Inspectors, issued by the Education Department in February 1891, which are quoted at the beginning of Section 15 of this chapter, show that the Department was fully alive to the importance of improving school conditions for children under the age of five. The new policy was carried further in the Special Circular to Inspectors on the Training and Teaching of Infants issued in February 1893, which is summarised in Section 15. (54)

Part III: The development of infant schools and of separate nursery schools from 1905 to the present time

17. The year 1905 was marked by several important changes in official policy in respect of infant schools, particularly those containing classes for children below the age of five. By the beginning of the present century, the environmental conditions required for the proper physical and mental development of young children were better understood than hitherto, and the problem of the training of children below the age of five was being discussed both by educationists and doctors. (55) The educationists pointed out that the public elementary schools were not providing a suitable type of education for children below the age of five, and that in some instances the training given tended to dull the children's minds. The doctors urged that attendance at school below the age of five was prejudicial to health, since it deprived young children of fresh air, exercise, adequate freedom of movement and sleep, at a critical stage in their development. (56) It was also pointed out that epidemics were apt to spread in crowded classrooms for babies.

The new local education authorities set up in place of the school boards under the Education Act 1902 looked for some guidance on this important point, and the Board of Education accordingly decided early in 1904 to employ five of the recently appointed women inspectors (57) to conduct an inquiry regarding the admission of infants to public elementary schools and the curriculum suitable for children under the age of five. The Board published the reports of these inspectors in 1905, with an introductory memorandum by the Chief Inspector of public elementary schools. The memorandum states that the inspectors were agreed that children between the ages of three and five gained no profit intellectually from school instruction, and that the mechanical teaching which they often received dulled their imagination and weakened their power of independent observation.

Though kindergarten teachers are praised in the reports, kindergarten 'occupations' are condemned, as being contrary to the spirit of Froebel, when taught mechanically in large classes. 'Kindergarten occupations are often', writes one inspector, 'distinguished by absence of occupation, for in effect it is not education that is offered, nor even instruction in anything but drill, the children being kept idle, silent and still for long intervals, while the teacher inspects the last little act that she has imposed upon the class by word of command'.

The Chief Inspector pointed out that the five women inspectors were agreed that the best informed teacher was not necessarily the best baby-minder, and he suggested that, though it was desirable that there should be special training for infant teachers, nevertheless two supplementary teachers of good motherly instincts might be as good for 60 babies between the ages of three and five as one clever certificated teacher. He added that in making this suggestion there was no desire to depreciate [deprecate?] the zeal and devotion of infant teachers. They had had unduly large classes of very young children and had thought themselves obliged to show 'results'. The Chief Inspector concluded by saying that the wider question as to the character which schools for children under five should assume, if indeed any institution for teaching were needed, would require the fullest consideration of the Board of Education and of local education authorities. (58)

The Board lost no time in taking appropriate administrative action in the light of this report.

Article 53 of the Code for 1905 provided that, 'where the local education authority have so determined in the case of any school maintained by them, children who are under five years of age may be refused admission to that school'. Section 6 of the Prefatory Memorandum to the Code, explaining this Article, states that there was reason to believe that the attendance of children under five was often dangerous to health, and that there was also a mass of evidence pointing to the conclusion that a child who did not attend school before the age of six compared favourably at a later age with a child whose attendance had begun at an earlier age. On the other hand, parents in certain areas doubtless desired that their children should attend school shortly after, or even before, the age of five. It devolved on the local education authority to take account of the wishes of parents in this matter and to deal on their own responsibility as to admitting or excluding children under the age of five. (59)

The Code for 1905 also contains important new Articles bearing on the whole field of infant education up to the age of seven or eight.

Article 1 gives (for the first time) a clear outline of the curriculum for infants, largely based on Circular 322, issued in 1893.

The principal aim of the infant school should be to provide opportunities for free development of the children's bodies and minds, and for the formation of habits of obedience and attention. (a) Physical exercises should take the form of games involving free movement, rather than of set drill; (b) the youngest infants should be encouraged to employ their eyes, hands and fingers in suitable free occupations, and the teacher, by talking with the children and encouraging them to ask questions, should lead them to form ideas and express them in simple language of their own; (c) for the older children these exercises should be supplemented by short lessons in which the children are trained to listen carefully, to speak clearly, and to reproduce simple stories and narratives, to do things with their hands, to begin to draw, to read, and to write, to observe, to acquire an elementary knowledge of number, to practise suitable songs and sing suitable musical intervals; (d) knitting may be practised by children under the age of six, but they need not learn to sew; and with the Board's permission sewing may also be omitted for children between the ages of six and seven. Section 7 of the Prefatory Memorandum to the Code for 1905 explains that Article 1, dealing wholly with infants, was inserted because in some cases the attention of infant teachers had been concentrated on efforts to secure that a fixed standard in the 3Rs should be reached by the age of 7. (60)

In 1905 the Board also issued for the first time a volume of Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers in which was incorporated the gist of Circular 322 on the instruction of infants (6 February 1893).

18. The English Nursery School in its present form is an indigenous growth, though it offers certain points of resemblance to institutions for the care and training of very young children that have been developed in France, Germany, the Swiss Cantons, and elsewhere on the Continent, such as day nurseries (creches), (61) kindergartens and bewahranstalten, ecoles maternelles and ecoles gardiennes. In this country the nursery school was gradually evolved from the free kindergartens for poor children established by philanthropic effort in London, Manchester, and other large towns during the last three decades of the 19th century. These institutions were designed to take children from very poor homes into an environment that would render possible the development of the child's whole personality; they had from their inception to devote special attention to the physical care of their pupils, and in some instances provided meals and baths. The best known example was the Free Kindergarten founded by Sir William Mather at Salford in 1873, which provided meals and baths for the infants and may justly be regarded as the first nursery school in England.

Sir William Mather, writing in 1920, gave a short account of the origins of this school. (62) In the early [eighteen] seventies when many of the children in infant schools in Salford were noticeably underfed, he formed the idea of building a special institution for training infants on 'kindergarten' lines, with arrangements for feeding and clothing them during school hours and with adequate provision for rest and play. 'We bought a lot of wretched cottages in a slum and cleared a large space on which we built the Queen Street Institute, opened by Bishop Fraser in 1873 (since known as the William Mather Institute), replete with kitchen, baths, resting-rooms, etc, and two large schoolrooms capable of accommodating 500 children, and dividing them into classes from infants of two years old upwards to six or seven years, when they were to enter the School Board elementary schools. We engaged a German Kindergartnerin from Berlin, an exceptionally capable teacher of fine character who, with English assistants and a committee of lady friends, succeeded in making a great success of our school for many years.'

In the later years of the 19th century a parallel movement for the foundation of free kindergartens was rapidly developing in the United States; (63) in 1900 under the influence of this movement a free kindergarten was established at Woolwich by Miss Adelaide Wragge, the Principal of the Blackheath Kindergarten Training College. Free kindergartens on similar lines were founded in several of the large towns. (64) They aimed at providing healthy environment, right mental occupation, free activities, training in good habits, and social intercourse, i.e. close cooperation with the parents. Several existing nursery schools have been developed without a break from these free kindergartens, having changed their name from kindergarten to nursery school when state grants for such schools became available in 1919.

19. In April 1907, the Board of Education gave the Consultative Committee the following Reference:

'To consider and advise the Board of Education in regard to the desirability, or otherwise, both on educational and other grounds, of discouraging the attendance at school of children under the age of (say) five years, on the assumption that, in the event of the change being found generally desirable, the moneys now payable by the Board of Education in the shape of grants in respect of the attendance of such children, should still be payable to local education authorities, in greater relief of their expenditure in educating the children over five years of age.'

'The work and influence of good nursery schools, (66) combined with improvements in the course of education provided for older girls, will do much to foster a truer and better tradition of home life, which in turn will enable education authorities to leave the education of these young children more and more to their parents ... For the present the Committee consider that nursery schools are in many cases a practical necessity. They believe that great advantages may be secured by their proper use, and that any effect that may be directed to this end will be amply repaid in the improved healthiness, intelligence, and happiness of future generations.'

In discussing the lower limit for voluntary and compulsory attendance at school, the Committee expressed the view that the majority of children for whom provision was to be made at all were sufficiently developed at three years of age to attend a nursery school, and that at least the option of attending at that age should be given. The Committee considered that it would not be wise to raise the existing lower limit of compulsory attendance.

In their detailed Recommendations the Committee endorsed the view embodied in the Code for 1905 and in Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers (1905), that children under the age of five should not be subjected to any mental pressure or undue physical discipline, and that freedom of movement, constant change of occupation, frequent visits to the playground, and opportunities for sleep, were essential. The Committee recommended a reduction in the size of classes for pupils under the age of five and the employment (in addition to the teachers) of nurse attendants or 'school helps' but only for the purpose of attending to the general physical needs of these young children. The Committee stress the importance of selecting suitable teachers. 'The best teacher will be one who has made a careful study of the physical and mental development of childhood, and who has a sympathetic and motherly instinct and a bright and vigorous personality.'

20. No legal or administrative action was taken to carry out the suggestions made in this Report till the passing of the Education Act of 1918 (see Section 22 below). No state grants were payable till 1919 in respect of nursery schools, though grants were available for day nurseries as from 1914. Nevertheless, a few nursery schools were established by private enterprise, chiefly in the large towns. The most famous of these was the school at Deptford, founded by Rachel and Margaret McMillan in 1911. In this school, which has to a great extent served as a model for other nursery schools, the buildings, in the form of low shelters, are grouped round a garden, and the children are trained under open-air conditions. (67)

Another early nursery school was that established in 1915 in a very poor district at Ardwick, by a private committee of Manchester citizens. This school, which is still in existence, was at first housed in two small cottages thrown into one. In course of time adjoining cottages were taken and convenient structural improvements made, so that the school has the use of two rooms running back to front, together with two small cloakrooms, an additional entrance room, and a small room, all on the ground floor. The back yards of the cottages have been converted into an open space for play and sleep. (68)

From about 1905 great improvements began to be effected in the general planning and construction of school buildings, including those for infants. The establishment under the Education Act of 1902 of local education authorities responsible for schools over large areas, and the subsequent appointment of salaried school architects and school medical officers (particularly after the institution of medical inspection of children in public elementary schools under Section 13(1)(6) of the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act of 1907), soon led to the systematic consideration of problems of hygienic conditions in schools. Under medical influence the idea of 'open-air' schools rapidly gained ground, and a number of special schools of this type were built for ailing and delicate children after 1905. (69) A completely open-air school is generally understood as meaning a building that opens fully on at least two sides to a veranda. In view of the satisfactory results obtained in these remedial open-air schools, (70) the 'open air' principle was soon applied, with suitable modifications, in designing new public elementary schools for infants.

Another influence that directed public opinion to the importance of attending to the physical welfare and general training of children under the age of five was the institution in 1908 of systematic medical inspection of children in public elementary schools. (71)

The local education authorities appointed salaried medical officers for this purpose, and a special Medical Branch was established at the Board of Education under Sir George Newman as Chief Medical Officer. Sir George Newman's Annual Reports, which began to appear from 1908, revealed for the first time in their entirety the facts regarding physical defects in children entering school at the age of five.(72) It was soon found that about 40 per cent of the entrants required medical attention at the very beginning of their school career, and many medical officers declared that many of these physical defects were not inevitable, but were the result of ignorance and neglect.

Some attempt was made before the [First World] War to cope with this problem by local authorities and by voluntary organisations by the establishment of schools for mothers, baby clinics, and day nurseries (creches). The Board of Education exercised a general supervision over these institutions up to 1919. By Section 3(1)(c) of the Ministry of Health Act 1919, 'all the powers of the Board of Education with respect to attending to the health of expectant mothers and nursing mothers, and of children who have not attained the age of five years and are not in attendance at schools recognised by the Board of Education' were transferred to the Ministry of Health. In this context, it should be mentioned that since 1919 much has been done to cope with this problem by the establishment of maternity and child welfare centres, to which the mothers often continue to take their children up to the age of one or even later.

21. Another influence which has profoundly affected infant education in England and Wales since about 1900 is the increasing recognition of the biological conception of life deriving ultimately from Darwin and his successors. This has to some extent afforded a scientific foundation for many of the educational theories of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Stow, Froebel and the Mayos, which were primarily philosophical rather than scientific in origin and method. Incidentally child study has tended to become more and more genetic in character, and has laid increasing emphasis on the continuity of growth in the human being as an organism, and at the same time upon the qualitative changes involved. The most prominent exponent of this newer biological conception of the educative process is Professor John Dewey, who in addition to emphasising the idea of the organic development of the individual child, has assigned a prominent place to the sociological factors which should influence and guide the direction of his growth.

Professor Dewey, born in 1859, was appointed Professor of Philosophy and Pedagogy in the newly founded University of Chicago in 1894. His best-known educational work, entitled The School and Society, was published at Chicago in 1899, and immediately attracted attention in England. As a careful student of children's behaviour, he was impressed by the directness of the child's outlook on life. He accordingly insisted on the importance of allowing young children to observe the world around them, and to learn by unorganised experience. He specially stressed the importance of handwork, which had genuine significance for the children, and the desirability of allowing them to experiment with primitive materials, so far as possible, under primitive conditions. In 1906, Dr JJ Findlay, Professor of Education at the University of Manchester, published a collection of Dewey's essays under the title The Child and the Curriculum. One of the principal thoughts underlying these essays is 'learning by doing'. The idea of the 'problem' or 'project', which has had such a wide vogue in educational circles in America, may be traced largely to Dewey's influence. Incidentally, he showed the futility of overemphasising the idea of 'correlation', substituting for it the conception of the unity of the child's actual experiences. Dewey's works were extensively studied by teachers of young children and by students in training, and have played an important part in the evolution of modern ideas on infant education in this country.

The doctrines and method of Dr Maria Montessori have since about 1910 had an important indirect influence on infant education in England, particularly on the training of very young children. Madame Montessori, like Dewey, bases her theory largely on biological principles, but her interest in medical science led her to prescribe a course of training in a prepared environment rather than to explore ways and means of permitting children to acquire their own experience in a social environment. In her book on education entitled The Montessori Method, (73) which appeared in an English translation in 1912, she laid great stress on the importance of allowing little children to develop naturally, but within a carefully prepared environment.

Her apparatus for sense training and for developing elementary ideas of number and form was largely based on the various models (e.g. the wooden insets), devised for defective children by Edouard Seguin (1812-1888). She intended this apparatus to be used by the children themselves, the teacher only supplying guidance when required.

She stressed the importance of providing furniture and equipment of sizes appropriate for small children at successive ages. The 'Montessori Method', though suggestive in many respects, is hardly suitable for application in its entirety in the infant schools of this country. Her methods, like those of Froebel and the Herbartians, tend to crystallise into a system. Much of her apparatus is well adapted to develop capacity for exact observation in number and form: but little provision is made for the development of the young child's free imagination, or for his wider interests in the activities of the adult world. The Montessori Method has affected many infant teachers in this country. Its influence may be seen: (a) in the growing tendency to make provision for individual occupation with the minimum of intervention on the part of the teacher; (b) in the emphasis on equipment of appropriate size (e.g. small basins, brooms, low cupboards), and the encouragement given to the children to handle and use everything about them with independence and initiative; (c) in the introduction of appropriate apparatus for sense training; and (d) in a growing scientific attitude towards the general care of mind and body, and renewed emphasis on self education.

It will be seen from this brief outline of the views and influence of Professor Dewey and Madame Montessori that both have justly emphasised the need for securing the active cooperation of the individual child in his own mental development on biological lines. Both afford scope for the natural 'urge' of the young child, while recognising, but not overemphasising his powers of memory, as many of the older writers on infant education were somewhat prone to do.

22. Legislative power to supply or aid the supply of nursery schools was granted for the first time to local education authorities by the Education Act of 1918. Section 19 of that statute, as re-enacted in Section 21 of the Education Act 1921, runs: 'The powers of a local education authority for elementary education shall include power to make arrangements for

(a) supplying or aiding the supply of nursery schools (which expression shall include nursery classes) (74) for children over two and under five years of age, or such later age as may be approved by the Board of Education, whose attendance at such a school is necessary or desirable for their healthy, physical, and mental development; and

(b) attending to the health, nourishment, and physical welfare of children attending nursery schools.'

In March, 1919, the Board issued Regulations for Nursery Schools, with a lengthy Prefatory Memorandum indicating the conditions under which they were prepared to recognise such schools and pay grants in aid. During the year ended 31 March 1919, 13 nursery schools were recognised for grant, most of which were voluntary institutions established before the passing of the Education Act of 1918. Partly owing to the high standard laid down in the Board's Regulations of 1919, and partly because local education authorities were absorbed in the exercise of the new statutory duties imposed upon them by the Education Act of 1918, the progress made in the provision of nursery schools was slow. Contributions for voluntary nursery schools were not easily raised. The cost of building was high, and difficulties were experienced in obtaining suitable existing premises. The necessity for national economy, which became apparent in the autumn of 1920, was strongly emphasised by the Board in Circular 1190 issued in January 1921, (75) and the restrictions on expenditure imposed by that Circular remained in force till 1924. In March of that year the President of the Board of Education announced in the House of Commons that he was prepared to consider sympathetically any proposals for the establishment of new nursery schools in suitable places. (76) In 1925 the Board of Education issued a new and simplified set of Regulations for Nursery Schools, which are still in force, and are printed as Chapter 8 of the Board's Special Services Regulations. These provide that no child may be admitted to a nursery school before attaining the age of two, or (except with the Board's consent) retained therein after the end of the term in which he completes five years of age. Sufficient opportunity for rest, meals, and recreation, must be provided, and adequate arrangements must be made for attending to the health, nourishment and physical well-being of the children. No charge may be made, except for food and medical treatment. Nevertheless, very few new nursery schools were established. Apart from the cost of staffing nursery schools, one main reason for their slow development has been the comparatively heavy capital cost, which was largely due to the limitation of numbers recommended by the Board in 1919, in order to ensure individual attention and reduce the danger of the spread of infectious diseases.

In the light of further experience the Board stated in 1928 that subject to their being satisfied as to the accommodation and equipment, the provision of open-air facilities, and the general conditions of supervision, they were prepared to consider proposals for nursery schools containing from 150 to 200 children.

On 5 December 1929 the Ministry of Health and the Board of Education issued a joint Circular on children under school age to maternity and child welfare authorities and local education authorities.

The Circular pointed out that the purpose of a nursery school was to provide for the healthy physical and mental development of children over two and under five years of age. The purpose was thus twofold - 'nurture' and education. In congested districts there were many children who, owing to home circumstances and environment, had everything to gain from the continuous care and attention which a nursery school would provide.

In the same Circular the Board, discussing the training of children under the age of five, stated that in planning new infant schools the desirability of including provision for children between the ages of three and five should be carefully considered. In respect of the character of such provision, the nursery school would remain the model, but the extent to which the accommodation approximated to this model, might be affected by the character of the district to be served and the presence or absence of nursery schools. The accommodation should be on open-air lines with as much free space as possible, and the lavatory and sanitary provision should be adapted to the children's ages, with an abundant supply of cold and wherever possible hot water.

The Circular concluded by pointing out that one of the advantages of the admission of children under five to public elementary schools was that it brought them within the scope of the school medical service.

The establishment of separate nursery schools, which had been very slow up to 1929, was checked by the measures of economy necessitated by the financial crisis in the autumn of 1931.

Meanwhile, however, much has been done during the last decade to better the conditions in baby classes for children below the age of five in public elementary schools. (77) The methods of training employed in these classes have been greatly improved by the zealous efforts of the teachers under influences deriving from the kindergarten, Professor Dewey, Madame Montessori, and the nursery school movement. (78) In many instances, the classrooms for the younger infants have been greatly improved by increasing the facilities for sunlight and ventilation, and by providing small chairs and tables for the children in place of desks. In some instances beds have also been provided. Within the last few years, several urban local education authorities, notably Manchester and Leicester, have taken steps to convert the classes for children below the age of five in a number of the infant schools in their respective areas into nursery classes. In these nursery classes, which are described more fully in Chapter 5 and Appendix IV of this Report, most of the amenities of nursery schools are provided, so far as local conditions permit. In particular, the teachers are assisted by student nurses, and beds are provided for all the children under the age of five. Thus it may be said that the nursery school movement, like the 'kindergarten' and other movements in infant education, has exercised a profound indirect influence in improving the conditions under which children below the age of five are trained in public elementary schools.

23. The following official statistics, all of which relate to 31 March 1932, serve to give some general idea of the existing provision for infants in England and Wales in public elementary schools and in separate nursery schools:

There were on 31 March 1932 approximately 1,189,000 children in England and Wales between the ages of 3 and 5, and 1,891,000 children between the ages of 5 and 8. 157,551 children out of the total number of 1,189,000, or approximately 13.2 per cent between the ages of 3 and 5 were attending elementary schools. (79) 120,918 children between the ages of 3 and 5 were accommodated in departments classified in the official statistics as 'infants departments'; 35,877 children between the ages of 3 and 5 were accommodated in other types of department, e.g. in junior mixed departments and in small 'all-age' schools taking children between the ages of 3 and 14. (80) There were on 31 March 1932 6,404 separate departments classified as 'infants' departments'.

On 31 March 1932 there were 55 nursery schools recognised by the Board of Education, 30 of which were provided by local education authorities, and 25 by voluntary bodies. These 55 nursery schools afforded accommodation for 4,520 pupils, and the average number on the registers was 3,768.

Of the 1,891,000 children between the ages of 5 and 8, 1,678,473 were attending elementary schools of various types. The number of children in the age groups 5-6, 6-7 and 7-8 who were accommodated in schools and departments classified as 'infants' departments', was 1,001,113.

24. We think that the following salient facts emerge clearly from this brief sketch of the historical development of infant schools in England and Wales:

(i) In the evolution of educational theory and practice since the beginning of the last century, the conception of the infant school as distinct from the elementary day school was present from the beginning of the movement for making educational provision on a large scale for the children of the poorer classes. Furthermore, the infant school was based on a richer and fuller educational tradition than that of the contemporary monitorial day schools. (Sections 1-10)

(ii) By 1870 the value and significance of separate infant schools or of infant classes within the elementary day schools were generally recognised, and the adoption of the age of five as the lower limit for obligatory attendance at public elementary schools in the Elementary Education Act of 1870 made the infant school or department an integral part of the system of public elementary schools in England and Wales. (Sections 11-16)

(iii) Since the early seventies a varying proportion of children under the age of five has been admitted to the infant departments of public elementary schools in which provision has been made for them in the form of baby classes, and since 1872 children above the age of three have been eligible for grant. Within the last few years, several authorities have taken steps to convert some of these baby classes into nursery classes by providing a large number of the amenities usually found in separate nursery schools. (Sections 17-23)

Footnotes

(1) Andreae thought that up to the age of six children should be trained at home. Reipublicae Christianopolitanae Descriptio, Strasburg, 1619, Chapter 53. Samuel Gott of Battle (1613-1671) who was much influenced by Andreae, held that children should be educated at home up to the age of 10. Nova Solyma, London, 1648, I. 339.

(2) This celebrated treatise dealing with the education of children up to the age of six, was an expansion in German of Chapter XXVII of the Czech draft of Comenius' Didactica written in 1628. It was published in 1633 at Leszno in Poland. The Latin translation published in 1657 at Amsterdam in Volume I of Comenius' Opera Didactica Omnia, is entitled Schola Infantiae sive de provida iuventutis primo sexennio educatione. Comenius states that his School of Infancy was translated into English in 1641. A Patera, Korrespondence JA Komenskeho, (1892), p. 39.

(3) Princess Pauline's School, which she herself described as a Pfleganstalt, was modelled on the salles d'asile established about 1801 in Paris on the lines of Oberlin's school at Waldbach. RR Rusk, History of Infant Education (1933), pp. 114-118; H Kiewning, Furstin Pauline zur Lippe, 1769-1820, pp. 143-5.

(4) A number of infant schools, either separate or housed in the same building with the monitorial school, were established after 1840 under the auspices of this Society (see the report by Mr Fletcher, HMI on such schools in Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education (1846) II, 214). In 1855 the Society established a model infant school in London in connexion with the Borough Road Training College. Binns, A Century of Education, p. 160.

(5) M. Arnold, Reports on elementary schools, 1852-1882. HM Stationery Office, 1920, p. 14.

(6) There were in 1819 3,102 dame schools containing 53,624 pupils. (Report of Parliamentary Inquiry, 1819.)

(7) Henry Kirke White (1785-1806) in his poem Childhood composed in 1799, gives a pleasing description of Dame Garrington, whose school on the outskirts of Nottingham he attended from 1788 to 1791. The Remains of HKW with an account of his life, by Robert Southey (1808), I.2, 203-4. cf. the literary and rather highly coloured description of an urban dame school given by George Crabbe (1754-1832) in The Borough, Letter XXIV., (1810).

(8) Thomas Cooper (1805-1892) the Chartist, states in his autobiography that at the age of three he learnt to read at Dame Brown's School, Exeter, and could even repeat Aesop. Later he entered Dame Gertrude Aram's School at Gainsborough, and he speaks of her also in appreciative terms. (Life of Thomas Cooper, pp. 5-7.)

(9) Central Society of Education, Third Publication, London, 1839, p. 116. cf. Joseph Lancaster's description of these Dame Schools which he calls 'Initiatory Schools', in his Improvements in Education, 5th edition (1806), p. 166: 'I am an advocate of this class of schools as women manage them; the infancy of their pupils requires a combination of the school and the nursery, and these schools answer that description when under proper management.'

(10) cf. Life of Robert Owen written by himself, London, 1857, p. 175. 'Books in infant schools are worse than useless ...' 'The children should be out of doors in good air at play as much as the weather and their strength will permit ...' '... In our rational infant school at New Lanark a mere child's toy was not seen for upwards of 20 years. When, however, any infant felt inclined to sleep, it was quietly allowed to do so.'

(11) It is very difficult to determine how far Owen's educational ideas were original. Mr GDH Cole in his article on the Educational Ideas of Robert Owen in the Hibbert Journal for 1925 (Vol. XXII, p. 137) writes: 'Owen owed very little to others, arriving at largely similar conclusions with other pioneers by a different road based on his own experience and peculiar philosophy of character'. cf. Owen's somewhat patronising reference to Pestalozzi in his autobiography 'Our next visit (in 1818) was to Yverdun to see the advance made by Pestalozzi ... He was doing, he said, all he could to cultivate the heart, the head and the hands of his pupils. His theory was good, but his means and experience were very limited and his principles were those of the old system.' Life of Robert Owen written by himself, London, 1857, p. 177.

(12) On the brass plate on the door the school was described as 'The Westminster Free and Day Infant Asylum'.

(13) cf. Lord Brougham's speech of 21 May 1835 in the House of Lords: 'In this country I think it is now 17 years since my noble friend Lord Lansdowne and I with some others began the first of these seminaries, borrowing the plan as well as the teachers from Mr Owen's manufactory at New Lanark.'

(14) The beginnings of the Infant School Movement are described by Thomas Pole, MD, in his Observations relative to infant schools designed to point out their usefulness, etc. Bristol, 1823. The first Church Infants' School was opened at Walthamstow in 1824 by the Rev. William Wilson, brother of Joseph Wilson. It was first held in the Vicar's tithe barn. cf. The System of Infants' Schools by the Rev. Wm Wilson, Vicar of Walthamstow. London, 1825.

(15) cf. S Wilderspin, The importance of educating the infant poor from the age of 18 months to 2 years. Containing an account of the Spitalfields infant school and of the new system of instruction there adopted. London, 1824.

(16) cf. JH Pestalozzi, Letters on early education addressed to JP Greaves, Esq., translated from the German manuscript, London, 1827.

(17) e.g. Early Discipline illustrated, or the Infant System progressing and successful (1832). On the title page of his System of Education for the Young (1840) Wilderspin describes himself as 'Inventor of the System of Infant Training'. Lord Brougham refuted this claim in his article on 'Origin of infant schools' in The Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, Vol. XLVI (1847), pp. 220-222.

(18) cf. D Stow, The Training System (1836), p. 69. 'The gallery is an indispensable part of the machinery, since it enables the children to see the master and the master to see them.' ... 'The social principle is concentrated in the gallery ... The attention of all is secured; all receive one lesson, and all learn.'

(19) Quoted in The Training of Teachers in Scotland, by Dr Robert R Rusk, Edinburgh (1928), pp. 52-53.

(20) cf. D Stow, The Training System (1836), p. 76: 'Every infant school ought to have a suitably sized playground, and under the training system this is indispensable ... Without such, the school may be a school for teaching infants, but not for infant training.' In his description of the playground on p. 77, he suggests that it should be covered with gravel and surrounded by a wall with flower beds about 3 feet wide under the wall.

(21) T Morrison's Manual of School Management (1859), which was extensively used in England especially in Wesleyan Schools, recognises the need for an infant class. In the Preface Morrison acknowledges his debt to Stow. cf. also Charles Reed, the Infant Class in the Sunday School (1857), in which the influence of Stow's 'System' is very noticeable.

(22) Cf. Supplement to Moral Training and the Training System by David Stow (1839), p. 23: 'Two departments at least are necessary to a complete system of education, viz. infant and juvenile, as children of 4 and 5 years of age do not sympathise with each other in understanding or habits. In some cases only one can be proceeded with. Our advice would be, begin at the beginning - commence with the infant department; for without it your juvenile school will be much less efficient. It is of great importance ... that no child be retained in the infant department beyond 6 years of age, and that no child be received into the juvenile department till he reaches the age of 6.'

(23) cf. A Prospectus of the Brechin Infant School (dated 10 July 1835), printed in Education in Angus, by JC Jessop, London University Press, 1831. pp. 279-283. cf. also the following passage from the article on Primary Schools in Volume XXI of the Penny Encyclopaedia (1841): 'Infants' schools are designed to prevent evil, and to train young children in the practice of virtue and kind feeling, particularly in those cases in which parents from their vocation are unable, or from their dispositions are unwilling, to take proper care of their offspring.'

(24) cf. the following passage from the article on Primary Schools in Volume XXI of the Penny Encyclopaedia (1841): 'The infant school system makes the schoolroom a nursery and a playground in which virtue, intelligence and love preside, direct the movements and regulate and foster the emotions. The scholars are instructed when they play and learn to associate pleasurable feelings with the school pursuits.'

(25) C Mayo, 'Observations on the Establishment and Direction of Infants' Schools' being the substance of a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution in May 1826, London, 1827.

(26) e.g. Elizabeth Mayo, Lessons on Objects as given in a Pestalozzian School at Cheam, Surrey, second edition, London, 1831. Practical remarks on Infant Education for the use of Schools and Private Families by the Rev. Dr Mayo and Miss Mayo, London, 1837. Elizabeth Mayo, Model Lessons for Infant School Teachers and Nursery Governesses (1838).

(27) Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education (1847). II. 545.

(28) Mr J Fletcher. HM Inspector of Schools, wittily observed in his Annual Report for 1845 that, 'although infant schools come last in the history of schooling, they come first in the history of the scholar'. Minutes of Committee of Council on Education (1845) II, 212.

(29) It was not without reason that Lord Jeffrey, addressing the Edinburgh Infant School Society in 1829, referred to the infant school there as 'this well-regulated systematic nursery.' cf. also the following passage from the Report by Mr J Fletcher, HMI, on infant schools on the principles of the British and Foreign School Society (1845): 'It is not surprising that the mother of a working man's family, who is herself perhaps employed in some branch of industry, and almost invariably has all the labours of her little household to perform in very narrow space, should begin to consider children of even 2 or 3 years old very much "in the way" during the greater part of the day ... In fact, she very properly seeks a nursery, and is prepared to subscribe for one; and to help to provide for her an airy, healthful nursery in which her infant children shall be happy and safe, is one of the greatest kindnesses which her wealthier neighbours can offer her.' Minutes of Committee of Council on Education (1845), II, 216.

(30) In his speech in the House of Lords on 21 May 1835, Brougham modified this position. After pleading for state aid for elementary schools, he said that it was incumbent on parliament to encourage in like manner the establishment of infant schools, especially in the large towns. JEG de Montmorency, State Intervention in English Education, pp. 297-301.

(31) cf. the following passage in the Report by Mr J Fletcher, HMI, on British and Foreign Infant Schools (1845): 'Certainly it is not disparaging to the dames' school to refrain from comparing the kitchens in which they are held with the handsome halls provided for most of the infant schools, or the airy yards annexed to them with the dirty courts and alleys into which alone the former can turn the little ones for external air. The manual exercises, the march, the cheerful song, the gymnastic play, under a superintendence too cheerful to be felt as oppressive; these are sources of health and vigour with which the confinement of the dame school, the exigencies of the mother's home, or the vagabondage of the streets, has nothing to compete.' Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education (1845), II, 218-219.

(32) cf. the following passage in the Report by Mr J. Fletcher, HMI, on infant schools on the principles of the British and Foreign School Society (1845): 'The theory of the more modern infant schools which I have visited appears to contemplate an education at once physical, intellectual, industrial, moral and religious. The occupations of each child, at whatever age, on every day of its attendance are more or less directed into all these channels ... In fact, to implant good habits of body, heart and mind ... is the larger part of the work undertaken by the best infant schools for those portions of our juvenile population who more peculiarly need such asylums.' Minutes of Committee of Council on Education (1845), II, 218.

(33) A series of Special Questions on Infant Schools was included in the earliest Instructions to Inspectors issued in August 1840; cf. Minutes of Committee of Council on Education, 1839-40, pp. 43-45.

(34) 'The want of infant schools has for a long time been evident from the number of dame schools which have for so many years existed in all parts of the country, nominally for educating, but really only for taking charge of the children while their parents were at work. The fees received by these 'Dames' amounted to 3d. or even 4d. a week for each child, and the business was a source of profit to persons who could earn a living in no other way. To their consequent opposition may be attributed to a considerable extent the comparative slowness of the development of the regular infant school system, which at the present day (1871) is far from being perfect.' GCT Bartley, The Schools for the People (1871), p. 107.

(35) The article on Primary Schools in Vol. XXI of the Penny Encyciopaedia (1841) after quoting the evidence about infant schools given by Mr JR Wood and Mr Kay (afterwards Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth) to the Parliamentary Committee on Education in 1838, states that 'by general admission the infant schools give the best direct instruction to the children of the poor'. (op. cit. XXI, 44-45). Report from Select Committee of the House of Commons on Education of the Poorer Classes (1838). Sections 36; 1157; 1061.

(36) The following passage from the suggestions of the National Society for the provision of a building for the joint purpose of Sunday school and day school helps to explain the circumstances in which small infant schools were often founded: 'The Sunday School may pave the way for the establishment of a day or at least of an infants' school; and if these cannot be secured, it seems the more desirable to promote the establishment of a Sunday School. Schools are sometimes erected to serve the double purpose of a school and chapel. The Committee of Council and the National Society will assist in such a case provided the prominent feature in the plan be the permanent schoolroom, duly secured for that purpose by deed and not the chapel.' (Church Education Directory (1853), p. 21. In infant schools of this type in small outlying villages the practice frequently grew up of keeping children till the age of nine or even ten.

(37) Prebendary Rogers, who was a member of the Newcastle Commission (1858-1861) writes in his Reminiscences (1887): 'Dame schools were everywhere to be found in the fifties. The teacher was generally an old woman, and the classroom was her kitchen, often close, crowded and dirty.'

(38) Minutes of School Board for London. I, 155-161.

(39) A similar, but more elaborate scheme of organisation for new board schools in large urban areas was outlined by Dr Rigg, Principal of Westminster Training College, and a member of the first London School Board, in his book entitled National Education (1873). He writes 'In the large towns a group or system of schools will most commonly consist of three departments, for infants, for boys, and for girls, but it will sometimes consist only of two, an infants' and a mixed school, while, on the other hand, it will sometimes, especially when the number of children provided for is very large, include four departments, viz, infants, junior mixed, senior boys and senior girls, or even five, viz, infants, junior boys, junior girls, senior boys and senior girls.' It is significant that in all these forms of organisation provision is made for a separate department for the infants.

(40) cf. GCT Bartley, The Schools for the People (1871), p. 107: 'There is scarcely an alley or court in crowded districts of London or the large towns in which a dame may not be found with her infants school. Some of a more pretentious character have a card placed in the window, and some are styled 'seminaries' and have a brass plate on the door. By far the larger number have scarcely accommodation for more than half a dozen or a dozen children, though often receiving twice that number. Dame Schools abound also in villages.'

(41) It is interesting to note that the Parliamentary Committee on Education (1838) were of opinion that it would be desirable to afford education to the children of the working classes from the age of three to that of thirteen. cf. The following passage from the Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, on Education of the Poorer Classes in England and Wales (1838), p. iv: 'Your Committee however believe, that as regards the children of the working classes (more especially those residing in large towns) it would be as much as would be desirable, to afford them the means of instruction until the age of 13; but, on the other hand, it would be of the utmost consequence, as respects their future conduct and happiness, and the comfort of their families, that preparatory or infant schools, in populous districts, should be open for the reception of children from the age of three years.'

(42) National Education Union. A verbatim Report of the debates in Parliament on the Elementary Education Bill, 1870, pp. 441-442. In the debate at the committee stage in the House of Lords Lord Shaftesbury proposed that the period for compulsory attendance should be from the age of four to that of ten, op. cit. p. 551.

(43) cf. F Clay. Modern School Buildings, Elementary and Secondary (1902), p. 224: 'The plan of having infant schools forming a department of an elementary school, and regularly found in connection with them, is peculiar to this country'.

(44) For instance, Rule 12 of The Rules to be observed in Planning and Fitting Schools issued by the Committee of Council on Education in 1871 and subsequent years, states that infants should never be taught in the same room with older children, as the noise and the training of the infants disturb and injuriously affect the discipline and instruction of the older children. This provision reappears in a more emphatic form in Rule 18 of the Rules for Planning and Fitting up Public Elementary Schools for 1904, which runs, 'Infants should not, except in very small schools, be taught in the same room with older children, as the methods and instruction suitable for infants necessarily disturb the discipline and instruction of the other scholars. Access to the infants' room should never be through the older children's schoolroom'.

(45) This provision was modified in Rule 17 of the Rules for Planning and Fitting up Public Elementary Schools issued in 1885, which state that, if more than 80 scholars are admitted, one gallery should be provided which should be well lighted from one side. Rule 27 of the Rules for 1871 states that an infants' school must have a playground attached to it.

(46) Informatorium der Mutterschul, Leszno, 1633, Chapter 4, Sections 9-12. John Dury, Motion tending to the publick good, etc. London, 1642, p. 21.

(47) Minutes of Committee of Council on Education, 1854-55, p. 473. In his Report for 1855 Mr Mitchell states that he had seen the Froebelian system 'at work in the infant school of St Mark's, Lakenham, under an intelligent mistress'. Minutes of Committee of Council on Education, 1855-6, p. 402.

(48) Institutions or colleges for training teachers and nursery governesses in Froebelian methods were established by voluntary effort in several towns, e.g. Bedford, Birmingham and Manchester.

(49) This represents a great advance on the ideas previously current, but went further in advising very short lessons than is now recognised as desirable.

(50) In this respect modern opinion and practice have changed, and the Froebelian theory of 'correlation' plays a less prominent part in the training of young children.

(51) It is interesting to note that Aristotle in his Politics divides the period from infancy to the age of 7 into two stages, viz: (a) from birth to the age of 5; (b) from the age of 5 to that of 7. He says that up to the age of 5 there should be no compulsory study or violent exercises. The period between 5 and 7 should be spent by the young in observation of the lessons which they will be required in future to learn themselves. Serious education should begin at the age of 7. Politics, VII, 17 (in Bekker's order of the books), Aristoteles, ed. E Bekker, Berlin (1831), II, p. 1336.

(52) Final Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Elementary Education Acts, England and Wales (C. 5485), 1888, p. 54.

(53) ibid, p. 247.

(54) The list of varied occupations for children between the ages of three and five appended to the circular includes games, with and without music, nursery rhymes, picture lessons, paper folding, mosaic with coloured tablets, drawing, matching colours, plaiting paper, threading beads and shells in twos and threes, etc, and arranging pictures of number with cubes.

(55) In 1892 Dr Francis Warner wrote a report based on the medical examination of 50,000 pupils in schools of various types. Sir Shirley Murphy and other medical officers of health had repeatedly drawn attention to the incidence of infectious disease in relation to school attendance. Several of the school boards had medical officers. For instance, the London School Board appointed a school medical officer in 1890; the Bradford School Board appointed a school medical officer in 1893.

(56) The Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration (1904) called attention to unhygienic conditions in public elementary schools and recommended that systematised medical inspection of all school children should be imposed as a public duty on every local education authority.

(57) Women sub-inspectors were appointed first in 1896-97, to inspect schools for girls and infants. In 1904 a staff of 11 women inspectors was created under the Hon. Maude Lawrence, as Chief Woman Inspector (Report of the Board of Education for 1904-5, p. 9).

(58) Reports on children under 5 years of age in public elementary schools by Women Inspectors of the Board of Education (1905), Cmd. 2726, pp. I-III and passim.

(59) The marked fall in the number of children below the age of five in public elementary schools during the first decade of the present century (see the decennial statistics quoted in Section 16) - was doubtless accelerated by the action of various local education authorities in excluding children below the age of five under Article 53 of the Code for 1905. In 1900-1 there were 615,607 children between the ages of 3 and 5 in public elementary schools. In 1904-5 the number of such children had fallen to 583,268. In 1905-6 the number again dropped to 497,643.

(60) The old distinction between 'infants' and 'older scholars' survives in the official statistics down to the passing of the Education Act of 1918. For instance, an Explanatory Note on the term 'Department' on page 149 of the Statistics of Public Education in England for 1912-13 states that a department is a portion of a school which normally has a head teacher. 'Departments for Infants only may be taken to be Departments for younger scholars between the ages of 3 and about 9.' Other departments are described as 'Departments for Older Scholars with or without Infants'. It should, however, be pointed out that the terms 'infants' and 'older scholars' in official language in the early years of the present century refer primarily to the classification of children for purposes of payment of grants and not to classification for purposes of instruction. On page 30 of the Report of the Board of Education for 1903-4 it is stated that the ordinary age for promotion from the infants department or class was between seven and eight, but that there had been a steady tendency to lower this age.

(61) The first creche (founded by M. Firmin Marbeau) was opened in Paris on 14 November 1844.

(62) Life of Sir William Mather (1838-1920), edited by his son Loris Emerson Mather, London (1925), pp. 93-94. It should be mentioned that Sir William Mather was one of the founders, about 1883, of the Salford Day Nursery, which carried on the nursery part of the work of the Salford Free Kindergarten. It was housed in a building at Greengate, in which a dispensary had been carried on as from 1876. With Sir William Mather's help, the Salford Day Nursery was incorporated in 1902 with the Greengate Dispensary, and a teacher was employed in order to establish the Greengate Open Air Residential School and Hospital for the treatment of rickets and debility among town children under school age, under the care of Dr A Brown and Dr A Mumford. This was one of the earliest open air schools for city children in England.

(63) Board of Education, Special Reports on Educational Subjects, Vol. 10 (1901), pp. 182-196.

(64) Several free kindergartens of this type were established by private effort in Scotland, e.g. Reid's Court Free Kindergarten at Edinburgh, founded in 1903, which is still in existence.

(65) In Appendix 5 to their Report upon the School attendance of children below the age of five (1908) the Consultative Committee gave tables showing the attitude of the various local education authorities in England and Wales towards the school attendance of children under five. 322 out of the total number of 327 authorities supplied information. 154 of these 322 authorities retained all children under five; 74 partially excluded children below five on grounds of lack of accommodation or to effect reduction of staff; 62 partially excluded children below the age of five for other reasons, e.g. admitting them at the age of four rather than five; 32 wholly excluded children under five.

(66) The Committee defined 'nursery school' on page 19 of their Report upon the school attendance of children below the age of five (1908) as follows: 'As a general name for schools where the special needs of small children are met by the provision of special rooms, special curriculum, and special teaching the Committee would adopt the term 'Nursery School'. Under this heading the Committee would include alike those public elementary schools, the number of which they are glad to believe is increasing, which at present contain properly organised classes for younger infants (commonly called 'babies' classes' and 'babies' rooms'), and also any other institutions where the arrangements for the younger infants approximate to those of the kindergarten or day nursery.' It will be observed that the connotation of the term 'nursery school' was still in 1908 rather vague.

(67) See the description of this school in Appendix IV (A)

(68) This description of the Ardwick Nursery School is taken from a memorandum prepared for the Consultative Committee by Miss Kate L Steel, the Superintendent and Headmistress of the school.

(69) See the Sections on open-air education, on pages 221-232 of the Annual Report for 1910 of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education (Cd. 5925); on pp. 210-224 of his Report for 1911 (Cd. 6530), and on pp. 256-270 of his Report for 1912 (Cd. 7184).

(70) cf. the Annual Report for 1912 of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education (Cd. 7184), p. 256: 'The method of the 'open-air' school is of the nature of a process. It comprises both a way of life and a system both of education and medical treatment.'

(71) Under Section 13(1)(b) of the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act of 1907, and of Section 122 of the Children Act of 1908 (Cleansing of Verminous children), which imposed a duty on children to submit to medical examination and on parents to cooperate in this matter.

(72) cf. See following passage from Sir George Newman*s Annual Reports for 1911 (Cd. 6530), p. 321: 'Previous to the commencement of school life children are subject to no medical control or supervision. Yet it is during the first years of life that diseases are often acquired - diseases which might frequently be avoided by the use of common hygienic precautions, but which, if contracted, are liable, if they do not prove fatal, to cause permanent injury to the constitution.'

(73) Il Metodo della pedogogia scientfica applicato all'educatione infantile nelle case dei bambini. Rome, 1913. The English translation by Anne E George, published in 1912 in New York and London, is entitled The Montessori Method.

(74) As regards the expression 'nursery class' employed in Section 21 of the Education Act, 1921, quoted above, it should be mentioned that up to the present no 'nursery class' has been recognised for grant under the Board's Special Regulations for Nursery Schools. The nursery classes organised during the last few years in Manchester, Leicester, and other urban areas, are treated as integral parts of the public elementary schools for infants in which they have been organised, and grant is paid in respect of them under the public elementary school Code.

(75) Paragraph 10 on page 4 of Circular 1190 runs as follows: 'Nursery Schools. The Board cannot for the present entertain proposals for the establishment of nursery schools except in special circumstances and on an experimental basis, where existing buildings are available'.

(76) The Nursery School Association, with Miss Margaret McMillan as its first President, was founded in 1923.

(77) This improvement in methods of training and teaching in infant schools was undoubtedly largely due to the influence of the training colleges. The Courses of Study on the Principles of Teaching set out in Appendix C on page 36 of the Regulations for the Training of Teachers and for the Examination of Students in Training Colleges, 1904, indicate that the Board attached importance to a certain amount of special training for teachers employed in infant schools. In the Regulations for the Training of Teachers for 1907, this aspect of training is dealt with in the Syllabus (page 38) in greater detail. A more comprehensive view of the training and teaching of children in the infants and lower classes of the 'Upper School' is contained in the Regulations for 1911 (pages 74-75).

(78) The valuable and suggestive experiments in the training of young children conducted by the late Dr Ovide Decroly at Brussels have been followed with interest in England and have had some influence on the teaching in infant schools. See La Methode Decroly, par Amelie Hamaide, Neuchatel, 1922.

(79) In the public elementary schools in the areas of 37 local education authorities there were no children below the age of 5 on 31 March 1932.

(80) 20,208 children under the age of 5 were attending public elementary schools in rural parts of the county areas in England and Wales on 31 March 1932.