PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND.

point one or more teachers of either class, at a salary of £50. There should also be two schools with female teachers, to receive £40 as salaries, and when the attendance at these passed fifty scholars, the Board might establish one or two more schools and ap- point teachers at £30. Scholars in Charlotte- town were to pay as tuition fees two and one—half shillings quarterly to provide books, rent and repairs of school houses, and the fees might be doubled, if necessary. The Board of Education as School Trustees of Charlottetown, should determine the schools at which the pupils should attend. Teachers’ salaries were to be paid half-yearly. The Board of Education might on the recom- mendation of the School Visitor give a grant of £5 to assist needy districts in the erection of a school building. The Board of Education was to receive from the Treas- ury the sum of £500 to import books, maps and other school supplies which should be supplied to the public schools at cost.

The returns made to the Government by the School Visitors had from time to time referred to the great deficiencies of the teachers both in educational attainment and in methods of instruction. So long as the only qualification demanded for license was an ability to pass a more or less formal ex- amination before the Board of Education. and to conduct a class for a brief period in the presence of the headmaster of the Cen- tral Academy no uniformity among the teachers was to be expected; each school had to bear the marks of the individuality of its teacher. In an attempt to effect a remedy. we find His Excellency stating at a meeting of his council on May 5, 1853, that in accord with their wishes he had been in communi- cation with difierent institutions in England to secure a competent school inspector, but

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that he had received no encouragement, as all had declined by reason of the small sal- ary offered. The council asked the Gov- ernor to communicate with like purpose with Stowe’s Seminary at Glasgow, Scot- land, and offer a salary of £200 sterling for a man who could, in addition to his other duties, lecture on Agricultural Chemistry, and had a practical knowledge of Agricul- ture. In response, Mr. John M. Stark, of Stowe’s Normal School, came from Glasgow and became Inspector of Schools for the province in accordance with the act of 1852. In his report of 1854, he complimented the province on solving the educational question which still perplexed the public mind of Britain, inasmuch as the law of 1852 placed the means of education within the reach of every family, leaving to the people of the district only the erection and maintenance of the school house, and the supplementing of the teacher’s salary, where practical, a law which was already receiving the ready as- sent and support of the people. Prince Ed- ward Island, he said, had taken this step in advance of the mother country, where multitudes of schools maintained by private support, by charity, by ecclesiastical endow- ment and by state assistance. nevertheless were leaving thousands of her population in ignorance and crime; in fact the Education Bill for Scotland introduced into the Im- perial Parliament at that session and defeat- ed was, he said, identical in all its essential elements with that in operation in this prov- ince. The system, he declared, would be complete were a Normal School established for the training of the teachers, so that there might be uniformity in educational stand- ards and in system of tuition; and if likewise a graduation of salary were made in the payment to teachers, so that ability and ex-