YEAR BOOK 43

made for the sale of the glebe and school lands reserved by the British Government, in order that money for the maintenance of schools might be provided.

By the Education Act of 1852, it was provided that the Board of Education should consist of seven members who were given control of all the schools and power to examine candidates for teachers’ license, to license to teach those whose teaching ability had been previously tested and certified by the Headmaster of the Central Academy, to re-examine teachers already licensed, at the end of the current year, and to re-engage those found to be efiici- ent for a term of twelve months. Not more than two hundred free schools were to be established under the Act, and the schools were to be not less than three miles apart. The control of each school was, by the Act, vested in a Board of School trustees to consist of five members. All children in the district who were upwards of five years of age, might be admitted to the school, and children residing outside the boundaries of a school district, might attend the nearest school. No fee was to be demanded of scholars at- tending a school of which the teacher was paid out of the public treasury.

In the course of time, questions arose as to the place religion should take in the schools. Some persons objected to the reading of King james version of the Bible to classes of children made up of Roman Catholics as well as Protestants. At alater date appli- cation was made for grants to religious schools in which secular education was incidentally imparted. These disputes, together with the failure of many of the public schools to meet the requirements of the times, led to the passage of the Public Schools Act of 1877. The grants demanded for schools in which distinctive religious teaching was imparted were refused, and it was enacted that the public schools should be strictly nonsectarian. The Board of Edu-

cation w is by the new Act enlarged to include all the members of the Executive Council, together with the Superintendent of Educa- tion and the Principal of Prince of Wales College, and was given full control of all matters connected with public education through- out the province. It was authorized to rearrange the school dis- tricts on the principle that each district should be four square miles in extent, and contain a school population of forty children between the ages of five and sixteen years. In the established districts which could not make up the required number of children, the school was reduced to the lowest class, and the teacher received the lowest salary paid. Otherwise the school was to be closed, and the children in the district sent to the adjoining districts. Special provisions were made for the schools of Charlottetown and