366
Year.
Comparative Statistics of Voluntary and Government Schools.
Religious
Voluntary Grant-in-Aid Schools.
Secular
Government Departmental Schools.
Schools.
Scholars.
Schools.
Scholars.
1873,
442
1874,
9
632
1875,
9
679
1876,
11
751
1877,
14
996
1878,
17
1021
1879,
19
1417
1880,
27
1808
1881,
37
2237
1882,
41
3068
***-******
30
1838
30
1931
30
1927
30
2171
30
2148
30
2101
31
2043
36
2078
35
1986
39
2114
1883,
48
3517
39
2080
1884,
55
3907
35
1978
1885,
55
4041
35
1803
1886,
56
3951
34
1893
1887,
61
4160
33
1814
1888,
63
4325
34
1933
1889,
69
4814
35
2293
1890,
76
4656
36
2514
1891,
81
5132
36
2540
6. SITUATION OF SCHOOLS.-The local distribution of the above mentioned 119 Public Schools under the supervision of the Government and the additional 96 Private Schools is on the whole satisfactory. Where the population is densest, the Schools are indeed too closely crowded together. In such cases, a combination of every cluster of small Schools into one large School would of course be preferable, both from an educational and from an economic point of view, but the high rate of house rent and the absence of suitably constructed houses make such a measure at present impracticable. But, though the central districts of the town have Public and Private Schools inconveniently packed together, the suburbs and the villages are comparatively speaking as well supplied with Schools. And yet, in all the purely elementary Schools in town, there is hardly a vacant seat to be found and the accommodation on the whole, though annually expanding in proportion to the growing demand for education, is below the actual requirements. Happily, the elastic character of our Grant-in-Aid System is such that wherever in the Colony there is a sufficiently strong demand for a new School, an attempt will with automatic certainty be made by the people to start a Grant-in-Aid School to meet that demand. Such Schools occasionally come to grief after a year or two and collapse again if the attendance is not sufficiently large to secure a substantial Grant. But the system is clearly capable of meeting every reasonable demand in any locality, as soon as the demand is strong enough. The only portions of the Colony where there is, owing to the absence of a sufficient demand, a topographical dearth of Schools, are the Praya from West Point to East Point, Aberdeen and the Peak District. In the two former cases the almost total absence of educational demands on the part of the boat population, the scarcity of family dwellings all along the whole line of the Praya and the unhealthiness of Aberdeen, are a sufficient explanation. In the case of the Peak District, the slight but growing demand for a Mixed School is at present too discordant, in social and religious respects, to encourage the starting of a Private or Grant-in-Aid School, and too feeble yet to demand a Departmental District School. But a School will be wanted on the Peak very soon and if the Government were to grant the use of a piece of ground and building to a Committee, the School could easily be worked so as to be self-supporting. But as to the boat population, something will have to be done as soon as possible to bring them into the education net. One point in connection with the topographical distribution of our 36 Departmental, 81 Grant-in-Aid and 96 Private Schools deserves to be pointed out and that is, that, although those 81 Grant-in-Aid Schools are denominational Schools, giving a distinctly religious education, they are so widely scattered and so freely interspersed with the other Schools, that any tax-payers, objecting to religious education, will find some other School within easy distance to send their children to.
7. EDUCATIONAL EXPENDITURE OF THE GOVERNMENT.-The sum total spent by the Government, in the year 1891, for educational purposes ($72,983) amounted, after deducting the school fees ($12,624) repaid into the Treasury, to $60,359. This sum is equal to 3.26 per cent. of the total revenue of the Colony and constitutes an increase of $4,277 as compared with the expenditure of the preceding year. The principal items of the educational expenditure, incurred by the Government in the year 1891, are as follows:-Grants-in-Aid to Voluntary Schools $19,960, Victoria College $18,159, Departmental District Schools $8,271, Inspectorate of Schools $5,760, Government Central School for Girls $2,855, Government Scholarships $2,269, etc. The total number of scholars educated in the Colony at the expense or with the aid of the Government, in the year 1891, being 7,672, the education of each scholar cost the Government (after excluding cost of two Government Scholarships held in England) $7.49 per scholar. In the several educational institutions the cost to Government of the
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