Government Grants to Prepare Teachers for English Secondary Schools

Abstract

A plan of government subsidy.-Since federal subsidies for almost every field of endeavor are being discussed, it might be well to examine the effect that government aid has had on the training of teachers for English secondary schools. For nearly thirty years the Board of Education of England and Wales has been giving financial help to young men and women who intend to teach in secondary schools. Most of these students receive four-year grants covering tuition and partial maintenance for the three years normally required for securing a degree of Bachelor of Arts from an English university and for a year of graduate professional training. A smaller number receive one-year grants paying the same charges for the year of graduate training alone. In the twenty-nine years that these grants have been in operation, there has been a decided increase in the number of teachers receiving professional training. In 1908, when the Board of Education made the first of these grants, there was a great dearth of professionally trained teachers. At that time only 47 of the 3,988 men and only 668 of the 3,593 women teachers in the state-aided secondary schools had completed recognized courses and obtained diplomas in secondary-school teaching.', Instead of trying to improve this condition by issuing teachers' certificates limited to persons having professional training, the board decided to subsidize this form of education. There followed such an increase in numbers that 2,103 students completed their professional training in 1933-34, and 1,839 of them had received grants from the