Yesterday week, Mr. O'Reilly made an exceedingly able speech in
the House of Commons in drawing attention to the low condi- tion of primary education in Ireland. The number of trained teachers in Ireland is not much more than one-third of the whole number, and of Roman Catholic teachers less than one-third have been trained at all. Of course, as a natural consequence, the teaching is bad and the educational results wretched. Mr. O'Reilly advocated the plan suggested by Lord Carlingford, of allowing
denominational houses to be affiliated to the non-sectarian training_ schools in Marlborough Street or elsewhere, and of paying these training-schools on the results,—i.c., in proportion to the number of efficient secular teachers whom they train. He wanted more residences for teachers to be attached to the primary schools, and thought 2,100 would usually build such a residence ; and the Irish Secretary afterwards suggested that the money for building teachers' residences might be borrowed under some modification of the Land Improvement and Glebes Loan Act, and the capital, in part at least,. repaid by grtuits from the National Commissioners of Education, so long.as the residences were really used for teachers' houses. Mr. O'Reilly also urged grants of pensions on easy terms to teachers who had themselves shown forethought enough to buy deferred Government, annuities for their old age,—grants to be made, of course, only on condition that they had been a certain time in the service, a larger pension being allotted to the man of longer service. But on the whole, what. Mr. O'Reilly chiefly relied on for the improvement Of Iri.slA education was State payment by results estimated on secular teaching and training. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, after deprecating wisely enough too exclusive 'an application of the principle of payment by results to the case of the Irish teachers, showed real anxiety to get more and better teachers, and his promises, though they were somewhat inadequate, were all in the right direction. It is time something was done, when we know, as Dr. Playfair tells us, that in some Irish counties not much more than a half, and in most of them barely two-thirds of the whole population can either read or write, and this, after forty years experience of the National System !
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