The Reports of the Inspectors under the London School Board
give a measure of the progress that educational work has been making within the last two years. There has been a very large increase of children " upon the books," and a creditable diminu- tion in the amount of "absences," though the proportion is still too high, being 27 or 28 per cent. of the whole. We do not understand what is meant by the distinction between " total " and " occasional " absence. If children come to be totally absent, one does not see how their names can be properly retained on the books at all. The new system is beginning to tell, though slowly, in the Educational result. About 52 per cent. of the pupils in the London School Board district were reported in 1873 as " below the lowest standard," but only 35 per cent. are now so classed. The defective quality of the junior teaching staff is one of the most formidable difficulties. Yet in spite of this and other drawbacks, the work of civilising the worst dis- tricts of London is making way. The children are being forced into the schools, and there the most hopeless receive some tinc- ture of civilisation,—a fact curiously witnessed, as the Inspectors note, by the diminution of dirty faces and the increase of shoes and stockings.
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