§ MR. FIELDTo ask Mr. Attorney-General for Ireland whether he is aware that the Manual and Practical Instruction Committee recommended that science teaching should be made compulsory as soon as possible in all the primary schools; 563 and, if so, whether, seeing that the teaching of elementary experimental science is not progressing owing to the diminution of the necessary funds, and that technical instruction in Ireland is impeded from the want of money for the erection of suitable buildings as schools, he will endeavour to meet those claims.
(Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) The Manual and Practical Instruction Commission recommended that elementary science instruction (including object-lessons) should be introduced generally into national schools, and should be made compulsory as soon as teachers could be trained to give the instruction. A special grant was made by the Treasury in 1900, to be continued for a period of five years, terminating on March 31st, 1905, for the purpose of organising elementary science teaching, and for the training of teachers in the subject. With the aid of this grant the Commissioners of National Education were enabled to appoint a head organiser of elementary science and several sub-organisers, and to make grants of science apparatus to national schools in which there were teachers qualified to give the instruction. The Treasury have consented to continue the grants for the head organiser, Mr. Heller, and for two of his assistants, Miss Maguire and Mr. Ingold, permanently, and they have also consented to continue the grants for science apparatus. Arrangements have been made in all the training colleges for the instruction of King's scholars in elementary science. In addition to the 2,397 teachers trained in elementary science at the several training colleges, 3,774 teachers have been trained at the classes conducted by Mr. Heller and his assistants in Elementary Science, Part I., and 500 of these latter have also attended courses of instruction in Elementary Science, Part II. Instruction in elementary science and object-lessons is progressing in the schools, and there is no reason to anticipate that it will diminish in the future. As regards funds for the erection of technical schools, the work of technical instruction, as defined in The Agricultural and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Act, 1899, is, in most of the urban districts in Ireland, carried on at present in temporary buildings. The Department permit a portion of the funds allocated 564 to schemes of technical instruction in urban districts to be applied to the repayment of loans for building purposes; but in the majority of cases the amount of the funds available is insufficient to admit of this being done.