§ Mr. PIRIEasked the Secretary for Scotland, with reference to the scheme outlined on pages 5 and 6 of the Report on Secondary Education for 1910, which provides for the instruction of selected pupils on the lines of the intermediate certificate in primary schools and the Lord Advocate's promise of information on this matter, if he would now state the number of primary schools in Scotland in which that scheme has been adopted; and, further, as no such other scheme was outlined in the Report on Secondary Education, 1910–11, if he would explain what 803 difficulty was found by the Lord Advocate in following the reference to this scheme and in giving this information when previously asked for?
The SECRETARY for SCOTLAND (Mr. McKinnon Wood)A sufficient explanation of the Lord Advocate's difficulty appears to be furnished by the fact which now transpires, that what my hon. Friend had in mind in his question of 19th February last was not, as originally stated, the Report on Secondary Education for the year 1910–11, but the corresponding Report for the year 1909–10. In all, fifty-two primary schools in Scotland have applied for and have received permission to present pupils for the intermediate certificate. It is found that very few of these do make such presentations regularly; the majority seemingly prefer to pass on their pupils to recognised intermediate or secondary schools. In ten other cases arrangements for instruction covering only the first or, in exceptional cases, the second year of the intermediate course have been definitely approved. That lack of such approval is not in itself an insuperable barrier may be inferred from the circumstance that in 1911 the Department were able to admit to the intermediate certificate examination after careful inquiry, and on the strength of the report of the headmaster of the centre school, no fewer than 143 pupils who had taken either the first year or the first and second years of their course in one or other of 103 primary schools, exclusive of the sixty-two schools mentioned above. I may add that there are no regulations of the Department which forbid the teachers of any primary school to give to their pupils such measure of secondary nstruction as would justify their presentation in single subjects at the leaving certificate or any other examination. Such pupils may be presented at the leaving certificate examination without any condition as to their condition in science or in drawing.
§ Mr. PIRIEIs the right hon. Gentleman not aware that as a matter of fact the masters in rural Scotland are prohibited by the existing regulations from training students for the universities, which is practically at a deadlock, and that the Lord Advocate's answer the other day evoked a storm of dissent from those best able to know in Scotland, who disagreed with him?
Mr. McKINNON WOODI think the facts I have stated do not quite agree with the hon. Member's contention.