[178] Previous to this the members of religious orders could teach in the public schools.
NOTE.--In 1902 the government still further restricted the teaching by religious orders. It is now proposed not only to forbid all teaching by these orders, but also to sequestrate the property of such congregations as exist solely for teaching purposes. This will close about 3500 schools of the Christian Brothers which have existed for a long time, and necessitate the organization by the government of corresponding school facilities to supply their place. Five years are allowed to effect the change..
=Literature=.--_Sharpless_, English Education; _Craik_, Education and the State; _Barnard_, English Pedagogy; _Clark_, The State and Education; _Gill_, Systems of Education; _Balfour_, Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland; United States Commissioner's Reports for 1889 to 1902.
Nearly a thousand years ago Alfred the Great encouraged education of the higher classes to the exclusion of the masses--a principle that has governed education in England until within recent times. Statistics taken in 1845 showed that only one in six of the inhabitants could read, one in four write, and one in fifty cipher as far as the Rule of Three. Since 1870 important changes have been made, and the number of children in the elementary schools of England has increased from 1,500,000 in 1870 to nearly 6,000,000 in 1902.[179]
"The principal features of the law of 1870 were (1) the obligation assumed by the government to secure school provision for all children of ages 5 to 14; (2) the recognition or creation of local agencies (private or church managers or elected boards) for the execution of this purpose; (3) provision for securing efficient instruction by means of an annual grant from the treasury to be distributed to the local managers upon the results of examination and inspection by government inspectors; (4) the creation of a central agency to carry out the provisions on the part of the government and of new local agencies or school boards which every school district must elect except upon satisfactory evidence that schools efficient and adequate to the needs of the district were otherwise provided; (5) the admission of private and public elementary schools to a share in the government grant upon the same conditions; (6) the requirements that board schools should be strictly non-sectarian and the children of private schools protected from enforced sectarian instruction by a conscience clause."[180]