2. Intermediate county scholarships are open to boys and girls under sixteen who come from any school, secondary or upper standard. They give free education to the age of eighteen or nineteen, with money payments rising from £20 to £35 a year. The income limit is £400. They are tenable at public secondary schools and places of higher learning.
3. Senior county scholarships. These are few in number, and intended to provide for specially promising students a training of university rank. They give free education at a college or technical institute, with money grants of £60 a year, and are tenable for three years. Here, too, the income limit is £400.
In 1896–97 London had a thousand junior scholars in fifty secondary, and two hundred and ninety-four in thirty-six upper standard schools. Of this total four hundred and eighty-five are girls. The intermediate scholars, of whom there were a hundred and eighty, were in the following institutions: three university colleges, five technical and science colleges, one training department of a polytechnic, fourteen first-grade public secondary schools, twenty-one second grade public secondary schools. Sixty-two of these scholars were girls. Of the senior scholars only two were women. They pursued their studies at Holloway and the Central Technical Colleges.
All this is, of course, in addition to the special scholarships for Art, Science, Domestic Economy, etc., which come more directly under the heading of ‘technical.’
If we turn away from these lists of names and figures to consider how wide a field has been covered by this work in London and the provinces, we cannot but be struck by the developments of these eight years. A system of universities for the people has been started, technical and commercial education have received an enormous impetus, secondary instruction has been brought within reach of large numbers by whom it was hitherto unattainable, numbers of already existing schools have been placed on a firm financial basis, and throughout the special needs of women have been considered. With better building and plumbing, better cooking and washing, we certainly may hope for more creature comforts in the good time coming. But this is a small thing compared with the brightening of homes by the gift of those higher pleasures, without which it has been truly said that life is not truly life at all.