ars, he making all structural alterations
necessary to fit the same for the special teaching of boys from the
Board Schools, who have passed the sixth standard, and whose parents are
willing to keep their sons from the workshops a little longer than
usual. The course of the two years' further instruction proposed,
includes (besides the ordinary code subjects, the three R's) mathematic,
theoretical, and practical mechanics, freehand, geometry, and model
drawing, machine construction and drawing, chemistry and electricity,
and the use of the ordinary workshop tools, workshops being fitted with
benches, lathes, &c., for the lads' use. The fee is 3d. per week, and if
the experiment succeeds, the School Board at the end of the five years
will, no doubt, take it up on a more extended scale.

_Aston School Board_.--The first election took place July 29, 1875, and,
as in Birmingham, it was fought on the usual political basis, the
Liberals gaining the day. The Board has nine Schools, with an average
attendance of 11,500 children, out of nearly 15,000 on the registers;
187 teachers, and a debt of L110,000

_King's Norton Board_.--The first election took place March 19, 1876.
Eight Schools have been built since that date.

~Schools and Colleges.~--What with thirty board schools, about sixty
church and chapel schools, and nearly 300 private enterprise schools,
Birmingham cannot be said to be short of educational establishments,
even for the 100,000 children we have amongst us. At the end of 1881
there were 93,776 children in the borough between the ages of three and
thirteen. Next to the Free Grammar School, the oldest public school in
the town must be the Lancasterian School, which was opened September 11,
1809, and was rebuilt in 1851. The National School in Pinford Street was
opened in 1813, the Governors of the Free Grammar School having the
privilege of sending sixty children in lieu of rent for the site. The
Madras school was formerly at the bottom of King Street. The first
Infant Schools we read of were opened in 1825. The first stone of the
Industrial School in Gem Street was laid April 13, 1849. Ragged Schools
were opened in Vale Street, September 11, and in connection with Bishop
Ryder's, September 17, 1862, and in Staniforth Street, January 11, 1868.
The schools in the Upper Priory were erected in 1860; those in Camden
Drive in 1869. The Unitarian Schools, Newhall Hill, were opened in 1833;
the New Meeting Street Schoo