."

Since 1900, a period of training has been required from the principals,
and this rule has recently been extended to assistant masters. In fact,
the qualifications demanded of national teachers in Ireland are much
higher than in England. When all the foregoing changes are considered,
it will be quite evident that not only must the teachers benefit from
them, but that the children cannot fail to benefit as well. Indeed, it
is these various reforms which, in all probability, have conduced to a
better school attendance than could be boasted of in the past. Many an
educational reformer has had cause to wring his hands over the
meagreness of attendance in days gone by. Even to-day it is not as it
should be. It is lower than in England and in Scotland, but it has
steadily risen, and continues to rise, and stands now at about 71 per
cent., an advance of between 30 or 40 per cent. upon what it was less
than 40 years ago; a fact which is certainly remarkable, when the
poverty of the population and its scattered character are taken into
account.

Another evil which the Board has had to fight has been the mushroom-like
multiplication of small schools. It is hardly necessary to emphasise
what must be a manifest disadvantage for any authority which is trying
to raise the standard of educational efficiency in a country. This
multiplication was largely due to the fact that Protestant Schools were
accustomed to receive grants when they could maintain an average
attendance of 20 pupils, quite irrespective of how many other schools of
the same or a similar denomination there might be in the immediate
vicinity, and whether they were really wanted or not. How far these
grants were conducive to unnecessary multiplication may be gauged from
the fact that, whilst there were 6,500 schools in operation in 1871,
when the population of Ireland was five and a half millions, there were
8,692 in 1901, or 2,000 more, when the population was a million less.
This vast and unprofitable growth in the numbers of educational
establishments could be stayed only by drastic regulation. Where
neighbouring mixed Catholic or Protestant schools cannot show an average
attendance of 25, they are now obliged to amalgamate, and the same
result has to follow if neighbouring boys' and girls' schools fall below
an average attendance of 30. These regulations have had the desired
effect, and no less than 300 superfluous schools have been absorbed in
this manner durin