e who were engaged in universities, public schools, or the
elementary schools working under the then recently established scheme
of State grants. Teachers in schools of this last description were
apparently intended by the government of the day to be regarded as
civil servants, appointed and paid by the State. Subsequent
legislation modified this arrangement, but teachers in schools
receiving government grants are still subject to a measure of control,
and those in public elementary schools are licensed by the State
before being allowed to teach. It will be seen that the effort to
organise a teaching profession was hampered from the start by the
fact that teachers were not entirely free to set up their own
conditions, since the State had already taken charge of one branch,
while further difficulties arose from the varied character of
different forms of teaching work and from the circumstance that some
of these forms were traditionally associated with membership of
another profession, that of a clergyman.

Hence it was that despite several attempts to institute a Register of
Teachers and to organise a profession the difficulties seemed to be
insurmountable. Between the years 1869 and 1899 several bills were
introduced in Parliament with the object of setting up a Register of
Teachers but all met with opposition and were abandoned. The Board of
Education Act of 1899 gave powers for constituting by Order in Council
a Consultative Committee to advise the Board on any matter referred to
the Committee and also to frame, with the approval of the Board,
regulations for a Register of Teachers. It was not until 1902 that an
Order in Council established a Registration Council and laid down
regulations for the institution of a Register. The Council thus
established consisted of twelve members, six of whom were nominated by
the President of the Board of Education while one was elected by each
of the following bodies: the Headmasters' Conference, the Headmasters'
Association, the Head Mistresses' Association, the College of
Preceptors, the Teachers' Guild, and the National Union of Teachers.
The members of the Council were to hold office for three years, and
afterwards, on 1 April, 1905, the constitution of the Council was to
be revised. The duty assigned to the Council was that of establishing
and keeping a Register of Teachers in accordance with the regulations
framed by the Consultative Committee and approved by the Board of
Educ