of
administration and inspection is L120,000 per annum; the similar charge
on Scotland is exactly half that sum, and yet Scotland prides herself on
her education, and Ireland is taunted with her illiteracy.

The state of secondary education in Ireland differs fundamentally from
that of England in this--that the number of educational endowments in
the country are extremely few. Practically the whole of the money spent
on this branch of education comes from taxation and school fees. It is
controlled by the Intermediate Board, which was established some thirty
years ago, and is in its management entirely dissociated from the
National Board, so that all arrangements with a view to the transfer of
clever pupils from the schools of the one type to those of the other are
made as difficult as possible.

The Intermediate schools are, on the other hand, subject to the
Department of Technical Instruction as well as to the Intermediate
Board. Each of these awards grants, in some instances, for the same
subjects, but dependent in many cases on different standards and
conditions, so that it sometimes happens that schools earn grants twice
over for the same subjects; and in other cases they enjoy aid from one
Department of State which is refused for the same subject by another,
owing to failure to comply with its conditions or to attain to its
standard. Just as the connection of the Elementary schools with the
Intermediate schools is very imperfect, so at the other end is the
connection with the universities. The system of payment by results,
under which the Intermediate schools are subsidised, is notoriously
unsound from the point of view of education, since it leads to
"cramming," and, moreover, under it the amount of grant earned by a
school is subject to extreme variations. Lastly, if the pupils suffer
from existing arrangements, the case of the teachers is no better, for
from a recent report it will be seen that the average salary of lay
teachers in Intermediate schools in Ireland is at least half what it is
in corresponding schools in England.

In a country where elementary and intermediate education are in so
unsatisfactory condition as we have seen them to be, one would expect
university education to be seriously crippled, but in Ireland there
arise in this connection further complications from religious
differences which serve to perpetuate a state of affairs which twenty
years ago Mr. Balfour declared was an intolerable