Many of the Board Schools form real architectural ornaments of the town. They are in three stages of design, the earliest being that in which boys, girls, and infants form separate departments, the boys and the infants being usually on the ground floor, the girls on the floor above the boys. In the second stage a large centre hall is surrounded by class-rooms on the ground floor; half way to the roof runs a gallery, from which doors open into another set of class-rooms. The infants are on the ground floor (except in Hope Street), in a separate part of the building; the whole school being under the supervision of a master. In the last stage everything is on the ground floor. The latest erected buildings of this stage are models of airiness and light. The specimens of the three styles easiest reached and most worth seeing are respectively Bristol Street, Icknield Street, and Stratford Road or Foundry Road. It should be noticed that half-time scholars are now almost unknown, although the conditions of life would seem to point to a wide extension of the system. A few scholarships, far fewer than could be wished, are at the disposal of the Board. They are of three classes, Major, Elementary Science, and Minor. Boys who hold the Wright, Piddock, and J. H. Chamberlain Memorial Scholarships receive £15 a year, on certain conditions, during a two years’ course at King Edward’s School, and £25 a year, with remittance of fees, for three years more at Mason College. Several Elementary Science Scholarships, in connection with the Science and Art Department, have hitherto been provided out of a fund called the Higher Education Fund, raised for the purpose of assisting poor but deserving scholars, by which a grant of £5 is guaranteed, with an additional £5 on passing a good examination under the Science and Art Department. It is greatly to be regretted that the funds raised for providing Minor Scholarships are all exhausted, except the Chamberlain and Edgbaston Day School for Girls Trust Funds. In the early stages of the Board’s work, when a Church majority was elected, religious education was given in the Birmingham schools. Upon the accession of the Liberal and Non-Conformist party to power such education was entirely done away with. The result of frequent and somewhat bitter controversy has been that at present a small portion of the Bible is read each day by the head teacher without note or comment. The Voluntary Schools have, up till quite recently, had no common organization. There has now, however, been formed an Association of Voluntary School Managers, under whose auspices it is proposed to undertake some amount of inspection, and which will frame and discuss all measures directed to their common welfare. The Chairman is the Rev. Canon Bowlby, Rector of St. Philip’s.