Should it ever be largely adopted the chief gainers would probably be the private schools, which would alone be left free to take a wide view of the present and future needs of their pupils. There would be a curious irony in such an outcome of all the efforts to improve girls’ education by making it a public concern; but as long as there is no compulsion beyond the elementary stage, we may always reckon on a healthy reaction and a revolt against excessive red-tape. Britons never will be slaves, not even to a Department which helps them to educate their children more cheaply. While the higher grade school is designed to give more advanced instruction to those children from the elementary schools who can afford to postpone their working life till fifteen or later, it has also become necessary to do something for those whose occupations will not allow of continued day-time instruction. The Evening Continuation schools are intended to supply this want. The original night-school of olden time was one where the unlettered rustic or mechanic came to spell out his primer and laboriously manufacture his pot-hooks. Though election statistics show that the absolutely illiterate voter is gradually vanishing from the scenes, his complete extinction cannot be far off, and in catering for after-instruction the amount of schooling represented by three standards may as a rule be assumed. But in early days the school boards had to cater for a very ignorant class of evening pupils, and the work of the continuation schools was to a great extent parallel with that of the day-schools. For many years the codes insisted that pupils in night-schools earning grants should undergo examinations in the three elementary subjects—reading, writing, arithmetic. As the numbers who passed through the day-schools increased there was a corresponding diminution in evening attendances, and it became clear that the proper use of the evening-school was as a place of more advanced instruction. Accordingly in the 1890 Code the clause, that elementary education should be the principal part of the education there given, was omitted. In 1893 Evening Continuation schools received fresh stimulus and importance from an entirely new Code dealing with them separately. Its declared aim was to give ‘freedom to managers in the organisation of their schools’ by offering a wide choice of subjects with suggested syllabuses in some subjects. The aims of these schools were now declared to be twofold:—(1) to supply defects in early elementary instruction; (2) to prolong the general education of the scholar, and combine with it some form of interesting employment.