these annual tests should be sufficient, but experience shows that there is a tendency to aim at results earlier in the school career; and the chaos of external examinations, from which many English schools are not yet completely emancipated, should be a warning to Wales to be wise in time, and from the beginning concentrate efforts on the same lines. This seems to be best effected by following the example of the Joint Board, and combining school examinations with the awarding of certificates. A scheme on these lines is now in course of preparation, and will probably come into operation in 1899. The subjects of the general examination are to be arranged in groups: _A._ Scripture and English; _B._ Mathematics; _C._ Languages; _D._ Science; _E._ Practical subjects. Within certain limits a choice is allowed from these five groups. Junior and senior certificates are to be awarded on papers of different grades of difficulty. The senior standard is to be carefully approximated to that of Welsh Matriculation, in the hope that the University may be willing to accept it as an equivalent. There should not be much difficulty about this, since the University Court is represented on the Central Board, and the Board in its turn on the Court, so that very close and sympathetic relations are maintained between the two bodies that have charge of the educational interests of the country. The next step would be to win acknowledgment for it as a substitute for the Medical and other preliminaries, and a further stage would be an Honours grade that might replace the higher certificate of the Joint Board as an admission examination to English colleges, and a substitute for the Previous and Responsions. Even this might in time be attained, and the Welsh Board would then have fulfilled its mission of making one school stage lead harmoniously and naturally to the next. Such is the scheme as it presents itself to the minds of the promoters, who look far away beyond the present troubles of small schools, irregular attendance, and inadequate funds, and see in the distant future the glorious fabric of their dreams: one system of schools for both boys and girls, leading them on step by step till they are ready to enter their own colleges, and thence, if more adventurously inclined, cross the border and ask the hospitality of the ancient English universities. The ladder in its widest acceptation is to be set up in Wales, so close to the home of every boy and girl that none may plead inaccessibility as an excuse for the failure to mount. And this system is to be worked by popular bodies, touching at one end the local schoolboard, at the other the university colleges, so that its foundations may be firm and lasting, ‘broad-based upon the people’s will.’