A remarkable return, eedered by the Privy Council, shows how
rapidly our Educational system is growing. On the 31st August, 1874, there was accommodation provided for 2,571,826 children, with eight square feet of floor for each child ; there were 2,407,602 Fhildren on the registers ; but only an average of 1,678,759 m in daily attendance, a circumstance which strongly joints, as Mr. Forster insisted on Thursday, to a compulsory law as the only remedy. Indeed, only 1,457,075 children, having made the requisite number of daily attendances, were in a position to bring grants to their schools. Of the 22,712,266 persons in England and Wales, 11,647,998 are now under School Boards, —i.e., a little more than half ; and the number of these School Boards is 859. It is obvious that this vast machinery is greatly in advance of the results attained when the average daily attendance is barely two-thirds of the full number of children on the books, and the number of those who really earn the grant is barely more
half the places kept for them.
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