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the elementary school regulations, while the nursery school is no part of the
elementary school system and is subject to a separate code of rules.
Manchester has at present about 170 infant schools, and within those schools
it has 49 nursery classes, some schools having one, a few having two, and about
three-quarters of them having none. A nursery class is sometimes formed by
splitting up a large babies' class. From a babies' class of 50 or 60 two nursery
classes of 25 or 30 each are formed. The maximum roll is 30. It is allowed to reach
35 when a special kind of helper, known as a "student nurse," is allocated to the
class. A student nurse is a bursar who teaches half time and attends a secondary
school the other half. Her ultimate objective is nursing, not teaching.
The success of these classes seems to be largely dependent on the teacher.
Where she combines special aptitude with special training she does well; where
one of these qualifications is absent, her work falls below the level which it is reasonable
to expect from so propitious an arrangement and so generous an equipment.
The nursery class raises the important question of the relation between the
nursery school and the infant school.
The relation between the nursery school and the infant school.—It seems rational to
think that the nursery school finds its proper place within the infant school system,
and ultimately, no doubt, that will be its fate. But it is doubtful whether the time
is yet ripe. It is necessary for the nursery school to develop its own methods and
create its own tradition. For it may be regarded as a means of reforming the infant
school; and, indeed, the whole scheme of elementary education. If this view is
well founded it is best for the nursery school to delay its entry into the infant
school until it has a chance of assimilating it. At present it would stand a far
greater chance of being itself assimilated. It is not merely true of the infant
school, but of all schools short of the University that the influences that make and
mould the curriculum and the methods of instruction flow from the higher schools
to the lower. The consequence is that the education of the younger pupils has
suffered too much from academic and bookish traditions. The nursery school is a
means of counteracting this influence by turning the current, by extending upwards
its own influence of health and kindliness and joyous spontaneous pursuits.
It is true that much of this spirit already pervades our infant schools. It
abundantly pervades the best of them. And we believe that already, if the schools
and the special teachers be wisely chosen, experiments in the way of nursery classes
may profitably be made in London.
The effect on the subsequent school career.—It is not easy to estimate, with any
approach to exactitude, the intellectual advantages of attendance at a nursery
school. The main impediment is that nursery school children are a selected group.
The poor are chosen rather than the well-to-do, the sickly rather than the strong.
They are, on the whole, below the average in social status and in physical health.
And even if their native intelligence is not also below the average, its development
is hampered by factors which are only partly under the control of the nursery school.
An attempt was made by one of us to trace the subsequent school careers of all
the children who had left the Notting Hill Nursery School within the last five years.
It was found that they all had held their own in school studies and pursuits. The
educational tests that were given them indicated that they were at least up to the
average in their school work. Although they entered the elementary school at the
age of five with no formal knowledge of reading and number they soon caught up
with those children who had had an early training in these subjects. The invariable
verdict of the teachers concerned was that the nursery school children were alert
and eager to learn, that they were well behaved and equipped with habits and
attitudes which made for progress and happiness in the school. The teachers
much preferred to get the children from the nursery school rather then straight from
the homes.