The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-08-07 00:00:00

TO THE GOVENORS OF KING EDWARD'S
GRAMMAR SCHOOL.

GENTLEMEN,
lam glad to be able again to iAve a very
favourable ,account of tl.e school. Latin seems to
be well and carefully taught, and lam glad to see
that a good deal of attention is paid to parsing.
whereupon gramatical accuracy is ensured On the
w i
hole the Latin work of the school s quite equal
to that of last year, although the head-master has
suffered the fate of all schools, in consequence of
the loss of two or three very promising boys. The
average marks obtained by the boys in Ole upper
classes are less than in 1879. Hartley. and. Brooks
however, have done very well indeed. In the secontt
from of the upper school I should like to particu-
larize the work of Penn. His paper was very good,
and had its quantity been equal to its quality he
would have been at the head of his form. In the
first form of the middle school Talbot follows very
closely behind Hodgetts. Indeed I was much
pleased with several of his papers and where be
faits it h apparently in slowness of writinz, in the
lower school some of the boys are very near to-
gether, especially Pargeter and Knowles. The
Greek classes are slightly larger than last year. I
think the work is quite as good. I
.might mention
Hartley in the upper, and Addison
.in the less ad-
vanced class as being worthy of praise. You will
remember that when I gave you my report last year
I found it necessary to draw attention to the Iw.l
that Holy Scripture was one of the weakest points
in the school. lam glad to say that it has entirely
ceased to be and instead of being the poorest is
now one of the best of the subjects. The inipro •
vement in this respect is most marked in the middle
schooi. Last year, the boy who occupied the first
place, obtained 49 marks out of 109. This year the
boy who stood 17th in the list, obtained a greater
proportion. This speaks for itself. In the upper
class only two boys failed to gain half the marks.
The lower school, too, is improved. Another weak
point last yeAwas French. This is decidedly bet-
ter; but in the middle form there is still room for
improvement; but I should like the boys in the
first class to read their French author for the littra
ture as well as the language. It !'s true that we
must gain an acquaintance with the language and
be able to translate the thoughts of the author in
our own tongue before we can utilize them ; but the
elder boys are quite sufficiently advanced in the
knowledge of the French language to be able to
read their author more intelligently, and secondly,
with greater enjoyments than they had at present.
This will, however, rest with the boys more than
with their masters. History is certainly the weak-
est part of the school work this year. Perhaps it
is, as I have stated to the head-master, that the
English Hhtory in the lower school is not suffi-
ciently interesting. I must again mention the new-
ness of many of the papers. This is always a very
great help to the examiner. Spelling is improved,
but not yet perfect.
In closing, I am glad to say that the school has
receded in Lolling, whilst my report shows that in
some subject there is a marked improvement. I
have noticed the same evenness about the work of
various classes, the same thoroughness about the
work of the school in general which I spoke of last
year. Many of the prizes have been very closely
fought for, and I have had to look through the best
papers some three, four, or even five times before
was sure which was the fortunate prize-winner.
I must congratulate both masters and boys upon
the examination which bears evidence of hard work
and careful teaching during the year, and you
gent'emen upon the high average of training which
exists in the school.