Under the control of a uniform syllabus, the schools which are now specialising and experimenting, and so giving a lead to the rest, would have to abandon whatever was interesting in their respective curricula, and fall into line with the average school; while, with the consequent lowering of the current _ideal_ of efficiency, the level of the average school would steadily fall.

A uniform syllabus is a bad syllabus, for this if for no other reason, that it is compelled to idealise the average; and that, inasmuch as education, so far as it is a living system, grows by means of its "leaders," the idealisation of the average is necessarily fatal to educational growth and therefore to educational life.
It was preordained, then, that the syllabuses which the Department issued, year by year, in the days of payment by results should have few merits and many defects.

Yet even if, by an unimaginable miracle, they had all been educationally sound, the mere fact that all the teachers in England had to work by them would have made them potent agencies for evil.

To be in bondage to a syllabus is a misfortune for a teacher, and a misfortune for the school that he teaches.

To be in bondage to a syllabus which is binding on all schools alike, is a graver misfortune.