If a young teacher, fresh from an exceptionally enlightened Training College, became an assistant under an old-fashioned head teacher, he soon had the "nonsense knocked out of him," and was compelled to toe the line with the rest of the staff.
But it was not only because the teachers of England had got accustomed to the Land of Bondage, that they shrank from entering the Promised Land.

There was, and still is, another and a stronger reason.

Wherever the teacher looks, he sees that the examination system, with its demand for machine-made results, controls education; and he feels that it is only by an accident that his school has been exempted (in part at least) from its pressure.

The Board of Education still examine for labour certificates, for admission as uncertificated assistants, for the teacher's certificate.

They expect head teachers to hold terminal examinations of all the classes in their schools.