[587] Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. cxxxi.
Turning now to the much smaller number of children in Poor Law institutions, of whom there were on January 1st 1871, 55,832[588] (together with a very small number "boarded out"), we see a similar continuity of policy in the Central Authority, but in these cases it is continuity in the policy of a constant enlargement of responsibility, and of a steady improvement in the provision.[589]
[588] Twenty-third Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1870-71, p. 374.
[589] There are few statutory provisions of this period which affect the institutional treatment of children, and these few deal simply with financial questions. It is worth noting, however, that they tend to improve accommodation, as they facilitate increased expenditure, by allowing a larger sum to be raised for building, fitting up, and furnishing Metropolitan District Schools (Poor Law Loans Act 1872, 35 Vic. c. 2, sec. 1), and by allowing the expenses of maintenance in a certified school to be paid up to any limit to be fixed by the Local Government Board; and provide against over-crowding by allowing no repayment from the common poor fund in respect of children in a school in excess of a maximum number fixed for the school by the board. The special provisions for the education of defective children will be considered under the heading "Defectives."
The main preoccupation of the Central Authority since 1871, so far as children are concerned, has been the increase, progressive improvement, and novel development of the Poor Law school entirely removed from the workhouse.[590] The recommendations and incitements to boards of guardians to remove from the workhouse the healthy children of school age are incessant down to 1900.[591] Such children are ordinarily accommodated in Poor Law schools, either district schools, where these exist, or much more frequently "separated" or "workhouse schools," which may be of the old aggregated type, or "cottage homes" or "scattered homes." The dramatic change from the views of 1850 is the abandonment of the "district school." The aggregated type, held in such esteem previously to 1871, fell gradually into disfavour, and is now known as the "barrack school." Already in 1871 Mr. Corbett was criticising these schools as being far too large (as well as too indiscriminate in the kind of children admitted) to be really successful.[592] After repeated outbreaks of malignant ophthalmia, and continued experience of the mental drawbacks, especially of the large girls' schools, the Central Authority abandoned its policy, and presently came to decline to sanction proposals which would have the effect of "extending the large schools in the Metropolis and ... most readily [to] entertain any proposals for applying to other purposes any of these large buildings, subject to other provision of a suitable character being made for the children."[593] The barrack school system grew up out of the five Metropolitan school districts; these also therefore shared in the condemnation, and in 1899 two had been dissolved.[594]