16

EDUCATION.

attending schools of all kinds (unregistered as well as registered)
 was 218,479. It would be a mistake to suppose that
by subtracting these quantities we ghould get the number
who are receiving no education at all. The fact is that
many of those attending school do so for very short periods,
and it is doubtful if the actual average of school life at all
sxceedsfour years. Adoptingthis figure,ithas been estimated
that at the present time about three-fifths of the children
are getting something in the way of education, and the
remainder nothing. Of those who are getting nothing, the
large majority are girls. But there are still some large but
sparsely inhabited districts that are almost entirely destitute
of schools.
Those who have read the earlier part of this chapter will
have inferred that the quality of the education is of the
most varied description. "It may he granted at once that a
large number of the unregistered schools are as bad as they
can be. In Government and in aided schools the work is of
a totally different description. In both there are strong
inducements to efficiency. They are examined annually
by Government Inspectors, and on the results of the examination
 depend the grant of the aided school and the prospects
of the teacher in the Government school. The work in both
cages is carried on in accordance with schedules which
correspond closely (perhaps too closely) with those of English
 elementary schools. Physical education has not been
neglected : drill has for some years formed a prominent part
in the work of Government schools, and is now being carried
on in many of the aided schools, where it is encouraged by
a small grant.
The Government schools have at present one great advansage
 in most of the areas in which they exist: compulsory
attendance is enforced by means of the Gansabhawa or village
tribunal. We have already seen that the Dutch, who understood
 Ceylon very well, made their system a compulsory one,
and in the Sinhalese districts no system is likely to be
sfficient which is not compulsory. In the Tamil districts
compulsion is less necessary, and if a decent school is provided
 the children usually flock to it. In these parts of the
Island the aided schools work excellently ; theyalso form a
very efficient system in those parts of the Sinhalese districts
where the inhabitants are all or almost all Christians, and
where some degree of compulsion can be secured by ecclesiastical
 authority. But in the non-Christian parts of the
Sinhalese provinces the position is sometimes a difficult
one, and the wants of the people seem to be better met by
Fovernment schools,