Page:The empire and the century.djvu/621

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578
EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

the quality of the instruction provided in each suffers from there being so many establishments within a comparatively short distance of one another, each with its separate staff of professors, and two of the three supported on denominational and racial lines. The Huguenot College for Women situated at Wellington has more recently offered teaching of a similar character, and it is clear that the Rhodes College at Grahamstown, the Grey College at Bloemfontein, and the Transvaal Technical Institute will soon take rank as important centres of University instruction. Besides controlling the examinations for almost all the degrees and diplomas at these institutions, the University of the Cape of Good Hope, through its school examinations, has a preponderating influence upon the curriculum and methods of teaching in the many secondary schools in South Africa, and even affects the teaching in primary schools. During the final years of the existence of the South African Republic, a considerable number of teachers trained in Holland were brought into the Transvaal. In the course of the late war, when nearly all the ordinary schools of the Colony were closed for a longer or shorter period, most of these teachers returned home or found other employment. But, with the rapid increase in what may be called the extraordinary schools of the war period—namely, the concentration camps—it became necessary to introduce into the new British territories a large number of thoroughly trained teachers from Great Britain and her Colonies. Besides those selected in Cape Colony and Natal, one hundred teachers were brought from Canada and Australasia, and more than two hundred from the United Kingdom itself—all within the space of one year. These teachers were well received by the parents of scholars, and already have had a decisive influence upon the quality of the teaching in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony.

As regards the distribution of schools, account must be taken of the peculiar conditions of South