been made to realise them by establishing a professional Council with its necessary adjunct of a Register of qualified persons.  Seventy years ago the College of Preceptors, with its grades of Associate, Licentiate and Fellow, suggesting a comparison with the College of Physicians, was established with the object of “raising the standard of the profession by providing a guarantee of fitness and respectability.”  The College Register was to contain the names of all those who were qualified to conduct schools, and admission to the Register was controlled by the College itself in order to provide a means of excluding all who were likely to bring discredit upon the calling of a teacher by reason of their inefficiency or misconduct.  The scheme thus launched was, however, not comprehensive, since it concerned chiefly the teachers who conducted private schools and did not contemplate the inclusion of those who were engaged in universities, public schools, or the elementary schools working under the then recently established scheme of State grants.  Teachers in schools of this last description were apparently intended by the government of the day to be regarded as civil servants, appointed and paid by the State.  Subsequent legislation modified this arrangement, but teachers in schools receiving government grants are still subject to a measure of control, and those in public elementary schools are licensed by the State before being allowed to teach.  It will be seen that the effort to organise a teaching profession was hampered from the start by the fact that teachers were not entirely free to set up their own conditions, since the State had already taken charge of one branch, while further difficulties arose from the varied character of different forms of teaching work and from the circumstance that some of these forms were traditionally associated with membership of another profession, that of a clergyman.

Hence it was that despite several attempts to institute a Register of Teachers and to organise a profession the difficulties seemed to be insurmountable.  Between the years 1869 and 1899 several bills were introduced in Parliament with the object of setting up a Register of Teachers but all met with opposition and were abandoned.  The Board of Education Act of 1899 gave powers for constituting by Order in Council a Consultative Committee to advise the Board on any matter referred to the Committee and also to frame, with the approval of the Board, regulations for a Register of Teachers.  It was not until 1902 that an Order in Council established a Registration Council and laid down regulations for the institution of a Register.  The Council thus established consisted of twelve members, six of whom were nominated by the President of the Board of Education while one was elected by each of the following bodies:  the Headmasters’ Conference, the Headmasters’ Association, the Head Mistresses’ Association, the College of Preceptors, the Teachers’ Guild, and the National