L25,000 a year, on the very insufficient ground that the Development Grant has been depleted to defray the loss of flotation of stock for the purposes of land purchase.  What, in the name of common sense, has land purchase to do with education?  What indissoluble relationship is there between the two that the expenditure upon the one should be made dependent upon the requirements of the other?  This niggardly and short-sighted attitude is hardly worthy of one of the richest countries in the world.  It is but a matter of a few thousands, and surely the efficient training of the youth of Ireland is quite as important as buying out the Irish landlords and placing the Irish tenant in possession of the soil.  The result of the present want of co-ordination is that the clever pupil is now kept far too long in the lower school.  There he remains, kicking his heels until he is sent up to the Intermediate School at 15 or 16—­much too late an age at which to begin the study of languages.  The Primary teachers are, of course, only too pleased to retain the clever boys as long as possible in the National Schools, but it is unfair to the children, and is robbing the community of services which might be rendered to it by these pupils in the future if fair opportunities were afforded them of training themselves while there was yet time.  Without higher grade schools, without scholarships, without at least some system of a “higher top” in connection with the Primary Schools, there can never be proper co-ordination of administration, and education in Ireland will never be able to progress beyond a certain point.  The Christian Brothers have set the Treasury a good example in this matter.  In their schools there is close co-ordination of primary and intermediate education.  Promising boys in the fifth standard are removed when they are 11 or 12 years of age into the higher schools and thus given an opportunity, at the most receptive period of their lives, of acquiring knowledge which they will be able to turn to good account in after life.  Over and over again has the National Board attempted to persuade the Treasury to adopt a similar system, but hitherto without avail.  The crust of the official mind has been impervious to every appeal.  There seems, indeed, to be now some chance of the establishment of scholarships for pupils in primary schools, but unless an intelligent mind is brought to bear upon it, and the scholarships limited, as in England and Scotland, to pupils under 12 or 13 years of age, the same unfortunate result will follow, as in the case of the Society for Promoting Protestant Schools and other similar bodies, where the scholarships have turned out to be a practical failure.  An exception, however, as suggested by Dr. Starkie, and as allowed in Scotland, might be made in favour of the best Primary Schools.  That is to say, where satisfactory Secondary teaching is given at a Primary School, the pupil might be relieved of one or two of the three years he is obliged to spend in the Secondary School before he can compete for the Intermediate Certificate which is awarded at 15 years of age.