This book outlines the principal features of the Payment by Results policy, first introduced in England in 1862. It draws attention to some of the positive aspects of the system but it also considers the more salient features of a system that preyed heavily on both pupils and teachers. Inspectors were used as agents of its implementation, resulting in a divergence of views between them and the teachers. Very few regretted its demise in 1900 when it was replaced by the Revised Programme, a much more child-centred curriculum. It was a system of schooling rather than of education, and it served very few admirably.

Dr Tony Lyons, formerly primary school teacher, latterly lecturer in the History of Education, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland. Formerly, Dublin Institute of Technology.