History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

CHAP. VI] CHARITABLE SCHOOLS. 289

of the Elphinstone Institution and College; Professor A. G. Fraser, D.D.; Dr. J. Burgess, now Archzeological Surveyor of India; and Mr. Dosabhai Nasarvanji Wadia, M.A., late Senior Fellow, Elphinstone College, Bombay, who has been in charge of the Institution since the lst of February 1873.

‘This charity maintains at present four schools for boys and three for girls in Bombay, and eight small schools for girls and seven for boys in different parts of Gujarat.

The four boys’ schools in Bombay number on their rolls about eleven hundred pupils, a number unprecedented in the annals of the institution; and the attendance per cent is also very high, being seldom under ninety and often as high as ninety-four. The three girls’ schools are attended by about nine hundred girls, the attendance per cent being seventyeight. The Mofussil schools contain upwards of one thousand children. All the schools of the institution taken together impart the blessings of education free of charge to nearly three thousand boys and girls of the poor belonging to the Parsi community.

The boys’ schools are attended by boys varying in age from six to twenty years, who are taught up to the matriculation standard of the local University. The girls’ schools are attended by girls of from five to twelve years, who are taught up to the fourth vernacular standard.

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