to exist east of the Elbe River (East Elbia). There were many agricultural workers who received part of their wages in kind, such as free housing, food or land use. As late as 1928, 83% of the income of an average farm worker in East Prussia consisted of such wages, although the figure was somewhat lower in Silesia and Pomerania. Employers preferred this form of pay because it tied workers more closely to them and made it difficult to verify the accuracy of their wages. The situation was different in areas with a population made up predominantly of independent farmers. Even so, reservations about politics in rural regions remained strong, as is shown by the emergence of rural protest parties such as the Christian-National Peasants' and Farmers' Party. In Schleswig-Holstein, which was characterized not by large landholdings but by farmers, an agrarian protest movement developed toward the end of the 1920s with the Rural People's Movement. Educational policy The period of the grand coalition saw the beginning of a reform of the educational system that was initially pushed forward by the independent Minister of Education Carl Heinrich Becker. One of its goals was to reduce the educational disparity between urban and rural areas. According to the Reich constitution, the training of elementary school teachers was to be aligned with that of the higher schools. How that was to be done was left a matter for the states. Some, such as Thuringia and Saxony, introduced teacher training at universities or technical universities. Others, including Bavaria and Württemberg, retained the old seminar method. In 1924 Prussia introduced a middle course using denominational pedagogic academies with a shorter training period than in a regular university course. Prussia increased its funding for additional educational opportunities aimed in particular at gifted blue- and white-collar workers. In 1928 there were 102 – schools with the goal of bringing gifted elementary school students up to high school readiness level – with 13,000 students. In 1928 a broad majority decided to introduce educational grants of 20,000 Reichsmarks to support the less well-off. Just one year later, the sum had reached 100,000 Reichsmarks, although additional increases were slowed by fiscal considerations, including on the part of the SPD. In other areas, problems of long standing were addressed, such as reducing the pupil-teacher ratio from 55 in 1911 to 38 in 1928. Overall, however, personnel costs in education, which placed