VOLUME VIII SLICE X Echinoderma to Edward (continued 10)

Towards the end of the 18th century the emergency of the industrial revolution evoked a fresh religious effort upon a more highly organized scale in the shape of the Sunday-school movement, which may be said to represent the The Sunday-school movement. educational contribution of the Evangelical revival Robert Raikes, the founder of the Sunday School Union, established his first Sunday school in 1782. The idea of the Sunday school did not originate with Raikes; among earlier pioneers in this field were John Wesley, who held Sunday classes at Savannah in 1737; Theophilus Lindsey at Catterick in the North Riding of Yorkshire, about 1769; Hannah Ball at High Wycombe in 1769; and Jenkin Morgan near Llanidloes in 1770. Sunday schools, too, had been founded in England by Joseph Alleine, the Puritan Father, in the 17th century, and in Catholic Italy and France by St Charles Borromeo and Jean Baptiste de la Salle in the 16th and 17th centuries respectively. Nevertheless, in virtue of his achievement in organization, Raikes is rightly regarded as the founder of the English Sunday school. The peculiar value of the Sunday-school system in its early days lay in the combination of secular with religious instruction; in many cases the school was held on Saturday as well as Sunday, and its restriction to the one day or two days was due to the prevalence of child labour under stress of the great industrial expansion. With better economic conditions and with the development of day schools the Sunday schools gradually became restricted in function to purely religious instruction. Even with this limitation there is no doubt that the great Sunday-school organizations of the various churches still deserve to be reckoned among the educational assets of the nation, and as agencies both of religious instruction and of general culture they may tend, under modern educational and religious developments, to play an increasingly important part.

At the end of the 18th century the development of industry and the social unrest which followed the French Revolution combined to bring home to the public mind the need of a national system of day schools. Unfortunately, Movements of Lancaster and Bell, and rise of the religious controversy. just at this moment the revival of Nonconformity as the result of the religious vitality of the Evangelical movement shattered the religious peace of the early Hanoverian period and divided the nation once more into hostile camps, to which class distinctions lent additional bitterness. The famous controversy between Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster and their respective followers in the opening years of the 19th century served to define the religious difficulty substantially in the form in which it exists after the lapse of a century for the present generation. Both these remarkable men conceived independently the idea of a national system of popular education upon a voluntary basis; both concurred in extolling the merits of the monitorial system, which each claimed to have originated. The controversy between them, begun upon personal grounds, resolved itself into a national contest of rival principles of religious teaching. Lancaster as a young Quaker schoolmaster, confronted with pupils drawn from various religious bodies, planned his religious instruction upon the lines of doctrine common to all the orthodox Christian denominations. Thus he is the father of the undenominational religious teaching which later formed the basis of the Cowper-Temple compromise. But whereas the Cowper-Temple clause is purely negative in form and so seems to point to an undogmatic religion, the Lancasterian teaching was essentially positive and dogmatic within its limits. In 1805 Mrs Trimmer opened the attack upon Lancaster’s system with a work bearing the expressive title of A Comparative View of the New Plan of Education promulgated by Mr Joseph Lancaster and of the System of Christian Instruction founded by our Forefathers for the initiation of the young members of the Established Church in the Principles of the Reformed Religion. The church as a whole refused to co-operate in religious teaching upon the basis of a common Christianity, and joined issue with Lancaster and his Whig and Nonconformist following not merely upon the question of the exclusion of dogmatic formularies, but also upon the question of the control of whatever religious teaching should be given. In fact the vital question at this period was whether the clergy of the Established Church were to control the national education. The religious issue was prominent in connexion with the remarkable attempt at legislation made by the Whig statesman Mr Whitbread in his Parochial Schools Bill of 1807. As originally introduced, the bill proposed to make it compulsory on parochial vestries to levy rates for the support of schools for teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. The compulsory provisions were dropped in the House of Commons, but the bill was rejected by the Lords, mainly on the ground that it did not place education on a religious basis or sufficiently secure control to the minister of the parish.

The failure of the liberal proposals of Whitbread, and the strength of the Dissenting opposition to any settlement on purely church lines (such as that advocated by Bell in 1808 for establishing schools under the control of the Foundation of voluntary schools. parochial clergy), rendered recourse to voluntary effort inevitable. In 1808 the Royal Lancasterian Society was formed to carry on the work of Lancaster, the name being afterwards changed, owing to personal difficulties due to the wayward character of Lancaster, to the British and Foreign School Society. In the following year the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church throughout England and Wales was formed, with Bell as its superintendent. In voluntary effort on a grand scale the church easily outdistanced her opponents, and in 1831 the National Society was able to show that there were in all over 13,000 schools in connexion with the church, of which 6470 were both day and Sunday schools, having a total attendance of 409,000.

The rapid development of the voluntary school system was no doubt greatly facilitated by the monitorial plan of teaching, upon which Bell and Lancaster equally relied. Probably the first idea of utilizing the older pupils Monitorial system. to teach the younger presented itself independently to Lancaster in the Borough Road and to Bell in Madras. The monitorial plan never rested upon any educational theory; it was simply a makeshift, a rough-and-ready expedient for overcoming the practical difficulty caused by the dearth of competent teachers. Historically it is important as the precursor of the pupil-teacher system which so long formed the exclusive basis of the English elementary system.

Meantime a further political move was attempted by Brougham, who included educational reform among his multifarious activities. In 1816 he procured the appointment of a general commission of inquiry into endowed charities. The Activities of Brougham. labours of this great inquisition lasted for twenty years and led to the reformation of many cases of abuse or waste of wealthy endowments, and eventually to the establishment of the Charity Commission in 1853. In 1820 Brougham introduced a remarkable bill which proposed to make the magistrates in quarter sessions the rating authority, to require teachers to be members of the Church of England and to be appointed upon a certificate from the parochial clergyman, and on the other hand to prohibit religious formularies and to confine religious instruction to Bible reading without comment. The bill naturally failed through the opposition cf the Dissenters, and served only to accentuate the religious impasse.

In 1832 the Whig government which passed the Reform Bill placed on the Estimates a sum of £20,000 for public education, thus initiating the system of the annual grant voted by parliament and dispensed under regulations framed Treasury grants. by administrative act. The grant of 1832 was administered by the treasury and not by a special department, under certain conditions laid down by treasury minute of August 30, 1833. The chief of these were that grants were confined to the erection of school buildings, and were to be administered only through the National and the British and Foreign School societies; there was a provision for audit, but no condition of inspection.

In 1839 Lord Melbourne’s government by means of an order in council established a separate education office under the style of the Committee of Council on Education, and the sum voted by parliament was increased to £39,000. Establishment of State-aided system. The original intention of the government was to establish a state normal school or training college as the foundation of a national system of education. Unfortunately this design had to be abandoned in view of the religious difficulty, with the result (so fruitful in controversy at the present time) that the training of elementary teachers was left in private hands and became a stronghold of the voluntary and denominational interests. In view of the limited resources placed at their disposal by parliament, the Committee of Council were at first compelled to confine their assistance to capital grants in aid of the provision of school buildings, but in the distribution of the money three important conditions were at once imposed. In the first place, the continuing right of inspection was required in all cases; secondly, promoters were obliged to conform to a fixed standard of structural efficiency; thirdly, the building must be settled upon trusts permanently securing it to the education of poor children.

By the minute of August 10, 1840, the Committee of Council concluded what came to be known as the concordat with the church. Under this minute no appointment was to be made of any person to inspect schools in connexion Concordat with the church. with the Church of England without the concurrence of the archbishop of the province, and, what seems still more extraordinary to modern ideas, any such appointment was to be revoked should the archbishop at any time withdraw his concurrence. The inspectors were charged with the duty of inspecting religious teaching, but under instructions to be framed by the archbishop, and their reports were to be transmitted in duplicate to the archbishop and the bishop for the information of these authorities. Further, the general instructions of the Committee of Council themselves were to be communicated to the archbishop before being finally sanctioned. The march of events, and in particular the altered financial relations between the state and the voluntary managers brought about by the institution of maintenance grants, soon rendered this concordat obsolete, but it remains historically important as showing how at the outset the denominational principle was recognized and fostered by the state.

Among the first acts of the Committee of Council was the promulgation of a set of model trusts deeds, one or other of which applicants for building grants were required to adopt for the settlement of their school premises. The Trust deeds. necessary conditions were the permanent appropriation of the site to purposes of education, and the permanent right of government inspection; it must, however, be noted that this latter right was generally limited in terms to the inspection provided for by the minute of August 10, 1840. A conscience clause was not obligatory, and indeed was only offered in the limited form of exemption from instruction in formularies and attendance at Sunday school or public worship. A more systematic attempt to promote public control by means of trust deeds in 1846 led the Committee of Council into a controversy with the National Society which extended over a period of three years, turning chiefly upon the management clauses and the question of appeals, and resulting in compromises which constituted a fresh concordat with the church. In point of fact, the management clauses proved to be of little practical consequence, save in a few controversial cases, until the act of 1902, which had the effect of bringing them once more into prominence in connexion with the constitution of statutory bodies of foundation managers. The act of 1902 also dealt specifically with two other points arising upon the old trust deeds, viz. the control of religious instruction and the appeal to the bishop in religious questions. Special facilities for the conveyance of land for school purposes were afforded to limited owners by the School Sites Acts of 1841 and subsequent years. The landed gentry responded with great public spirit to the call thus made upon their generosity by the state, with the result that the vast majority of rural, and many urban, parishes were freely endowed with sites for elementary schools.

The Grammar Schools Act of 1840, which was passed to deal with the case of the decayed “grammar” (i.e. classical) schools which abounded throughout the country, belongs to the history of elementary rather than secondary education. Grammar Schools Act 1840. It expressly empowered the Court of Chancery, where the endowment was insufficient for a classical school, to substitute subjects of useful learning analogous to those contained in the original trusts. As a result of this act a considerable number of ancient endowments were reorganized so as to afford an improved elementary instead of an inefficient classical education, and the schemes made under the act constituted an early, but not very successful, experiment in the direction of higher elementary schools.

In 1843 the Committee of Council decided to make grants in aid of the erection of normal schools or training colleges Training-college grants. in connexion with the National Society and the British and Foreign School societies, thus marking the definite abandonment of the provision of training colleges to voluntary effort.

In 1846 an important step forwards was taken in the foundation of the pupil-teacher system. The regulations of this year inaugurated annual maintenance grants in the form of stipends for apprenticed pupil teachers receiving a Pupil-teacher system. prescribed course of instruction under the head teacher, and a lower grade of stipendiary monitors in schools where such instruction could not be provided. These regulations inaugurated the system of Queen’s Scholarships to assist pupil teachers to proceed to a training college; they also established capitation grants for the support of such colleges, and annual grants to elementary schools under government inspection of from £15 to £30 in aid of the salary of every trained teacher employed. Provision was at the same time made for retiring pensions to elementary teachers.

Down to 1847 state aid was confined to two religious categories of schools: those giving specifically Church of England teaching, and those in connexion with the British and Foreign School Society giving simple Bible teaching. To Extension of state aid to Wesleyans, Roman Catholics and Jews. facilitate the recognition of other denominational schools the Committee of Council in 1847 issued a minute dispensing schools not connected with the Established Church from inquiries concerning their religious condition, and in the same year state aid was extended to Wesleyan and Roman Catholic schools. The settlement of model trust deeds gave occasion for each of these two great religious bodies to negotiate a kind of concordat with respect to school management, and the Roman Catholic deed was only settled after a controversy, similar to that which had arisen with the National Society, as to the rights of ecclesiastical authority. Jewish schools received recognition in 1851 upon condition that the Scriptures of the Old Testament should be daily read in them.

During the middle years of the century various unsuccessful legislative attempts were made to establish a national system of elementary schools upon the basis of rate-aid. These attempts began with the education clauses of Sir Robert Bills of 1842-57. Peel’s Factory Bill of 1842, and were renewed in a series of bills from 1853 to 1857, of which one set was introduced by Lord John Russell on behalf of the Whig government, whilst a second was promoted by an organization called the Manchester and Salford Committee on Education, in the denominational interest, and a third set by an organization called the Lancashire (afterwards the National) Public Schools Association, in the secular interest. The only one of these attempts which calls for notice here is the bill introduced by Lord John Russell (called the Borough Bill, on account of its being restricted to municipal boroughs) in 1853, and forming part of a comprehensive scheme of legislative and administrative reform of which a portion was actually carried into effect. The bill as a measure for elementary education was supplemented by an administrative system of capitation grants for rural areas. The government scheme also comprised a measure dealing with the administration of charitable trusts (which took shape as the Charitable Trusts Act 1853), the constitution of the Department of Science and Art, and university reform upon the lines recommended by the Oxford and Cambridge commissions. The Borough Bill left it optional with municipalities to adopt the act. It provided for the appointment of a school committee, one half of whose members might be non-members of the council. The school committee was merely given power to assist existing voluntary schools out of the rates. No provision was made for public control beyond the requirement of audit; the sole condition as to religious instruction was the acceptance of a conscience clause.

The failure of the Borough Bill did not affect the new system of capitation grants which was introduced by minute of the Committee of Council dated April 2, 1853. These grants were fixed at a scale varying from 3s. to 6s. per head, Capitation grants. payable upon certain conditions, of which the most important were that the school must be under a certificated teacher, and that three-fourths of the children must pass a prescribed examination. In consequence of the failure of the several fresh bills introduced in 1855 by the government, the church party and the secular party respectively amplifying the proposals previously brought forward, the capitation grant was, by minute of January 26, 1856, extended to urban areas. As in the case of all the early grants, the regulations governing the distribution of the capitation grants were framed upon the principle that subventions of public money must be met by local funds derived from voluntary contributions, endowments and school fees; thus the basis of the denominational system as fostered by the state at this stage was one of financial partnership.

In 1856 a purely administrative bill was passed, establishing the office of vice-president of the Committee of Council Education minister, 1856. on Education as a minister responsible to parliament. At the same time, the Science and Art Department was transferred from the Board of Trade to the Committee of Council.

The progress of state-aided education during this period may be measured by the increase of the annual parliamentary grant, which rose from £30,000 in 1839 to £100,000 in 1846, £150,000 in 1851, £396,000 in 1855, and £663,400 in 1858. This expansion was viewed with misgiving Newcastle Commission. by the friends of the denominational system, and by the strong individualist school of that day, who upon wider grounds clung to the old ideal of voluntary initiative. These sections combined with the advocates of further state intervention to press for a commission of inquiry, and at the instance of Sir John Pakington (the eminent Conservative educationist who was responsible for the denominational bills of the ’fifties) a royal commission was appointed in 1858, under the chairmanship of the duke of Newcastle, to inquire into the state of popular education in England, and to consider and report what measures, if any, were required for the extension of sound and cheap elementary instruction to all classes of the people. The Report of the Newcastle Commission, issued in 1861, contains an exhaustive account of the existing condition of elementary education, and, with due allowance for the grave defects revealed, and in particular the glaring inefficiency of the numerous little private-venture schools kept by “dames” and others, the graphic picture drawn by the commissioners constitutes a striking tribute to the sterling qualities of self-help and religious earnestness which were so characteristic of the early Victorian period. It was found that in round numbers about 2,500,000 children were attending day schools, the proportion to population being 1 in 7, as compared with 1 in 9 in France, 1 in 8 in Holland, and 1 in 6 in Prussia, where education was compulsory. On the other hand, of this number only 1,675,000 were in public schools of all kinds, only 1,100,000 in schools liable to inspection, and 917,000 in schools receiving annual grant. The result was that only one child in every twenty was attending a school whose efficiency could be in any way guaranteed by the state. In the constructive portion of their work the comments and recommendations of the commissioners reflected the prevailing perplexity of the public mind. A consistent individualistic minority considered that the annual grant should be withdrawn altogether, and that any further state aid should be confined to building grants, which they would concede not as desirable in themselves but as necessitated out of considerations of fairness to the parishes that had not yet received such aid. The commissioners as a body rejected free and compulsory education in view of the religious difficulty and upon general grounds of individualistic principle. Of the religious difficulty itself the commissioners had some wise words to say which hold good in substance at the present time. In their judgment the considerable evidence they had amassed conclusively proved that the religious difficulty originated with the managers, promoters and organizers of the schools, and not with the parents themselves; yet the indifferent or comparatively passive attitude of the people nowise materially diminished the practical difficulty of introducing a comprehensive system, since it was not with the body of the people but with the founders and supporters of schools that legislators would always have to deal. In view of the solution adopted in 1902 it is of interest to note that the Newcastle Commissioners deliberately rejected the parish as unfit to be taken as the unit of elementary education upon the ground that management by parochial ratepayers must tend to be illiberal and niggardly, bent upon economy of the rates to the detriment of educational interests; accordingly they recommended the constitution of county boards (which in the absence of elective councils must needs originate with quarter sessions) clothed with power to levy a rate for the aid of existing voluntary schools.

The one definite achievement of the Newcastle Commission was the famous system of payment by results, which may be said to have excited a keener and more prolonged controversy than any other measure of a purely Payment by results. educational character. Impressed by the defects of the existing teaching, the commissioners reported that there was only one way of securing efficiency, and that was to institute a searching examination by competent authority of every child in every school to which grants were to be paid, with the view of ascertaining whether the indispensable elements of knowledge were thoroughly acquired, and to make the prospects and position of the teacher dependent to a considerable extent upon the results of this examination. Thus the commissioners hoped to counteract what appeared to them to be the crying defect of the existing training college system, viz. that it tended mainly to adapt the young schoolmaster to advance his higher, rather than to thoroughly ground his junior, pupils. They recognized that to raise the character of the children, both morally and intellectually, was and must always be the highest aim of education, and they were far from desiring to supersede this by any plan of a mere examination into the more mechanical work of elementary education, the reading, writing and arithmetic of young children; but they thought that the importance of this training, which must be the foundation of all other teaching, had been lost sight of, and that there was justice in the common complaint that while a fourth of the scholars were really taught, three-fourths after leaving school forgot everything they had learnt there.

Mr Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke) as vice-president of the Committee of Council (1859-1864) adopted the system of payment by results in what became famous in history as the Revised Code, issued in 1862 and so called because it was a revision Revised Code. of the minutes and regulations of the Committee of Council, which were first collected and issued in the form of a code in 1860. The Revised Code provided for the payment of a grant of 4s. upon the old principle and a further grant of not more than 8s. upon the result of examination. Mr Lowe declared of the system in the House of Commons that “if it was costly it should at least be efficient; and if it was inefficient it should at least be cheap.” In fact, it proved to be cheap; the giant fell from £813,400 in 1861 to £636,800 in 1865. The upholders of the existing system denounced the Revised Code as an undeserved slight upon the voluntary managers, and even as a breach of faith with the great religious denominations. On purely educational grounds, which need not be here re-capitulated, it was at once viewed with misgiving by many authorities, including Matthew Arnold. To meet objections, some modifications were introduced in the code under the Conservative government in 1867. The system of paying grant upon the result of individual examination of the scholars was not finally abolished till 1904.

The years immediately preceding 1870 were occupied with discussion and preparation for the great legislative measure for which the time was now felt to have arrived. Good work was done in this direction by the Select Committee Proceedings preliminary to the act of 1870. of the House of Commons in 1866, over which Sir John Pakington presided. For reasons connected with the political situation of the moment this committee never reported, but the minutes of evidence and the draft report prepared by Sir John Pakington contained much valuable material in the way of criticism of the existing system and suggestion for the coming settlement; in particular the draft report insisted upon the inevitableness of an education rate. In 1868 the Conservative government brought in, but did not proceed with, an education bill deliberately discarding the principle of rate-aid on the ground that it would destroy voluntary contributions and gradually starve out the denominational schools. In 1867 and again in 1868 Mr Bruce (afterwards Lord Aberdare), Mr W.E. Forster and Mr Algernon Egerton introduced a bill which formed the basis of the measure of 1870. As redrafted in 1868 the bill of Mr Bruce and his coadjutors proposed a universal system of municipal and parochial rating with liberty for voluntary schools to unite themselves to the rate-aided system under their existing management, subject to the acceptance of a conscience clause. The bill also proposed to empower town councils to co-opt outsiders upon their education committees. Thus both in the principle of co-optation and in the extension of rate aid to schools not under public control the bill of these Liberal statesmen in 1868 anticipated certain controverted features of Mr Balfour’s Education Act of 1902. In the meantime, in the country the Education League, originated at Birmingham, was carrying on a propaganda in favour of free secular schools, whilst the Education Union, formed to counteract the influence of the league, urged a settlement upon the old lines. As a concession to the popular feeling against secularism, the league proposed to allow Bible reading without doctrinal exposition. Thus opinion was sufficiently focussed to enable Mr Gladstone’s administration in 1870 to undertake the comprehensive measure of educational reform for which the country had had to wait so long.

The Elementary Education Act of 1870 bore in every respect the marks of compromise. As Mr Forster explained in introducing the bill, the object of the government was “to complete the voluntary system and to fill up gaps,” not to supplant it. Act of 1870. To this end the Education Department was charged with the duty of ascertaining whether or not there was in every parish a deficiency of public school accommodation, and provision made for the formation of school boards in every school district (i.e. parish or municipal borough) requiring further public school accommodation. Such accommodation might consist either of public elementary schools as defined by the act, or other schools giving efficient and suitable elementary education. The definition of public elementary school contained in section 7 of the act is still in force. Shortly, a public elementary school is a school subject to a conscience clause entitling scholars to complete exemption from all religious instruction and observance whatsoever. Any religious instruction or observance in the school must be either at the beginning or the end of the school meeting. The school must also be open at all times to the government inspectors and must be conducted in accordance with the conditions required to be fulfilled in order to obtain an annual parliamentary grant. In the same connexion an important change was made in the conditions of inspection by declaring that it should be no part of the duties of the inspector to inquire into religious instruction, whilst a later section of the act provided that no parliamentary grant should be made in respect of any religious instruction.

Three important changes were made in the measure during its passage through parliament. As at first proposed, (1) the school boards were not to be directly elected by the ratepayers, but were to be appointed by the town council or the vestry. (2) These nominated boards were empowered either to provide schools themselves or to assist existing public elementary schools, provided that such assistance was granted on equal terms to all such schools, upon conditions to be approved by the Education Department. Thus the school board, if it exercised the option of assisting denominational schools, would have been obliged to assist all or none. (3) With regard to its own schools, the school board was to settle the form of religious instruction. These proposals raised serious opposition in the country, and when the committee stage of the bill was reached two fundamental changes were made in the policy of the bill. In the first place, as Mr Gladstone put it, the government had decided “to sever altogether the tie between the local board and the voluntary schools.” In lieu of the suggested rate-aid they proposed an increased grant from the treasury, that is to say, the voluntary schools were left standing as state-aided schools under private management, side by side with the new rate-supported schools.

Next, the character of the religious instruction in the board schools was determined upon an undenominational basis by a provision which has become known to history after the name of its author, then Mr Cowper-Temple, Cowper-Temple clause. as the Cowper-Temple clause (section 14 of the act), directing that “no religious catechism or religious formulary which is distinctive of any particular denomination shall be taught in the school.” The clause was not intended to exclude doctrinal exposition, and was in fact a compromise not merely between absolute secularism and denominationalism, but between denominationalism and the view of those who would have the Bible read without note or comment. The Apostles’ Creed as a symbol common to all denominations of Christians was held by Mr Forster (at the suggestion of Mr Gladstone) not to be excluded under the Cowper-Temple clause. The result was the establishment in the schools, upon the lines laid down by Joseph Lancaster at the beginning of the 19th century, of what may be termed the common Protestantism of the English nation; and though Mr Disraeli urged that a religion without formularies was in fact a new religion, and that in leaving its exposition to the teachers we were creating a new sacerdotal class, the Cowper-Temple compromise, notwithstanding its inherent want of logic, stood the test of experience for more than a generation against the consistent denominationalists on the one hand and the party of secular education on the other. It is important to observe that the act of 1870 left the giving of religious instruction, whether in voluntary schools (in which its inclusion might be assumed as of course) or in board schools, purely permissive. In practice it was only in Wales that school boards availed themselves to any extent of the liberty to abstain from giving religious instruction, and this comparative secularism of Wales certainly argued no lack of religious life among the people.

The third change in the bill was the substitution of the ad hoc school board for the municipally appointed board originally proposed, a change which commended itself in view of the special difficulty presented by the case of London. These boards were elected by the system of cumulative voting under which each elector had as many votes as there were candidates to be elected, with liberty to give all his votes to one candidate or to distribute them amongst the candidates as he thought fit. This system was much criticized as being unduly favourable to minorities, whose representation it was devised to secure; it continued, however, until the supersession of the ad hoc authorities by committees of the county and urban councils under the act of 1902.

School boards were empowered not only to acquire sites for schools under powers of compulsory purchase, but also to take transfers of existing voluntary schools from their managers. The section which enables managers to transfer schools to the school board or local education authority for the purpose of board or council schools freed from religious trusts unquestionably marks an important inroad by the state upon the sanctity of trusts. Thus though the act of 1870 did not itself introduce the principle of compulsory transfer, it formed the point of departure for the proposals in this direction which were the basis of the unsuccessful bills of 1906 and 1908. The act of 1870 did not introduce either direct compulsory attendance or free education, but it took a distinct step forward in each direction by enabling school boards to frame by-laws rendering attendance compulsory, and also to pay the school fees in the case of poverty of the parent.

The policy of compromise between the two systems of voluntary and rate-established schools was carried out in the provisions relating to the future supply of schools. On the one hand, building grants were continued temporarily for the benefit of those who applied (as voluntary managers alone could apply) before the 31st of December 1870. On the other hand, the Education Department was authorized to refuse parliamentary grants to schools established in school board districts after the passing of the act if they thought such schools unnecessary.

The following figures are of interest as showing the progress made under the act of 1870. In the year 1870 there was accommodation in inspected day schools for about 2,000,000 children; the average attendance was 1,168,000, and Progress under the act of 1870. the number on the books about 1,500,000. It was computed, however, that there were, exclusive of the well-to-do classes, at least 1,500,000 children who attended no school at all or schools not under inspection. In 1876 accommodation had been provided for nearly 3,500,000, and of the 1,500,000 new places nearly two-thirds were provided by voluntary agencies. “These voluntary agencies,” says Sir H. Craik, “had received grants in aid for about one-third of the schools they had built, the grants defraying about one-fifth of the cost of the aided schools.” On the other hand, the growth of school boards was rapid and continuous, notwithstanding the permissive character of the act and the strenuous efforts of the voluntaryists to keep pace with the new demands. In 1872, 9,700,000 of the population were under school boards, and of these 8,142,000 were under by-laws; in 1876 the numbers were respectively 12,500,000 and 10,400,000. In the same period the annual grants increased from £894,000 in 1870 to £1,600,000 in 1876.

The development evidenced by the above figures, and in particular the fact that 52% of the population were subject to by-laws, enabled Mr Disraeli’s government in 1876 to take a notable step forward in the direction of universal Act of 1876. direct compulsion. The act of 1876 embodied the declaration that “it shall be the duty of the parent of every child to cause such child to receive efficient elementary instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic, and if such parent fail to perform such duty he shall be liable to such orders and penalties as are provided by the Act”; next, it rendered an employer liable to a penalty who took into his employment a child under the age of ten years, or a child between the ages of ten and fourteen years who had not obtained the required certificate of proficiency in reading, writing and arithmetic, or of previous attendance at a certified efficient school. In order to complete the machinery for compulsion, the act directed that, in every district where there was no school board, a school attendance committee should be appointed by the local authority. The law as to school attendance, resting upon this and subsequent enactments, is complicated and in some details obscure. The subject was dealt with in the report of an inter-departmental committee in 1909, who recommended the abolition of the partial exemptions permitted, and the raising of the age of exemption to 13.

In 1880 Mr Mundella, as vice-president of the Council in Mr Gladstone’s administration, passed a short act which made the framing of by-laws compulsory upon school boards and school attendance committees, thus completing the Act of 1880. system of universal direct compulsion. Under the acts of 1876 and 1880 the average attendance increased from 2,000,000 in 1876 to 3,500,000 in 1878 and 4,000,000 in 1881; in terms of percentage to population, 8.06 in 1876, 9.60 in 1878, and 10.69 in 1881. In the last-mentioned year the annual grant rose to £2,200,000, having more than doubled in the decade.

With the passing of the Elementary Education Act 1880 the education question entered upon a new phase. The country was now possessed of a national system of elementary education, in the sense that provision was made for Development of public opinion. the supply of efficient schools and for compulsory attendance. The question of free education was brought within the range of practical politics by the adoption of universal compulsion, but as yet it was advocated only by a small political group of pronounced collectivist tendencies. Whilst opinion was maturing on this topic, there began to force itself upon the public mind the vastly more difficult problem of combining the two systems of voluntary, denominational, state-aided schools on the one hand, and public, undenominational, rate-supported schools on the other. From the denominational point of view the problem presented itself as that of a burden imposed and a danger threatened in ever-increasing degree by the competition of the board schools, a competition that was felt not so much by direct rivalry of school with school as indirectly by the steady raising of the standard of efficiency with respect to buildings, equipment, salaries of teachers and educational attainment which inevitably resulted from the establishment of authorities with power to draw upon the rates. On the other hand, from the purely educational point of view, it was seen that the dual system tended in practice to an illicit but almost inevitable recognition of two standards of efficiency, the lower being conceded to voluntary schools in consideration of their comparative poverty. Experience, too, of the shortcomings of small country school boards was beginning to confirm the misgivings entertained long before by the Newcastle Commissioners as to the wisdom of entrusting autonomous powers to the parish, when the reform of local government by the creation of popularly elected county authorities turned attention once more to the question of organizing education upon a county basis.

In 1887 a royal commission under the presidency of Viscount Cross was appointed to inquire into the working of the education acts. The labours of this commission produced a thorough discussion of the educational problem in all Cross Commission, 1887. its aspects, political, administrative, scholastic and religious. For any clear recommendations with regard to the reorganization of education generally the moment was not opportune, inasmuch as the commission just preceded the establishment of the new county authorities and the powers with respect to instruction other than elementary which parliament was shortly to confide to them under the Technical Instruction Acts. Nevertheless the report of the majority of the commissioners pointed unmistakably towards the solution adopted in the act of 1902, and their definite recommendation that voluntary schools should be accorded rate-aid without the imposition of the Cowper-Temple clause, served as the basis of that legislation. The commission brought into strong relief the opposing currents of thought in educational politics, the majority report, representing the principles of denominationalism, being balanced by a strong minority report embodying the views of those who looked for progress along the lines of the school-board system. Taken together, the two reports form a comprehensive survey of the difficulties which still in the main beset public education in this country.

Of the developments which followed the Cross report, it is convenient to mention in the first place, out of chronological sequence, the practical establishment of free education by the act of 1891, not by the absolute prohibition of Elementary Education Act 1891. school fees but by the device of a special grant payable by parliament in lieu of fees, called the fee grant. The result of this legislation and of subsequent administrative action was to place free education within the reach of every child, fees being retained (with few exceptions) only where some instruction of a higher elementary type was given.

The establishment of county councils by the Local Government Act 1888 introduced a new factor which was destined to exert a determining influence upon subsequent developments of public education. In the first place, it at once Education other than elementary. rendered possible the partial and experimental provision for higher education attempted by the Technical Instruction Acts, which affected secondary education as well as technical education in the proper sense of the term. In order to understand the state of secondary education at this period, it is necessary to refer back to the first attempts made to deal with secondary education a generation earlier.

In 1861, that is to say, nearly thirty years after the state began to concern itself with elementary education, the first step in the way of intervention in what is now called secondary or intermediate education was taken by the appointment Public Schools Commission, 1861. of a royal commission, presided over by Lord Clarendon, to inquire into the condition of nine of the chief endowed schools in the country, viz. Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Charterhouse, St Paul’s, Merchant Taylors, Harrow, Rugby and Shrewsbury. The report of this commission led to a statute, the Public Schools Act of 1864, which introduced certain reforms in the administration of seven of these schools, leaving the two great London day schools, St Paul’s and Merchant Taylors, outside its operation. The results achieved were seen to be important enough to call for a further and much wider inquiry.

Accordingly in 1864 the Schools Inquiry Commission was appointed under the presidency of Lord Taunton to inquire into all the schools which had not been included either in the commission of 1861 or the Popular Education Commission Schools Inquiry Commission, 1864-68. of 1858. It included several men of eminent distinction, such as Dr Temple (afterwards archbishop of Canterbury), Mr W.E. Forster, Dean Hook, and Sir Stafford Northcote; and it was singularly fortunate in its staff of assistant commissioners, among whom were numbered Mr James Bryce, Mr Matthew Arnold, and Mr (afterwards Sir Joshua) Fitch. It thoroughly explored the field of secondary education, discussing all the problems, administrative and pedagogic, which the subject presents, and “its luminous and exhaustive report” (to quote the words of Mr Bryce’s Commission of 1894) remains the best introduction to the problem of public secondary education in England. The existence of numerous and frequently very wealthy endowments arising from private benefactions and bequests has at all times been a feature in education as in other departments of English social life. In the organization of secondary education in particular, private endowments have played and continue still to play a part which cannot be paralleled in any other country. This circumstance has undoubtedly resulted in a great economy of resources, though in numerous instances the difficulties occasioned by the haphazard distribution of endowments and the local jealousies invariably aroused by any attempt to readjust their areas to modern conditions have obstructed useful reform and proved a source of misdirected and wasted effort. At the date of the Schools Inquiry Commission the state of the ancient endowments was largely one of abuse. Very many endowments intended for advanced education were applied for instruction of a purely elementary character, and that of an inferior kind; indeed the possession of an endowment in a rural locality not infrequently operated to prevent the establishment of an efficient state-aided school. The evidence showed that the proportion of scholars in the country grammar-schools who were receiving some tincture of the classical education intended by the founders was steadily decreasing, and nothing had been done to bring the curriculum into harmony with the actual needs of the time. No doubt a small élite of classical scholars were sent to the older universities by these schools, but in the main they were in a feeble and decadent state, giving, more or less inefficiently, an education wholly unsuited to the wants of the class to whom they ministered. In addition to the general inelasticity of the curriculum, the special evils from which the grammar-schools suffered were the want of effective governing bodies and the freehold tenure of the headmasterships.

The commission was singularly successful in bringing about the reform of these abuses, its report being immediately followed in 1869 by the Endowed Schools Act, which was based upon its recommendations and conferred upon a special Endowed Schools Acts 1869-74. commission (united in 1874 with the Charity Commission) very wide and drastic powers of reorganizing ancient endowments. A direction for extending the benefits of endowments to girls did much to assist the movement for the secondary education of girls. The Endowed Schools Acts 1869-1874 introduced modifications of importance and general interest into the law of trusts. Under the existing rules of the court of chancery, which rules were also binding upon the Charity Commissioners, educational endowments were generally treated, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, as subject to a trust for instruction in the doctrines of the Church of England. Under the Endowed Schools Acts the presumption is reversed, and ancient trusts are treated as free from denominational restrictions, save in virtue of express conditions imposed by or under the authority of the founder. The result was that in framing schemes for the reorganization of ancient endowed schools the commissioners found themselves able to treat the majority of cases as undenominational. In such cases the general practice was to direct that instruction should, subject to a strict conscience clause, be given in the principles of the Christian faith; this provision corresponded in a way to the Cowper-Temple clause in elementary education, with the important distinction that it was positive, not negative, and did not exclude special doctrinal instruction.

Besides the recommendations for the reform of endowed schools, to which substantial effect was given directly or indirectly by means of the Endowed Schools Acts, the Schools Inquiry Commission also submitted proposals Schools Inquiry Commission’s proposals for reform of secondary education. for the general administrative organization of a system of secondary education. They recommended the establishment of three authorities—(1) a central authority; (2) a local or provincial authority, representing the county or a group of counties, with a certain jurisdiction both in proposing schemes for the reform of endowed schools in their area (such as that afterwards conferred upon the joint education committees under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act), and in administering these schools; and (3) a central council of education charged with examination duties. Further, it was proposed to raise the level of proprietary and private schools by offering them inspection and examination and by establishing a system of school registration. Lastly, in order that the supply of public secondary schools might not be dependent upon endowments, it was proposed to confer upon towns and parishes powers of rating for the establishment of new schools. For these proposals as a whole the time was not ripe. The bill of 1869 as originally introduced in the House of Commons attempted to give effect, with some variations, to one of these suggestions, namely, that for the creation of a central council, but exigencies of parliamentary time made it necessary to drop this part of the measure; the result was that the plan of the commissioners was only half carried out. Nevertheless, owing to the multiplicity and wealth of endowments, the work accomplished was sufficient to exert a considerable influence upon the secondary education of the country. Thus in 1895 Mr Bryce’s Commission was able to report that schemes under the Endowed Schools Acts had been made for 902 endowments in England, excluding Wales and Monmouth, leaving only 546 endowments out of the total of 1448 endowments in England known to be subject to the Endowed Schools Acts, which had not felt the reforming hand of the commissioners. The total income of the endowments known to be Subject to the Endowed Schools Acts, and therefore available for purposes of secondary education, according to the estimate of the Secondary Education Commission (still in 1909 the latest available source of complete information), was in 1895 about £735,000 gross.

Twenty years after the Schools Inquiry Commission the creation by the Local Government Act in 1888 of the representative and popular county authorities of which the need had been felt by reformers alike in secondary and Technical Instruction Acts 1889, &c. elementary education, rendered the first step in the direction of the municipalization of secondary instruction at last possible. In 1889 the Technical Instruction Act (extended in some particulars by an act of 1891) empowered the councils of counties, boroughs and urban districts to levy a rate (not exceeding a penny in the pound) for the support or aid of technical or manual instruction. Comparatively few councils were prepared to resort to their rating powers, but progress under these acts was greatly facilitated by the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act of 1890, which mentioned technical instruction as one of the purposes to which the imperial contribution paid to local authorities in respect of the beer and spirit duties might be applied. By virtue of the very liberal interpretation given to technical instruction by these acts the financial assistance afforded under them was extended to cover the whole field of mathematical and physical science, as well as modern languages.

The Department of Science and Art acted as an agency in the development of secondary education upon the same lines as the Technical Instruction Acts, administering a parliamentary grant which was gradually extended with a Grants of science and art department. view to encouraging literary studies as well as the scientific and mathematical subjects to the promotion of which it was primarily directed. Thus the combined effect of the local resources available under the Technical Instruction Act and the imperial grant administered by the department was gradually to develop a national system of secondary education with a marked bias on the side of physical science.

An undoubted stimulus was given to secondary education in the great centres of industry during the last quarter of the 19th century by the rise of the new university colleges, Influence of new university colleges. among which must be reckoned those established expressly for women. In the main the influence of these new institutions made for a non-classical and scientific type of curriculum in the popular secondary schools.

At the same time, the pressure of the school boards influenced secondary education in two ways. In the first place, the elementary schools were found to act as feeders for schools of a higher type, and the idea of the “educational Influence of school boards. ladder” began to play a leading part in plans for the organization of national education. It was seen that there must be schools to which the more advanced scholars could pass from the public elementary schools, and scholarships to assist such scholars to continue their education in this way. In the next place, it was recognized that to provide adequately for the further education of public elementary scholars a new type of school was required. Thus there came into being through the initiative of the great school boards what were known as higher-grade elementary schools. These were really secondary schools of the third grade, and, as the Commission on Secondary Education observed, the school boards simply stepped in to fill the educational void which the Schools Inquiry Commissioners had proposed to fill by schools of that name. The happy obscurity of the legal definition of elementary education left these schools free to develop during the long years of the neglect of secondary education by the state, and when in 1901 the famous judgment in the test case of Rex v. Cockerton pronounced them to be illegal, it was at once recognized that the legislature must without delay step in to secure the educational work which the undoubtedly correct principles of judicial interpretation had placed in jeopardy.

Such were the agencies at work in the domain of secondary education when in 1894 a royal commission was appointed under the presidency of Mr Bryce to inquire into this branch of education. The terms of reference excluded Secondary Education Commission, 1894. elementary education, and the report may be taken as embodying the views of that school of educational statesmen who held that progress would best be attained by keeping elementary and secondary education entirely separate for purposes of local administration, the parish being regarded as the natural unit for elementary and the county for secondary education, a topic to which it will be necessary to revert in connexion with the act of 1902. The principal recommendations of the commission were: (1) the unification of the existing central authorities, viz. the Department of Science and Art, the Charity Commission (so far as it dealt with educational endowments), and the Education Department, in one central office, and the establishment of an educational council to advise the minister of education in certain professional matters; (2) the establishment of local authorities, to consist of committees of the county councils with co-opted elements; (3) the formation of a register of teachers with a view to the encouragement of professional training, and a system of school registration upon the basis of inspection and examination. The first of these recommendations was carried out by the Board of Education Act 1899, as mentioned below, and under the same act an attempt was made to give some effect to the third-named object, which, though it unfortunately fell short of success, may serve as a point of departure for further efforts. The realization of the second, and the most important, of the recommendations was deferred till 1902, when it was brought about as a part of a wider reorganization of the educational system.

The religious difficulty in elementary education during the period immediately succeeding the report of Mr Bryce’s Commission in 1895 once more reached an acute stage, and this circumstance was immediately unfavourable to a Agitation on behalf of voluntary schools. resolute handling of educational problems as such, public attention being largely concentrated upon the demand of the supporters of voluntary schools for relief from the growing financial burden which was laid upon them by that steady raising of the standard to which reference has been made above. In 1896 an endeavour was made to meet the demands of the voluntary managers by means of a bill introduced by Sir John Gorst on behalf of the Conservative government. This bill with its provision for a special aid grant to be administered by county education authorities, which were to exist side by side with the school boards, represented a kind of compromise between the systems of 1870 and 1902. It encountered opposition in all quarters and was withdrawn. In 1897, however, the position of the denominational schools was strengthened by the Voluntary Schools Act, which provided for a special aid grant of five shillings per head of the scholars in average attendance in these schools.

In view of the difficulties which beset any comprehensive treatment of the education question, partial effect was given to the recommendations of the Secondary Education Commission by the Board of Education Act of 1899, Board of Education Act 1899. which abolished the office of vice-president of the council, united the Department of Science and Art with the Education Department in one central office under the title of the Board of Education, with a president and parliamentary secretary; and provided for the transfer to this board of the powers of the Charity Commissioners in relation to educational endowments; also for the association with the board of a consultative committee, consisting as to not less than two-thirds of persons qualified to represent the views of university and other bodies interested in education, for the purpose (1) of framing a register of qualified teachers, and (2) of advising the Board of Education upon any matters referred to the committee by the board. The administrative reorganization of the Education Office was completed shortly after the passing of the act of 1902, when a tripartite division was adopted to correspond with the three branches of education with which the Board of Education is concerned, viz. elementary, secondary and technological.

No law of recent years has excited an acuter or more prolonged controversy than the Education Act of 1902, and amid the dust of religious and political strife it is not easy for contemporaries to view it objectively and in its true Act of 1902, general principles. proportions. Nevertheless, considered historically, the act becomes intelligible as the product of the forces, partly religious and partly educational, which have been already described. The immediate impulse for this measure must be sought in the agitation that during the preceding decade had been gathering force among the adherents of the Established and Roman Catholic churches for equality of financial treatment as between voluntary and board schools. It must be placed to the credit of the constructive statesmanship of the Conservative party that it availed itself of an ecclesiastical agitation to take an important step forward in the organization of national education. The difficulty inherent in such a measure was the admitted difficulty of securing public control, as a necessary concomitant of public maintenance, without jeopardizing or destroying the special religious character of the voluntary schools. The act of 1902 sought to solve this problem, so difficult of solution under democratic conditions, upon the principle of a division of financial responsibility justifying a corresponding division of control between the voluntary managers and the local authority. The constitution of the local authority to be charged not only with the delicate duty of participating in the dual control of the voluntary public elementary schools, but also with the responsible task of co-ordinating public higher with public elementary education, presented features of controversy only less formidable than the purely religious question itself. Boldly reversing the settlement of 1870, the act of 1902 abolished the parochial school boards, and with them the system of ad hoc election, and made the county councils, already seised of technical and secondary education under the Technical Instruction Acts, the local authorities for all forms of education, thus reverting to the solution propounded by Conservative statesmanship in the middle period of the 19th century and endorsed by an important memorandum contributed by Lord Sandford (formerly permanent secretary of the Education Department) to the report of the Cross Commission. The unquestionable niggardliness and inefficiency of many small country school boards, which had been foretold by the prescience of the Newcastle Commissioners, constituted the chief educational argument for the selection of the wider area so far as the interests of elementary education alone were concerned. On the other hand, experience has shown that in the rural districts against the undoubted gain in general efficiency there must be set a certain loss on account of the decay of local and personal interest consequent upon the centralization of authority in the hands of the county councils. Account, too, must be taken of the comparative heaviness with which a uniform county rate is apt to press upon sparsely populated agricultural parishes, especially in counties which include considerable industrial districts. Notwithstanding these minor drawbacks, it may be said that upon the whole the best opinion has endorsed the policy of 1902 with respect to the area of administration. At any rate it has been necessary to recognize the impracticability of disestablishing the strongly organized provincial authorities which the act brought into being, and proposals for amendment in this particular have been confined to schemes, favoured in principle by all parties, for securing some measure of decentralization and delegation of powers calculated to restore and stimulate local interest without derogating from the financial and administrative responsibility of the county council.

The principal provisions of the act of 1902 may be summarized as follows:—

Part I. Local Education Authority. The council of every county and of every county borough is the local education authority for the purposes of the act, i.e. for both higher and elementary education, but for the purpose of elementary Act of 1902, summary of provisions. education autonomous powers are conferred upon boroughs with a population of over 10,000, and urban districts with a population of over 20,000 (§ 1).

Part II. Higher Education. “The L.E.A. (local education authority) shall consider the educational needs of their area and take such steps as seem to them desirable, after consultation with the Board of Education, to supply or aid the supply of education other than elementary, and to promote the general co-ordination of all forms of education.” For this purpose the application of the money received by the local authority under the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act 1890, heretofore optional, is made compulsory, and power is given to levy a rate which in the case of a county is not to exceed two pence in the pound, or such higher rate as the county council with the consent of the Local Government Board may fix (§ 2). Concurrent powers are given to the councils of non-county boroughs and urban districts, with the limit of a penny rate (§ 3). A council must not require any particular form of religious instruction or observance, but the usual conscience clause in schools, colleges, or hostels provided by the council is modified by a provision for facilities for any particular religious instruction to be given at the request of parents of scholars at such times and under such conditions as the council think desirable, otherwise than at the cost of the council (§ 4).

Part III. Elementary Education. (1) Powers and duties. School boards and school attendance committees are abolished and their powers and duties are transferred to the L.E.A., who are also to be responsible for and have the control of all secular instruction in public elementary schools not provided by them (§ 5).

(2) Management of schools. (a) For public elementary schools provided by the L.E.A. (now officially styled “council schools”): (1) in counties, there is to be a body of six managers, viz. four appointed by the county council and two by the borough or urban district council, or parish council or parish meeting as the case may be, called in the act the minor local authority; (2) in non-county areas, the L.E.A. (being the borough or urban district council) may, if they think fit, appoint a body of managers consisting of such number as they may determine (§ 6 [1]).

(b) For schools not provided by the L.E.A. (voluntary schools) the act directs that there shall be a body of six managers, of whom four are to be “foundation managers,” and two are to be appointed as follows: in counties, one by the L.E.A. and one by the minor local authority, and in autonomous boroughs or urban districts both by the borough or urban district council (§ 6 [2]). Directions for the appointment of foundation managers are given by § 11, which in effect declares that, unless the trust deed of the school provides for the appointment of the required number, the foundation managers must be appointed under an order of the Board of Education, in making which the board are to have regard to the ownership of the school building and to the principles on which the education given in the school had been conducted in the past. It was found necessary for the board to make over 11,000 of these orders, a heavy task which was rendered the more formidable by the controversial character of the questions arising upon trust deeds as to the mode of appointment and the qualifications of managers.

(3) Maintenance of schools (§ 7). (a) Powers. The L.E.A. are required to maintain and keep efficient all public elementary schools which were necessary (i.e. which, as defined by § 9, have an average attendance of not less than thirty), under certain specified conditions, of which the most material are as follows. The managers must carry out the directions of the L.E.A. as to the secular instruction to be given in the school, including any directions with respect to the number and educational qualifications of the teachers, and for the dismissal of any teacher on educational grounds (§ 7 [1] [a]). The consent of the L.E.A. is required to the appointment of teachers, but that consent may not be withheld except on educational grounds; and the consent of the authority is also required to the dismissal of a teacher unless the dismissal is on grounds connected with the giving of religious instruction (§7 [1] [c]).

(b) Liabilities. The managers are required to provide the school premises to the L.E.A. for use as a public elementary school free of charge, except that a rent is payable for the teacher’s residence where one exists; and the managers are further required out of funds provided by them to keep the school premises in good repair and to make such alterations and improvements in the buildings as might reasonably be required by the L.E.A. On the other hand, the L.E.A. are required to make good such damage as they consider to be due to fair wear and tear of rooms used by them (§ 7 [1] [d]). Thus, by virtue of the teacher’s house rent and the wear-and-tear allowance the voluntary managers secured a valuable set-off against the cost of ordinary repairs.

Any question arising under this section (§ 7) between the L.E.A. and the managers of a voluntary school is to be determined by the Board of Education (§ 7 [3]).

It is further provided with respect to teachers in voluntary schools that assistant teachers and pupil teachers may be appointed “if it is thought fit” without reference to religious creed and denomination, and in any case in which there are more candidates for the post of pupil teacher than there are places to be filled, the appointment is to be made by the L.E.A. (§ 7. [5]).

A provision, § 7 (6), known from the name of its author (d. 1908), Colonel Kenyon Slaney, M.P., as the Kenyon-Slaney clause, attracted considerable attention and formed the subject of much ecclesiastical controversy during the passage of the bill through parliament. The Kenyon-Slaney clause requires the religious instruction in voluntary schools to be in accordance with the provisions (if any) of the trust deed, but also to be under the control of the managers as a whole, whereas the common form of trust deed of the National Society reserves the control of religious instruction to the clergyman, whilst the clause was equally in conflict with the well-known sacerdotal principles of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus the clause represented a revival, as did the questions with respect to foundation managers, of the early controversy over the management clauses of the Committee of Council on Education. Its special interest lies, not so much in its intrinsic importance, as in the precedent it affords, specially notable as emanating from a Conservative source, for the overruling of trust deeds upon grounds of public policy. By way of saving another familiar provision of the trust deeds, a proviso to the Kenyon-Slaney clause reserves the existing trust-deed rights of appeal to the bishop or other denominational authority as to the character of the religious instruction.

Provision of New Schools.—New schools may be provided either by the L.E.A. or any other persons, subject to the issue of three months’ public notice, and to a right of appeal on the part of the managers of any existing school, the L.E.A. (in the case of proposed voluntary schools) or any ten ratepayers of the district, to the Board of Education on the ground that the proposed school is not required, or that a school provided by the L.E.A., or not so provided, as the case might be, is better suited to meet the wants of the district than the proposed school. Any enlargement of a public elementary school which in the opinion of the Board of Education is such as to amount to the provision of a new school is to be so treated for the purposes of the section, and any transfer of a school to or from the L.E.A. must be treated as the provision of a new school. In deciding appeals as to new schools and in determining a case of dispute whether a school was necessary or not, the board are directed to have regard to the interest of secular instruction, the wishes of parents as to the education of children, and the economy of the rates, but existing schools are not to be considered unnecessary if the average attendance is not less than thirty (§§ 8-9). The last-mentioned canons have played a prominent part in subsequent discussions. Experience of these sections has shown that though it is extremely difficult to set up new voluntary schools in face of opposition from the L.E.A., such opposition is rarely offered or pressed where any really strong local demand is shown to exist.

Aid Grant.—Section 10 provides a new aid grant payable to the L.E.A. in respect of the number of scholars in average attendance in schools maintained by them. This new grant, calculated by an elaborate method which need not here be set out, took the place of the grants under the Voluntary Schools Act 1897, and § 97 of the act of 1870 as amended by the Elementary Education Act 1897.

Education Committees.—The constitution of education committees is dealt with by § 17. All councils having powers under the act, except those having concurrent powers as to higher education only, must establish education committees in accordance with schemes made by the councils and approved by the Board of Education (§ 17 [1]). A scheme may provide for more than one education committee under a single council, but before approving such a scheme the board must satisfy themselves that due regard is paid to the importance of the general co-ordination of all forms of education (§ 17 [6]). All matters relating to the exercise by a council of their powers under the act, except the power of raising a rate or borrowing money, stand referred to the education committee; the council may also delegate to the education committee any of their powers other than financial powers as above (§ 17 [2]). Every scheme must provide (a) for the appointment of a majority of the committee by the council, the persons so appointed to be persons who are members of the council unless in the case of a county the council otherwise determine; (b) for the appointment by the council, on the nomination or recommendation, where it appears desirable, of other bodies (including associations of voluntary schools) of persons of experience in education, and of persons acquainted with the needs of the various kinds of schools in the area of the council; (c) for the inclusion of women. Provision was also made (d) for the representation in the first instance of members of existing school boards (§ 17 [3]).

Expenses.—All parliamentary grants are made payable to the L.E.A. instead of as previously to the managers (§ 18 [2]). The county council must charge a proportion of all capital expenditure and liabilities, including rent, on account of the provision or improvement of any public elementary school on the parish or parishes which in the opinion of the council are served by the school, such proportion to be not less than one-half or more than three-fourths as the council think fit (§ 18 [1] [c] [d]). The county council may also if they think fit charge on the parishes benefited any expenses incurred with respect to education other than elementary (§ 18 [1] [a]).

Endowments.—The act introduced a new principle into the administration of endowments by directing that their income so far as necessarily applicable in any case for those purposes of a public elementary school for which the local authority are liable must be paid to that authority for the relief of the parochial rate (§ 13). As the result of technicalities of legal interpretation the section has been found to have in practice a narrower scope than had been generally anticipated.

The act of 1902 was extended to London by a separate act in 1903, containing certain special provisions of only minor importance.

The hostility of Nonconformists to the extension of rate-aid to denominational schools led to the organization upon a considerable scale of what became known as the “Passive Resistance” movement, a number of Nonconformist “Passive resistance” to 1902 act. Default Act 1904. rate-payers refusing to pay the education rate on the ground that their consciences forbade their supporting the religious teaching in denominational schools; and their willingness to become subject to distraint and consequent inconveniences rather than pay the rates became the foundation of a widespread political campaign. In Wales, where in the rural districts the schools were commonly Anglican whilst the population was Nonconformist, particular difficulties arose in administering the act in consequence of the hostile attitude of the county authorities. Friction likewise manifested itself in one or two English areas, which reflected militant Nonconformist views. Accordingly the government passed the Local Education (Local Authority Default) Act 1904, empowering the Board of Education, in the case of default by the local authority, to make payments direct to the managers of the school and to deduct the amount from the sums payable to the defaulting authority on account of parliamentary grants.

When the liberal party came into power again in 1906, Mr Birrell as president of the Board of Education in Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s administration introduced a bill to amend the Education Acts 1902-1903, with Bill of 1906. the object of securing full public control of all rate-aided schools and the appointment of teachers without reference to religious belief. The bill was of a highly complex character; its principal features were,—compulsory transfer of existing voluntary schools to the local authority, facilities for the giving of denominational instruction in transferred schools out of school hours by persons other than the regular teachers, and the recognition in populous districts, upon the demand of parents, of special publicly maintained schools in which denominational teaching could be included in the curriculum; the latter schools might (according to the bill as finally amended) in the last resort, i.e. if the local authority refused to maintain them, be recognized as state-aided schools. The bill encountered strong opposition from Anglicans and Catholics (though the Catholic Irish members finally voted for it as amended); it passed the House of Commons by a large majority, but after unavailing attempts at compromise upon the amendments introduced in the House of Lords, the two Houses failed to agree and the measure was lost.

Mr Birrell was soon transferred to another office, and nothing more was done to amend the act of 1902 till early in the session of 1908, his successor Mr McKenna introduced a bill based on what was known as “contracting out.” In Bills of 1908. single-school parishes the existing schools were to be compulsorily transferred, subject to the grant of denominational facilities out of school hours; elsewhere a sufficiency of places in schools with Cowper-Temple teaching, which the bill proposed to make compulsory in all provided schools, must be supplied by the local authority, while existing voluntary schools might become state-aided schools upon terms of receiving a grant of 47s. per head. The bill was accompanied by a financial scheme for a new system of allocating the parliamentary grant. In view of the improbability of its passing into law the bill was not pressed beyond the stage of second reading. Meanwhile, when Mr Asquith reorganized the cabinet, Mr Runciman succeeded Mr McKenna at the education office, and in the autumn he introduced a fresh measure framed as the result of negotiations between the government and the archbishop of Canterbury (Dr Randall Davidson) and designed to be passed rapidly through parliament by consent of all parties. Mr Runciman’s bill, like his predecessor’s, was based upon the principle of compulsory transfer in single-school parishes and contracting out elsewhere, but it gave a right of entry for denominational teaching on two days a week during school hours in all council schools whether transferred voluntary schools or otherwise, with liberty to employ for this purpose assistant teachers, but not (save temporarily at first in transferred schools) head teachers. Provision was also made for the payment of a small rent which would be applicable for or towards the cost of the denominational instruction. Unfortunately, the compromise failed at the last moment for want of agreement as to the financial terms of “contracting out,” the government offering 50s. per head and the Church demanding 7s. more. It is obvious that “contracting out” is open to serious objection upon educational and economic grounds, and that if resorted to upon any very considerable scale it would involve a disruption of the public elementary system, and a duplication of schools which would constitute a wasteful drain upon the national exchequer. Upon such a system, therefore, some check is necessary, and, once decided that the check should take the form of financial pressure, rather than request of parents as in Mr Birrell’s bill, or some form of administrative control, the question of pecuniary terms became one of principle and not merely of financial detail. Moreover, the difficulty of adjusting differences was intensified by the opposition of the extremists on either side, which daily gathered force, and the bill was withdrawn by the government when in committee of the House of Commons. The conciliatory efforts of Mr Runciman and Dr Randall Davidson revealed the existence of a considerable body of influential opinion among all schools of thought in favour of a national compromise, and the proposals embodied in the bill marked on the part both of Churchmen and Nonconformists important concessions to each other’s views, engendering reasonable hopes of an ultimate settlement being reached at no distant date.

Two subsidiary points as regards educational machinery have to be noted. The Education (Provision of Meals) Act 1906 enabled local education authorities to aid voluntary agencies in the provision of meals for children attending Feeding of school children. public elementary schools, and in certain cases with the consent of the Board of Education to defray the cost of the food themselves. In 1907-1908 forty, and in 1908-1909 seventy-five authorities in England and Wales were authorized by the board to expend moneys from the rates on food under this act. In addition, a number of authorities expended funds on equipment and service.

In 1907 an uncontroversial act entitled the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, besides dealing with various matters of technical and administrative detail, laid upon local education authorities the new duty of providing for Medical inspection. the medical inspection of all children attending public elementary schools. In connexion with this act the Board of Education established a medical department to advise and assist them in supervising local education authorities in carrying out their statutory duties in this regard. The whole departure is significant of the new sense of the importance of physical culture and hygiene which has been one of the remarkable features in recent educational developments.

Sir Joshua Fitch, in his article on education in the 10th edition of this work, describes how experience had led the Education Department to abandon the system of payment by results, to establish “in place of testing General progress in elementary education. the proficiency of individual scholars, ... one summary estimate of the work of the school; in place of an annual examination, occasional inspection without notice; in place of a variable grant dependent on a report in detail on the several subjects of instruction and on particular educational merits and defects, one block grant payable to all schools alike.” He at the same time expressed some misgiving as to the effect of “so large a relaxation of the conditions by which it had hitherto been sought to secure accuracy and thoroughness in teaching.” The act of 1902, by placing secular education in public elementary schools under the control of strongly organized local education authorities may be said to have largely removed such dangers as were to be apprehended from the relaxation in question. Thus it was possible for the Board of Education in the code of 1904 to abolish the last traces of the system of payment by results, by setting forth (in the language of their report for 1903-1904) “a properly co-ordinated curriculum suitable to the needs of the children, with an indication of the relation which the various subjects of instruction should bear to each other, in place of the relatively haphazard list of possible branches of knowledge which were formerly presented to the choice of individual schools or authorities.” In the new code also the board for the first time endeavoured to state for the guidance of teachers and parents the proper aim of the public elementary school, laying stress upon that element of the training of character which the system of payment by results had so unfortunately obscured. The new spirit was strikingly manifested in the volume of Suggestions for the Considerations of Teachers, issued by the Board of Education in 1905. This volume represented a notable attempt to connect administration with educational theory, without in any way seeking to crush individual initiative, or to impose a bureaucratic uniformity of method upon those engaged in the actual work of the schools. Apprehension of the true aim of elementary education as essentially and primarily a preparation for practical life has led to a corresponding development of instruction of a practical character, observation lessons and nature study being treated as a necessary element in the curriculum, while handicraft and gardening, and domestic subjects (for girls), are encouraged by special grants. Particular attention has been bestowed both by the central and local authorities upon the problem of rural instruction, and much has been done in many areas to bring the schools into closer relations with the needs of agricultural and rural life generally. In this way the old and perhaps not altogether ill-founded distrust of popular education as tending to unfit the working classes for industrial pursuits is being broken down and a public opinion more favourable to educational progress in the widest sense is being created.

According to the official returns for 1907-1908, the total number of scholars on the registers (England only) was as follows:—council schools, 2,991,741; voluntary schools, 2,566,030; total, 5,557,771, and the total attendance upon which grant was paid was 4,928,659. The percentage of actual average attendance to average number on the registers was 88.50%. The parliamentary grant (England and Wales) for elementary schools, other than higher elementary, amounted to £11,023,433.

The development of higher elementary education in England is now proceeding very much upon the lines that have been noted in France. The old higher-grade board-schools (declared illegal under the Elementary Education Acts Higher elementary schools. by the judgment in the case of Rex v. Cockerton in 1901, and legalized temporarily by an act passed for the purpose in the same year) were mostly converted into municipal secondary schools under the act of 1902. In the succeeding years provision was made in the code for higher elementary schools of a specialized and technical type intended only for industrial districts. In 1906, as the result of the recommendations of the Consultative Committee, a new type of higher elementary school was admitted for children over twelve, corresponding generally to the French école primaire supérieure, described as having “for its object the development of the education given in the ordinary public elementary school, and the provision of special instruction bearing on the future occupations of the scholars, whether boys or girls.” It may be possible to supplement this system in the rural areas to some extent by “higher tops” to the ordinary elementary schools in cases where it is not practicable to establish a fully organised higher elementary school; but for such “higher tops” no central grant is available. The total number of scholars upon the registers of higher elementary schools (England) in 1907-1908 was: New Type, 3178 (against 2715 in the previous year); Old Type, 4492 (against 5866 in the previous year).

The total expenditure (exclusive of capital outlay) of the local authorities (1906-1907) in England only upon elementary education, including “industrial” and “special” schools, was £19,776,733, of which (a) £10,408,242 Expenditure on elementary education. was met by the ordinary parliamentary grant, and (b) £8,930,468 was the balance required to be met by rates, the difference being represented by receipts from various sources. The average cost per child of elementary schools in England and Wales (excluding London) may be taken at £3 (including London £3, 4s. 10d.), and the average central grant (excluding grants for special purposes) at 41s., leaving 19s. to be raised locally.

The training of teachers for the two great branches of public education, elementary and secondary respectively, is an important part of the general administrative problem. Since the middle of the 19th century there has been Preliminary training of elementary teachers. a great development of public opinion with regard to their professional qualifications. Sir Joshua Fitch (Ency. Brit. 10th ed.) pointed out that the full appreciation of the importance of training began at the lower end of the social scale. Shuttleworth and Tufnell in 1846 urged the necessity of special training for the primary teacher, and hoped to establish State Training Colleges to supply this want; but the one college at Battersea which was founded as an experiment was soon transferred to the National Society (the “National Society for educating the poor in the principles of the Established Church”: founded in 1811). Before this, Bell and Lancaster had made arrangements in their model schools for the reception of a few young people to learn the system by practice. In Glasgow, David Stow, who founded in 1826 the Normal Seminary which afterwards became the Free Church College, was one of the first to insist on the need of systematic professional preparation. The religious bodies in England, notably the Established Church, availed themselves promptly of the failure of the central government, and a number of diocesan colleges for men, and separately for women, were gradually established. In 1854 the British and Foreign School Society (founded 1808) placed their institutes at the Borough Road and Stockwell on a collegiate footing, and subsequently founded other colleges at Swansea, Bangor, Darlington and Saffron Walden; the Roman Catholic Church provided two for women and one for men; and the Wesleyans two, one for each sex. The new provincial colleges of university rank were invited by the Education Department to attach normal classes to their ordinary course and to make provision for special training and suitable practice in schools for those students who desired to become teachers. Thus the government came to recognize two kinds of training schools—the residential colleges of the old type and the day colleges attached to institutions of university rank; both were subsidized by grants from the Treasury, and regularly inspected. As the need of special training for teachers became further recognized by the consideration of the same question as regards teachers in higher and intermediate schools (Cambridge instituting in 1879 examinations for a teacher’s diploma, and other universities providing courses for secondary as well as primary teachers, and establishing professorships of education), the attitude of the government, i.e. the Board of Education, towards the problem gradually became more and more a subject of controversy and of public interest, as indicated by the clause in the Act of 1899 providing for a public registration of qualified teachers and for the gradual elimination from the profession of those who were unqualified. And meanwhile the increased solidarity of the National Union of Teachers (founded in 1870), the trade union, so to speak, of the teachers, brought an important body of professional opinion to bear on the discussion of their own interests.

The question of the preliminary education of elementary teachers had after some years of discussion reached a critical stage in 1909. The history of pupil teachership as a method of concurrent instruction and employment shows that it was in its inception something in the nature of a makeshift; the ideal placed before local education authorities in the recent regulations and reports of the Board of Education is the alternative system whereby with the aid of national bursaries (instituted in 1907) “the general education of future teachers may be continued in secondary schools until the age of seventeen or eighteen, and all attempts to obtain a practical experience of elementary school work may be deferred until the training college is entered, or at least until an examination making a natural break in that general education and qualifying for an admission to a training college has been passed.” Under the revised pupil-teacher system established by the regulations of 1903 provision is made for the instruction of pupil teachers in centres which as far as possible are attached to secondary schools receiving grants from the Board of Education under the regulations for secondary schools, about two-thirds of the secondary schools on the grant list undertaking this work. Accordingly, the result of recent changes is to modify the old system in two ways: first by providing the alternative of a full course of secondary education, secondly by associating pupil teachership itself as far as possible with part-time attendance at a secondary school. The total number of pupil teachers recognized during the year 1907-1908 was 20,571, and of these 9770 were in centres forming integral parts of secondary schools. The number of bursars who passed the leaving examination was 1486.

One of the principal difficulties which confronted the state and the local authorities in their task of organizing an improved system of public education under the act of 1902 lay in the deficiency of training colleges in view of Training colleges. the increased number of teachers. Local authorities naturally hesitated to burden themselves with the cost of providing such institutions in view of the fact that there is nothing to prevent teachers trained at great expense by one authority taking service under a less public-spirited authority who had contributed nothing to such training; hence a widespread feeling that the provision of training colleges should be undertaken by the state as a matter of national concern. Under these circumstances a new system of building grants in aid of the establishment of training colleges was instituted in 1905. In 1906 these grants were raised from 25 to 75% of the capital expenditure, but were limited to colleges provided by local authorities. A further difficulty in view of the municipalization of education arose from the fact that the majority of the residential colleges were in the hands of denominational trusts which did not admit a conscience clause. Under the presidency of Mr McKenna in 1907, the Board of Education, in regulations which excited much controversy, “with a view to throwing open as far as possible the advantages of a course of training in colleges supported mainly by public funds to all students who are qualified to profit by it irrespective of religious creed or social status,” laid down that the application of a candidate might in no circumstances be rejected on any religious ground, nor on the ground of social antecedents or the like. The same regulations provided that no new training colleges would be recognized except on terms of compliance with certain conditions as to freedom from denominational restrictions or requirements. The obligation as to religious exemptions has since been limited to 50% of the admissions. There were in attendance (Statistics, England, 1907-1908) in the various colleges, 6561 women and 2835 men, of whom 1619 women and 335 men were in colleges provided by local education authorities. The grants made by the Board of Education for training colleges were as follows: maintenance grants £383,851; building grants £45,000. These figures include Wales.

The fear has been widely entertained that a considerable part of the national expenditure upon elementary education is wasted for want of an effective system of continuative instruction to be given out of working hours to adolescents engaged in Continuative education. industrial employment. The whole subject was exhaustively treated by the report in 1909 of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education. This report seeks to base an efficient continuative system upon the improvement of elementary education by reducing the size of the classes in the elementary schools upon the lines now laid down by the new staffing regulations of 1909; by increasing the amount of instruction in hand-work with a view to rendering the curriculum less bookish and more efficient as a training for industrial and agricultural life; and by legislation to reform the system of half-time attendance and raise the age of compulsory attendance to thirteen and ultimately fourteen. Upon the foundation of an improved and prolonged elementary education there would be reared a superstructure of continuative schools or classes, attendance at which up to seventeen would be compulsory under bye-laws adoptive locally at the option of the local education authorities. In 1906-1907 about 21 per thousand of the population of England and Wales attended evening schools and classes inspected by the Board of Education, and grant amounting to £361,596 was paid in respect of 440,718 regular attendants.

The most marked progress has undoubtedly been in secondary education, and in no direction has the act of 1902 proved more fruitful. At the end of the 19th century secondary instruction in England was still provided chiefly by Secondary education. endowed grammar-schools, by proprietary schools established by religious bodies or joint-stock companies, and by private enterprise. No public provision was made for secondary education as such; what financial assistance was forthcoming from municipal sources was given indirectly under cover of the grants under the Technical Instruction Acts, while in the administration of central grants for the first years of the working of the Board of Education Act 1899, no absolute differentiation between secondary and technological functions was recognized. The establishment of local authorities with direct duties in respect of secondary education, and the reorganization of the central office with reference to the three branches of education, elementary, secondary and technological, rendered possible for the first time an adequate treatment of the problem of public secondary education as a whole. “The regulations for secondary schools,” says the prefatory memorandum to the regulations of the Board of Education, “grew up round the old provisions of the Directory of the Science and Art Department. Detached science classes were gradually built up into schools of science. Schools of science were subsequently widened into schools of what was known as the ‘Division A’ type, providing a course of instruction in science in connexion with, and as part of, a course of general education. Aid was afterwards extended to schools of the ‘Division B’ type in which science did not form the preponderating element of the instruction given. In 1904 the board recast the regulations so as to bring all schools aided by grants within the general definition of a school offering a general education up to and beyond the age of sixteen through a complete graded course of instruction, the object of which should be to develop all the faculties, and to form the habit of exercising them.”