§ MR. ARTHUR MILLSasked the Vice President of the Council, Whether the Government will consider the expediency of redrafting the Education Code, which under the various titles of "Revised Code" and "New Code" has now existed for eighteen years, during which time a large number of Articles have been wholly or partially cancelled or modified, by which process the Code had been rendered rather complicated and incomprehensible?
§ LORD GEORGE HAMILTONSir, the Code is no doubt complicated; but this is due more, I think, to the somewhat complex contingencies under which deductions are made from the annual grants, rather than to want of arrangement or clearness of expression. No doubt, it could, however, be put, if we 1520 started entirely afresh, in a more succinct form. On the other hand, the school managers and teachers are well acquainted with the present form of the Code, although the conditions embodied in it are not sufficiently stereotyped to enable them to instantaneously recognize them if presented in an entirely new shape. All the printed Returns now in use both by the managers as well as the Department would have to be altered. On the whole, I think inconvenience rather than advantage would result from the sudden adoption of my hon. Friend's suggestion, though, in the annual revision of the Code, no opportunity will be lost by the Education Department in improving both its form and phraseology.