§ SIR JOHN PAKINGTONsaid, he wished to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, Whether the Report of the Rev. Mr. Watkyns last year, and the Reports of other Inspectors in the last two years, have been altogether suppressed or much altered in the Annual Report from the Committee of Council; and, if so, what were the reasons for any such suppression or alteration; and whether there is any objection to lay such suppressed Reports on the table of this House?
§ MR. LOWE,in reply, said, it was the practice of the Education Committee to lay before Parliament every year, in addition to the Report of the Department itself, and in addition to the tabulated Reports about schools, Reports from the twenty-eight Chief Inspectors. In order that those Inspectors might make their Re- 23 ports they were allowed the very ample and, he thought, unreasonable period of fourteen working days to prepare them, the Reports generally not exceeding five or six octavo pages. The result was, that the time of the Inspectors was consumed in preparing their Reports. Considerable difficulty had always been found by the Committee in confining the Reports within what appeared to them legitimate and convenient limits. When the right hon. Member for North Staffordshire (Mr. Adderley) held the office of Vice President, he endeavoured to carry out a scheme for digesting the Reports under heads, as if they were evidence; but the House did not approve that scheme, thinking as the noble Lord now at the head of the Government expressed it, that any Department administered with proper decision and vigour ought to be able to keep down the Reports of its officers without any formal decision of Parliament. Since then the Department had tried to keep the Reports within due limits, and for that purpose several Minutes had been issued, but those Minutes had not fully succeeded in their object. It had also been suggested to the Inspectors that certain paragraphs, thought to be irrelevant or improper, should be omitted, but the Inspectors objected to the omission, because, they said, it was garbling their Reports, and because, if any part were taken away, the Reports would be no longer their own. Under these circumstances, the Committee considered the matter carefully about two years ago, and this was the course they adopted:—They found that, in substance the Minutes previously issued amounted to an instruction to the Inspectors to confine their Reports to the state of the schools inspected by them, and to practical suggestions for their management and improvement, and they embodied that direction to the Inspectors in a new Minute. Then, in order to avoid all difficulty about striking out particular paragraphs, they determined to make the Inspectors their own censors, and the regulation they laid down was this:—Whenever a Report appeared to them to wander beyond the prescribed limits it was to be sent back to the Inspector, with a direction to him to make it conform to the Minute, intimating, at the same time, that if he failed to do so, the Report would not be printed or laid before Parliament. That was the course they had adopted, and the result was, that during the last year three of the Reports 24 which had been sent back to the Inspectors were not amended in a manner satisfactory to the Committee of Council, and they consequently were not presented to Parliament. In the present year, also, three of the Reports had been sent back to the Inspectors, and the amendments not having been considered satisfactory, they would not be printed with the Report of the Department. One of the Inspectors, Mr. Watkyns, appeared in both lists. Last year he sent in a Report containing a great deal of speculative and controversial matter, which it was not thought proper by the Committee to lay before Parliament and have printed at the public expense. Mr. Watkyns declined to make any material alterations in his Report, and it was therefore not printed. This year he had sent in a Report likewise dealing with controversial matter; and as that was not thought within the scope of the Minute, the Report was returned to him with the usual intimation; but he declined to make any alteration in it, and for that reason it would not be printed with the Report of the Department. The right hon. Baronet also asked whether he (Mr Lowe) had any objection to lay these Reports before the House of Commons. He trusted the right hon. Gentleman would be convinced by what he had just said that such a course would not be proper. The very reason why he had declined to have them printed with the appendix of the Department's Report, was the very reason why he should decline to have them specially printed and circulated among Members of Parliament. It was desirable to keep the Inspectors, in their Reports on the state of the schools, to the points that had been indicated to them, and not encourage them to enter into speculative and controversial matters on such a delicate subject as education. If he were to consent to lay these Reports on the table, and give them the notoriety and publicity of being specially distributed among hon. Members, he should really be offering a premium to the Inspectors to disregard the rules of the Department, and be there by striking at the foundation of discipline. He was sure that the right hon. Gentleman, who had held a far higher office than that which he (Mr. Lowe) had the honour of filling, would not wish him to do that.