§ MR. DIMSDALEasked the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, When those managers of schools who have memorialized the Committee of Council for assistance towards the cost of erecting school buildings, may expect to receive an answer to the application made by such managers?
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERI fear, Sir, that the only answer I can give is that all the applications will be taken in turn. There are two classes of applications—those for the enlargement of schools, and those for the building of new schools, and each class will be taken in turn, according to the date of the application. The Office is doing its very utmost to proceed with the utmost possible despatch; but it is impossible for us to state distinctly when they will all be disposed of. There is an enormous number of applications to be dealt with. In the year before last 236 of these applications were disposed of; last year we had 3,300 applications, of which 3,003 came in the last five months, and by far the largest proportion came within the last month, many even on the very last day or two of the year. As regards the general working of the Education Act, I may remark that an extraordinary amount of labour has been imposed on the Department. More than 14,000 school returns have been received since the passing of that Act, and though no head of a Department could be supported with greater ability and diligence by its officers than Lord De Grey and myself have been, yet even with a new and the old staff working for a greater number of hours than it is right for them to work, we find it difficult to keep pace with the activity of the country—an activity in which we greatly rejoice, though it has imposed upon us a large amount of extra labour.