DR. CAMERONasked the Vice President of the Council, Whether he has any objection to lay before the House, a Return showing how many meetings of the Scotch Education Department occurred during the year 1876, and the names of those members of the Department who were present at each meeting?
§ VISCOUNT SANDONThe hon. Member asks me how often the Scotch Education Department met in 1876. I would remind him that the Duke of Richmond and Gordon and I, as Lord President of the Council and as Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, are 1852 members of the Scotch Education Department, and I hope I need hardly assure him that we were constantly meeting at Whitehall last year, and were frequently engaged in discussing and deciding upon matters connected with the administration of the Elementary Schools of Scotland. It has not been considered necessary, nor would it have been in accordance with usage, to summon, under ordinary circumstances, to Whitehall the other members of the Scotch Department; but other members of that Department have been consulted on details with which they were specially conversant, or when matters of general policy respecting Scotch Education have arisen. I fear I cannot give the hon. Member the statistics he desires, but I can promise him that he will in any case find two members of the Scotch Department—the Lord President and myself—at all times happy to receive him at Whitehall and to attend to any matters connected with the administration of Scotch Education which he wishes to bring before us.