§ MR. PELL, in rising to call attention to the fact that scholars attending School Board Schools are in certain cases exempted from the payment of any weekly fees, or are admitted on payment of extravagantly low fees, who nevertheless are at the same time invited under an organized system of collection in the Board School they attend to become and who do become depositors of money in Savings Banks, said, that out of the 625,000 children in the board schools receiving Government grants, one quarter of them were paying less than 2d. a week for fees, so that 156,000 children were being educated for about 5s. a year, the deficiency being supplied by the rates. He wished particularly to draw the attention of the House to the cost of education in the metropolitan area under the London School Board supervision. It averaged 821 52s. per annum for each child, or, reckoning the period of attendance, about 1s. 2d. per week. Out of that large sum the average contribution of the children was only 2d. per week. He was quoting from the Report of the Committee of the Council on Education put into the hands of hon. Members that morning. The Report also stated that the cost per head in the School Board schools generally was £2 1s. 4d., and in voluntary schools £1 14s. In the same Report they were informed that the fees paid by the scholars averaged only 9s. 2d. per annum. The calculation for 1870 was that for each child the parent would contribute one-third of the cost of education; which third, in the case of board schools, it appeared, would now amount to nearly 14s. a-year; but the sum actually paid was only 9s. 2d. in fees. Thus every child in England in a board school paid nearly 5s. short of what it ought to pay; and thus, whatever might be the character of the education, it failed to teach the most important lesson of all—independence. He wished also to point out how this evil was aggravated in school board districts. There was a practice, in which the managers of the schools seemed to take a pride, of having in each school an officer connected with penny banks, who received from those who, on the score of poverty were being educated at the cost of the ratepayers, considerable sums. He found that during the year ending March, 1876, at a school in Hackney, 483 children deposited £61 5s., while the total of the school fees only amounted to £41 10s. That showed the ability to pay £100, instead of which only £41 was paid, and the rest they put into the bank. In the Tower Hamlets, there were 45,000 scholars, who paid into the bank £1,137, and only contributed in school fees £773. At Liverpool £90 was deposited in one of these school banks, where the fees paid were £73; and at Norwich, where only 1s. 4d. per week was charged on account of the poverty of the people, 542 children deposited £52, while only £35 was paid in school fees. These facts, he thought, did not redound much to the credit either of the managers of the schools or to the parents of the children. In London there were schools in which the fees were as low as 1d., and many of the children were exempt from payment on the ground of 822 poverty. In one of these schools 239 depositors were found in the year 1877 who had saved amongst them £57. Three of the depositors were children whose parents had been exempted from payment of school fees, and he thought every honest man would consider that the money deposited in the bank ought to have been expended on the children's education. He regretted that the Forms of the House did not permit him to submit a Motion on this subject, therefore all he could do at present was to draw the attention of the House and the country to this mischievous system, in the hope that something might be done to remedy the existing state of things. He believed the 17th clause expressly conferred upon the Education Department the power of sanctioning the amount of, or withholding their consent to the remission of fees, and he trusted that the Government would consider the subject, and encourage a change in the state of things that would be fairer to the children, the parents, and the ratepayers.