§ MR. E. W. HARCOURTasked the Vice President of the Council, Whether, having regard to his statement that schools should be opened to children on just and reasonable conditions, and that the School Attendance Committee and the Magistrates at Witney have decided that James Butler is not entitled to plead poverty as a claim for the payment of school fees for his children on the same scale as that of an ordinary agricultural labourer, and as the School Attendance Committee and the Magistrates have come to such a decision entirely apart from any wrongful proceedings on the part of the school managers, the Education Department will, in reliance upon the justice of the decision of the local authorities, and with the object of giving them a legitimate support, review their determination to withdraw the grant if the children of James Butler are not admitted to the school on payment of the lowest fees?
§ MR. MUNDELLASir, I cannot exclude from the consideration of this case the conduct of the school managers and all the attendant circumstances. The children of James Butler were admitted to Ramsden National School at the ordinary fees, and because the parents objected to their cleansing the school out of school - hours the fees were doubled. When James Butler objected to pay a double fee, which was exacted as a fine, his children were refused admission to the school, and he was twice prosecuted for neglect, although he sent them regularly with their fees in their hand. At the first prosecution, the case was dismissed; but, on the second occasion, the magistrates decided that the parent could afford to pay the double fee. He appealed to the Department against the treatment to which he had been subjected, and we hold that the double fee ought not to have been charged, that the children ought not to have been refused, and that the prosecutions were vexatious and unnecessary. It is not needful for a parent to plead poverty when he pays the full fees of the school; and no extra fee was demanded, or would, in our opinion, have been imposed, if the parent had con- 921 sented to his children cleansing the school. Under these circumstances, I conceive it is my duty to adhere to the decision of the Department, and to require the children to be reinstated at the original fee.