§ MR. WOODHEAD (York, W.R., Spen Valley)asked the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether the inspector of schools for the district had on two successive years reported that the Board School at Roberttown, Liversedge. Yorkshire, does not afford sufficient accommodation for the children in attendance, and whether the Board has been threatened with a withdrawal of the grant if the accommodation be not increased; whether the plans prepared for the enlargement of the building, with a view to obtaining a loan, were submitted to the Education Department in September last, and provisionally approved by them; whether the plans have since been returned to the Board, with an intimation that, unless the additional accommodation proposed to be made were reduced by 26 places, the sanction of the Department would be withheld; whether the Board thereupon ascertained, and reported to the Department, that the proposed reduction would effect a saving of only £18, and would also occasion serious inconvenience as 374 regards the mixed department, and, therefore, asked the Department to reconsider its objection to the proposed plans; whether it was in consequence of the representations of the Vicar of Roberttown that the Department has withdrawn its approval of the plans, and continued to insist on the proposed reduction of accommodation; and whether, in view of the fact that the inhabitants have, in public meeting, expressed their approval of the Board's plans, and of the proposed expenditure, the Department will, for the sake of a saving of only £18, involving the sacrifice of 26 places, continue to insist on an alteration of the plans before sanctioning a loan?
THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (Sir W. HART-DYKE, Kent,) DartfordThe facts as stated in the first three paragraphs are correct. The Department are not prepared to admit that 26 places would cost only £18 or that the reduction would cause inconvenience. The reduction of the places was caused not by the representations of the Vicar, but by the fact that the school, including the enlargement now sanctioned, would supply sufficient accommodation. The last paragraph rests upon a misapprehension. The Department have no power to sanction a loan for building on the security of the Rates, unless, to use the words of the Statute, they are satisfied that the amount of accommodation is required for the educational wants of the District. The Department are not satisfied of this, and therefore they cannot alter their decision. But the School Board are themselves at liberty, without the sanction of the Department, to spend what they please out of the Rates.