MR. SINCLAIR&c.) (Falkirk,I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education if, in the case of schools, whether voluntary or Board schools, which consist of more than one department, the managers or School Board will have the option of dealing with each department of the school as a separate school, or dealing with the entire school as a whole; and, in the latter case, would it be permissible, under the Elementary Education 393 Bill just introduced, to equalise, where fees continue to be charged, the fees throughout the school, with the object of inducing, so far as the reduction of fees in the higher standards can do so, parents to keep their children at school to a more advanced age than at present; and, where fees charged in the lower standards may be 3d. or under, and in the higher standards above 3d., would it be permissible to continue a charge in the lower standards, thus applying the greater amount of the grant in the reduction of fees in the higher standards?
§ SIR W. HART DYKESubject to any arrangements which it may be necessary to make in order to meet the demand for free school accommodation, managers will be at liberty to distribute the fees still chargeable as they like, provided that they do not in the aggregate amount to more than the excess of the present fee income over the proposed fee grant; but every department of a school must be treated as a separate school.