HC Deb 14 March 1892 vol 2 cc853-60

MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS.

(12.20.) DR. CAMERON (Glasgow, College)

I have to move an Address to disallow Article 134 of the Scotch Education Code, 1892, and the effect of such disallowance would be to complete the system of free education in all our State-aided schools in Scotland, and education would be free to all our children in public schools between the ages of five and 14. This is a matter worth striving for. When the original Government Grant in Aid was given to our public schools in Scotland, the Government were afraid to go the whole length of free education, and Ministers spoke of relief of fees simply, not of free education, and this declaration was made by the Leader of the House, by the President of the Local Government Board, and by Lord Lothian. The reason was obvious. The principle of free education had not been determined upon for England, and the Government wished to guard themselves against being committed to the principle of free education. When the first Bill for making these grants was before the House, I moved an Amendment to the effect that no school should receive any portion of the grant which did not give free education. That Amendment received a considerable amount of support on this side of the House, but it was defeated. A few years afterwards there was another grant proposed for public schools, and again I put down a similar Amendment. In my absence it was moved on that occasion by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen (Mr. Hunter), and it received, I think, the united support of Gentlemen on this side of the House. Now another opportunity presents itself to rectify what appears to me to have been a grave error which the Government originally committed in this matter. The Government is about to dispose of another Education Grant, and we have the opportunity to rectify the error committed by freeing our educational system from top to bottom at least within the prescribed ages. I move in the matter, because this Article is a cause of great and serious annoyance in Glasgow—the evil is very great there. In Scotland altogether there are over 3,100 public schools, and there are only 42 public schools in which fees are charged and which come under this Article. Besides these, there are some 15 schools which forgo any claim on the grant on consideration of being allowed to charge what fees they please. While in the whole of Scotland the fee-paying schools are but I per cent. of the whole number, in Glasgow itself, against 58 free schools, there are eight fee-paying schools. In the free schools throughout Scotland there are 670,000 scholars on the roll, and in the fee-paying schools there are 21,000, or only 3 per cent. fee-paying scholars. In Glasgow, in the eight fee-charging schools, there are 35 per cent. of the entire number of scholars on the roll of these fee-paying public schools, and there are a number of bursars and scholars who pay lower fees because the school is attended by three or more members of one family. These fee-charging schools are genteel schools, affected by inhabitants, not of the immediate neighbourhood, but often from a distance. There are some 600 children from outside Glasgow who receive their education at these schools and largely at the expense of the ratepayers of Glasgow. The citizens of Glasgow in large numbers protest against these genteel seminaries being maintained for the benefit of outsiders and out of their pockets. One of the advantages of free education, as compared with a system of payment of fees by a Parochial Board, is that there is no loss of self-respect, no class distinctions, introduced by non-payment of fees—there is no degradation in the acceptance of free education; but by keeping up a fee-paying with a free system you create an inviduous distinction against the poorer ratepayer: you create a class distinction. I maintain that an education good enough for the rich is not too good for the poor, and this is an invidious distinction to introduce in matters of education. The Education Department may very easily make such conditions as will render needless the makeshift system provided for in this 134th Article; but I will say that it behoves us to take this opportunity of putting the coping stone, as it were, to our free education system in Scotland, and free our public schools from top to bottom. I shall not detain the House further, but move the Resolution which stands in my name.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying Her to withhold Her assent to so much of the Code (1892) of the Scotch Education Department as is contained in Article 134."—(Dr. Cameron.)

(12.32.) MR. HOZIER (Lanarkshire, S.)

I earnestly trust that the House will not accede to the proposal of my hon. Friend (Dr. Cameron). The Article simply provides local option for the School Boards of Scotland, and I do not see why they should be hindered. Moreover, this Article provides that local option is doubly safeguarded in the interests of the country. In the first place, it is laid down in the Article that there must be the sanction of the Scottish Education Department; and, in the next place, that there must be a sufficient number of perfectly free schools supplied by the School Board to meet all the requirements of the district before the School Board can institute any fee-paying schools whatever. On the last occasion when this subject was before the House—namely, on 13th March, 1890—I do not think there were any Members opposite who ventured to go against this principle of local option. But they thought that local option would support their view. I have here a quotation which even at this hour I should like to read to the House. It is from the speech of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Bridgeton (Sir G. Trevelyan), delivered on that occasion, when he spoke as follows:— The hon. Gentleman the Member for Glasgow University (Mr. J. A. Campbell) says that we ought to leave these matters to the local representatives—that is, to the School Boards. In this case, that goes for nothing at all. The Glasgow School Board was elected before the passing of free education. Not only is it an entirely new question, but there was not even a public discussion in the Board before the regulations were brought out by which ten of the schools were left as fee-paying schools—by which a very serious dislocation of educational interests took place. Now, I wish particularly to call attention to what follows:— If I know anything of the feeling of Glasgow, this will be the last Board elected with that feeling; and by passing the Amendment we shall lay down the principle that all School Boards that take a share of the Probate Grant shall see that in every school there is free education. On his own showing, therefore, the right hon. Baronet did not know anything of the feeling of Glasgow, because in April last a fresh School Board was elected, and they have re-enacted exactly the same principle which is set forth in this Article of the Code.

(12.34.) MR. ESSLEMONT (Aberdeen, E.)

My hon. Friend (Mr. Hozier) who has just spoken has scarcely given a fair interpretation of local option. Is this local option? Why is it that these schools are not free schools? The hon. Gentleman must know very well that the reason why the remaining schools were not free schools was that there was not sufficient money to carry out the system from top to bottom, and an opportunity has now occurred by which that money can now be found without raising the school rate. But, after all, what does local option mean in this case? Does my hon. Friend opposite dispute that those who are most directly interested in education, who wish to send their children to these schools, have no option whatever? Their choice is, as has been said by the Member for the College Division (Dr. Cameron), that a certain set of schools is set apart, and supported out of public money, for the advantage of a few classes of the citizens in order that they may have, by paying the mere pretence of a fee, a superior, or supposed superior, education and association for their children. It is no business of a public School Board to make any provision of this kind. If those parents who are evidently willing to pay for the education of their sons and daughters wish to have a select school, and a sort of superior society for them, it is their duty to provide that out of their own money, and pay such fees as are commensurate with the selection they desire to make. But the system of putting into these schools what are supposed to be a superior class of teachers is a vicious system, and ought not to be supported by public money. There can be no doubt that in the application of fee grants throughout Scotland no system could prevail, or be in the interest of those who need education most, which does not make all the public schools free alike. I think the claim made by my hon. Friend is made at an opportune moment, and I shall cordially support the Motion.

(12.37.) MR. C. S. PARKER

I have always regarded this as a temporary arrangement, and no doubt it originated in the fact that there was not enough money to free all the schools. The City of Glasgow proposed for themselves and others the permission to levy fees in a few schools. I think it probable that the equivalent grant now coming to Scotland may ere long provide sufficient money to replace these fees; but until that is the case I am not prepared to vote in favour of cancelling Article 134. I differ from the hon. Member who brought forward the Motion as regards his statement that the schools in Scotland are not already free, because under Article 133 of the Code every parent in Scotland is entitled to have his children at a free school. That Article is absolutely compulsory. Article 134, on the other hand, is purely permissive. It simply allows School Boards to provide education by charging fees only to such parents as are willing to pay them. I think the invidious thing in regard to it in the City of Glasgow is that these schools where the fees are paid have not only the attendance of children whose parents can afford it, but they have a rather higher style of education from which other children are shut out. I venture to suggest to Glasgow and other School Boards that the course they should take is to make the distinction between free schools and fee schools not social, but educational. That might be done in this way—if School Boards agreed that their fee schools were for children who were intended to remain beyond a certain age at school. [Mr. ESSLEMONT: No!] The Glasgow School Board have already diminished the number of fee schools, and I think they may be expected to go further in the same direction. The School Board of Glasgow have been recently re-elected, and, therefore, they are better entitled than the hon. Member for Glasgow (Dr. Cameron) to express the views of Glasgow on educational matters.

(12.42.) THE LORD ADVOCATE (Sir CHARLES J. PEARSON,) Edinburgh and St. Andrews Universities

On behalf of the Government I have to say that we cannot accept the Motion, and I cannot help thinking that the hon. Member himself is under some erroneous impression when he says that this enact ment originated in mistake. I do not know to what he refers.

DR. CAMERON

I said it was a mistake not to free them from the first.

SIR CHARLES J. PEARSON

If it he a mere objection to the enactment itself, the objection resolves itself into this: that something is lacking to the completeness of free elementary education. That is true only in a sense. Local Bodies have to consider whether there is sufficient provision within their jurisdiction for free elementary education; and, having done so, it was considered that it did not detract at all from the completeness of that system that they should in addition be allowed in certain places, subject to the supervision of the Department, to charge fees in certain schools where the parents were able and willing to pay such fees. It seems clear that it would be a waste of money to refuse that source of income, unless it can be shown that the levying of the income from that source is accompanied by some defect in the provision of free elementary education within the district. I have been listening with some interest to see whether any fresh arguments could be brought forward on this question in addition to those submitted to the House on the previous occasion. I have heard none. The only addition to the stock of arguments we have heard has been all the other way. I am not going to chop logic with the hon. Gentleman as to whether this is a matter to be described as a local option; but it remains certain that on a previous occasion the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bridgeton, whom I am sorry not to see in his place, challenged us and the School Boards with immaturity of judgment on this subject, and he undertook for himself, if he knew anything of Glasgow sentiment, that there would be a change at the next School Board election. That election has come and gone, and has resulted, I believe, in a majority of two to one in favour of fee-paying schools. The source of income which I have described, the fees levied in these fee-paying schools, is one which I think it would be most injudicious to throw away. What would be the inevitable result of the confirmation of the hon. Gentleman's Motion? It would be simply to lay the cost of that education upon the ratepayers.—

MR. HUNTER

So it should be.

SIR C. J. PEARSON

Thereby diverting the burden from those who are willing and able to bear it—namely, the parents—to the general body of ratepayers, who are not necessarily of the same class at all. It must be remembered that, after all, this desire for uniformity or the completion of the system of elementary education has something formal and pedantic about it. It has, in my humble opinion, no substance in it, because it must always be remembered that in those few places in Scotland—I believe Aberdeen is one of them—where there are fee-paying schools under the School Board, the fees that had been charged before the grant was made in relief of school fees had been so much higher than the average that if they had not been continued to some extent by the way of fee-paying schools, there would have been a loss in the continuance of that education which had been provided before, and that loss would have come upon the rates. That is a justification for the prolongation of this state of matters; and the safeguard which the House possesses with regard to the proper dispensation of this fund is, in the first place, that it was all done under the supervision of the Scottish Education Department, and, still more, that the proposals emanated from those who are best acquainted with the locality—namely, the School Board, and it is their proposals which are submitted to the Department. In the case of Aberdeen, for instance, there was a desire to have three or four fee-paying schools; and the Department, in view of the situation, came to the conclusion that two was enough. In the case of Glasgow, it has been the subject of repeated revision, and I believe they have been reduced in number; but those which remain are schools which it would be impossible to dispense with without laying a great burden upon the ratepayers. Upon these grounds, and upon the fact that no fresh argument has been submitted to the House in favour of the proposition, and that to affirm this Motion would be to leave a large gap in the existing educational system of Scotland in those particular places to which the Motion would apply, I have to say that we do not see our way to accept this Motion.

(12.50.) MR. HUNTER (Aberdeen, N.)

I congratulate the Government on the good old Tory speech of the Lord Advocate. I think it is desirable, when a General Election is about to take place, that those Tories who will be going about Scotland contending they were in favour of free education should have this salutary lesson before their minds: that this Government, in its dying hours, still clings with avidity to the last rags of class distinction in the mattr. of education. I doubt if it is worth while, on the part of my hone Friend, to bring up this subject in a dying Parliament, and I do not offer any thanks or gratitude to the hon. Member for Perth—who never has been a very warm advocate of free education—that he should be disposed to contemplate the death of this system in another year. Certainly in another year it will die, but I congratulate the Government that before another Election comes off they should show their hands so plainly, and in spite of what they surrender they still exhibit a fond desire for class distinction.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 22; Noes 97.—(Div. List, No. 31.)

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