§ VISCOUNT WOLMER (Edinburgh, W.)I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether he is aware that the decision of the Leith School Board to establish the Craighall Road School as a fee-paying school was an unanimous decision; that the present objection to that decision is confined to a single member of that School Board; and whether, in view of the fact that the Scotch Education Department has for a long time past urged on the Leith School Board the duty of supplying places for some 1,203 Leith children hitherto edu- 274 cated in the Edinburgh schools, that since the Craighall Road School was opened two and a-half mouths ago 832 children have been enrolled on its books, and that there are 1,182 unoccupied places in the free schools of Leith, he will reconsider his decision to refuse to the Craighall Road School the benefit of the fee grant?
§ SIR G. TREVELYANI have no reason to doubt that the original decision of the School Board was, as the noble Lord states, passed without objection; but I had to consider the question on its merits. In the district which this school provides there is not sufficient free accommodation, whatever there may be in other parts of the burgh, which covers a large area. The number of 832 children in attendance at a school with places for 1,600 shows that the Craighall Road School is not utilised to anything like its full extent. I do not think (hat the facts as then stated, or as stated in the noble Lord's question, are such as to warrant the treatment of this school as one which falls under the special provisions of Article 134 of the Code, having regard to the expediency upon general grounds of adhering to the principle that a school provided from the rates should be open to all the community, whether they belong to the class who are willing to pay fees or not.