MR. FIELDI beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether the Education Department, in pressing the Liverpool School Board to open or build free schools in the outskirts of the city, which would be mainly utilised by those who could afford to pay fees, have taken into their consideration the fact that the loss in the management of such schools has in a large measure to be defrayed by the 380 dock labourers and small struggling tradesmen of the central part of the city, who receive no aid whatever towards the maintenance of their own schools; also whether, in view of the working of the Elementary Education Acts, especially in Liverpool, where the poorer Irish Catholic ratepayers, although contributing £10,000 per year towards the maintenance of the School Board system, are prohibited by law from receiving anything out of the local rates for the support of their own schools, which educate 24,000 children, or nearly as many as the Board schools, it is contemplated by the Education Department to initiate or support any measure for placing voluntary schools on a footing of equality, as regards aid from public funds, in accordance with the recommendation of the Majority Report of the Royal Commission on Elementary Education,1888, p. 195?
§ MR. ACLANDI am aware that the rate levied by a School Board in order to provide schools in any part of its district is levied on the whole of the rateable property throughout the district, whatever the character of the population. But it is the duty of the Department, under the Act of 1891, to require free education to be provided for all those who claim it. The late Government did not adopt the recommendation of the Royal Commission that voluntary schools should, in certain circumstances, be aided from the rates, and it is not the intention of the present Government to introduce any legislation with that object.