§ MR. HARRY FOSTERI beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education if he is aware of the fact that in a large number of voluntary schools it is necessary for the managers to become personally responsible to bankers for overdrafts necessary to meet the annual expenditure incurred in efficiently maintaining the schools pending the receipt of the annual grant; whether he will consider the wisdom of recommending an alteration of the existing method of payment, so that semiannually a payment of one-half or one-third of the grant based on an average of the preceding years shall be paid, thereby greatly facilitating the work of the voluntary schools, and putting them on a more equal footing with the Board schools of the Kingdom; and whether, in any case, he will impress upon Her Majesty's Inspectors the necessity of sending in their Reports promptly, so that no avoidable delay may occur in the payments of the grants?
§ MR. ACLANDI am aware of the fact stated in the first paragraph of the question. In answer to the second paragraph, it is not possible to make any difference between the mode of payment to Board and voluntary schools. The difficulty in making any payment of the kind indicated, is that the inspection on which the grants depend cannot be held more than once a year, and if an advance were made it might be ascertained at the end of the year that no grant whatever was due, and the State would lose the amount of the advance. The Department has constantly impressed upon 693 the Inspectors the necessity of sending in their Reports promptly. But I have no objection to issuing further directions to them to that effect.