§ *MR. A GRIFFITH - BOSCAWEN (Kent, Tunbridge)I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education (1) whether he has received copies of resolutions passed by the Parish Council of Rhuabon unanimously, and by the Rhuabon parish meeting by 125 votes to 20, praying that Rhuabon should be separated from the United School Board district of Rhuabon, Rhos, Penycoe, and Cefn, in pursuance of the powers conferred on parish meetings by the Local Government Act 1893, section 52 (2); (2) whether he is aware that under the Local Government Act Rhuabon has been made a separate parish for all purposes other than School Board purposes; that in Rhuabon parish there is no School Board or site for Board School and that there is ample accommodation in the Voluntary School; that there is no representation of Rhuabon parish on the United School Board, and that further the United School Board propose to raise immediately a loan of £4,000 for increased Board School accommodation at Rhos, the interest on which will be partly charged on the ratepayers of Rhuabon, though they will derive no benefit whatever from it; and (3), whether under these circumstances he will favourably consider the request, and will sanction the dissolution of the School Board so far as the parish of Rhuabon is concerned?
§ SIR J. GORSTThe answer to the first two paragraphs is in the affirmative. The Committee of Council have announced that they do not propose to sanction the 12 dissolution of the United District unless it can be shown that the School Board as well as all the Parish Councils concerned are in favour of the dissolution.
§ *MR. GRIFFITH -BOSCAWENasked whether the right hon. Gentleman understood that what he asked for was not the dissolution of the United District but only the School Board of one particular parish, and also that if it was left to the four parishes concerned that would never take place because it was natural that the other parishes would wish to be able to continue to rate.
§ *MR. SPEAKEROrder, order!
§ *SIR GEORGE OSBORNE MORGAN (Denbighshire, E.)asked a question arising out of the same matter of which he had given the right lion. Gentleman private notice, whether it was the fact that the Voluntary Schools in the parish of Rhuabon only provided accommodation for 364 out of 605 children of school age in the parish leaving 241 children whose education had to be elsewhere provided for, and whether having regard to section 41 of the Elementary Education Act of 1876 which required that before a School Board was dissolved "the Department must be satisfied that there is sufficient public school accommodation for the district" he would in any case postpone his final decision until further inquiry had been made on the subject?
§ SIR J. GORSTsaid the Education Department had no power to suspend the connection of a School Board in a particular parish without the dissolution of the United District. In answer to the Question of the right hon. Baronet the information at present possessed by the Committee of Council did not tally with the suggestion contained in the first part of his Question. He was informed that there was ample accommodation for all the Rhuabon children. As regards the second part of the Question, Section 41 seemed to provide for cases in which it was admitted the accommodation was insufficient.
§ LORD CRANBORNE (Rochester)asked whether the Department would really consider on the merits each specific case which was submitted to them in order to see whether the dissolution of a School Board ought to follow?
§ *MR. SPEAKEROrder, order! That is a general question of which notice should be given.