HC Deb 10 May 1897 vol 49 cc134-52

"The standard of rate expenditure in any school year at any school provided by a School Hoard receiving a contribution under this Act shall not, without the consent of the Education Department, exceed the standard of rate expenditure at such school during the school year last concluded; and no School Hoard shall, without; such consent, receive from the rating authority for maintenance a larger sum than is sufficient, together with the contribution under this Act, to meet a rate expenditure according to such standard. The expression standard of rate expenditure' means the sum arrived at by dividing the amount received in any school from the rates and from any contribution under this Act and expended for the purposes of annual maintenance in any school year by the number of scholars in average attendance at such school during that year."

He said most people were under the impression that this Bill was intended for the relief of poverty-stricken districts, and the terms of the Bill had taken them rather by surprise. As a matter of fact, a very much larger number of School Boards were included in the scope of the Bill than could in any way be described as being in poverty-stricken districts. He did not object to the Bill on that ground. The Bill was introduced for the relief of the rates. ["Hear, hear!"] That was the reason put forward, he thought, by the Government, and certainly by numbers of Gentlemen supporting the Government. The question was, did many of the School Boards about to be relieved show in any sense that they felt the pressure of the rates? If so, they would have expected them to keep down the cost of education to a reasonable limit, and not to run into unnecessary luxury and extravagance as many of them had done. The Forest of Dean did not give cheap education, it was £2 6s. a head there; in Walthamstow it was as much as £2 8s. a head. These districts were going to be very heavily assisted under the Bill. In Leicester it was £2 7s. a head; in Gateshead £2 9s. This cost, moreover, was rising every day. Since 1891 the cost of education in the Borough of Nottingham had risen from £2 5s. to £2 11s. a head; in Leeds from £2 6s. to £2 11s. 6d.; and in West Ham from £2 9s. 6d. to £3 0s. 1d. He took his figures from the return which the Government had presented. It was very strange that School Boards which came for assistance to the Exchequer, should have a very expensive education, the cost of which was increasing 37ear by year in this manner. Many of the School Boards in the large towns were not content to give merely a good education. If the West Ham School Board would limit its expenditure to £2 5s. per head, the School Board rate in West Ham would be reduced by 6½d. in the pound. Let the West Ham School Board give as good an education as they pleased, but when they voted money for School Boards who thought fit to spend money in this way, there was no assurance that the money would go to the relief of the ratepayers. Why should not any of these School Boards raise the expenditure still further? The West Ham School Board had not reached the London School Board figure of £3 7s. It might establish a higher grade school—or go in for specific subjects after the fashion of the London School Board. It might teach "the nature of hydrogen, its preparation, properties, and combustion; coal gas, its explosive powers; atmospheric air, carbonic gas in air, its use in plants; water ebullition, air pressure, boiling point, water apparently boiled by cooling, effect of sodium upon it." The teacher of these subjects was a sanguine man. He was of opinion that this instruction was not altogether thrown away, and said that girls who remaned two or three years in the classes always showed improvement, and in, some cases they remembered well what they had learnt—perhaps 18 months afterwards. [Laughter.] If the House was going to vote this large sum of money because some girls remembered the nature of boiling point 18 months after they left school, the ratepayers would not be relieved and the money would be entirely wasted. Was there anything in the terms and conditions of the Bill which would lead School Boards to be economical? The conditions which determined whether a School Board was to receive assistance under the Bill or not were threefold. They did not depend merely on the number of the children or the wealth of the district —those were the principles upon which the old clause of 1897 was constructed—but they also depended on the height of the rates. The Nottingham School Board received substantial assistance, while the Sunderland Board received hardly anything at all. One of the reasons was that Nottingham gave a more expensive education. So, in order to get money from Parliament, there was a direct incentive to spend money. West Ham received 7s. and East Ham 4s., the reason that West Ham got most being that there 7s. per child was spent more than in East Ham. Every penny that the Leeds School Board added to the School Board rate would produce more than it had hitherto produced, because it would receive corresponding assistance from Parliament. So West Ham would receive 14 per cent, more and the Forest of Dean 25 per cent. more The School Board of the Forest of Dean would be more than human if it did not raise its rates after the passing of this Bill. The Bill would offer a direct incentive to School Boards to raise their rates, because it would be remunerative to them to do so. He moved the new clause, because precaution should be taken that the money voted by the House did not go in unnecessary expenditure, but in relief of the taxpayer. Then the interests of the Voluntary Schools had to be considered. This Bill and the Voluntary Schools Bill should be considered together as forming one scheme on the part of the Government. He regretted that they had to discuss the sum devoted, to the Board Schools from the point of view of Voluntary Schools. But this was because of the method which the Government had adopted through no fault of their own. They had said, "Let the Voluntary Schools look to the Imperial taxes as compensation for the advantage the Board Schools have from the rates." The friends of Voluntary Schools, therefore, looked with the greatest jealousy upon any special sum of money to be devoted to School Boards out of Imperial taxes, because it would clearly diminish the competitive power of the Voluntary Schools. For example, Yorkshire had a large number of School Boards which would be assisted under the Bill and receive a larger sum of money for education than they otherwise would, and this would enable them to compete much more successfully with the Voluntary Schools, and the competitive power of the latter schools would be correspondingly diminished. Parliament intended the money voted under this Bill to be for the relief of the rates, and he proposed by the clause to give the Education Department power to see that the money went as Parliament directed. He should have been better pleased if the power could be given to the county and District Councils, which were representative of the ratepayers. He suggested that course, but for obvious reasons it was ruled out of order. Under the circumstances there was a good logical reason why the Education Department should be the controlling authority, and he was supported by a precedent set by the Vice President of the Council, who had inserted an Amendment in the Bill giving the Department control, to some extent, over the expenditure of the boards. The clause was an extension of the same principle, and was intended to give Parliament the control over School Board expenditure which it ought to have. ["Hear, hear !"] Unless some clause of this kind were accepted, he was confident the only result of the Bill would be in an enormous number of cases to raise still further expenditure which had already run to extreme limits in a large number of School Boards, and the ratepayers would be no better off than they were at the present moment. He begged to move that the clause be Head a Second time.

SIR J. GORST,

in resisting the Amendment, pointed out that, even if the clause were passed, the Education Department would not exercise control over all School Board expenditure, but only over the expenditure of those which were subject to the operations of the Bill, and which composed a fraction only of the School Boards of the country. It was quite clear that the proper people" to exercise control over the expenditure of the School Boards were the ratepayers.["Hear, hear!"] They had the most complete power of electing persons on the School Board to represent them, in whom they had confidence, and he could not say he felt any strong sympathy with them if, having the power to protect themselves, they did not exorcise it["Hear, hear!"] He did not think the particular class of school to which the Amendment applied was that which required control from the central Department, nor did he think the central Department would undertake to exercise it. What was practically suggested was that the Education Department should fix for I every School Board district in the country the proper amount per scholar to expend. [Viscount CRANBORNE dissented] It was the expenditure per scholar that was controlled, and which was not to be increased without the consent of the Department. That would involve in the case of each School Board that came under the clause the consideration of what was the proper rate to be expended. That was a matter which it was quite impossible for the Education Department or a central office in London to decide As he had often tried to explain The rate of expenditure, quite irrespective of the efficiency of the school, varied enormously in different places and the greatest expenditure per scholar was not where they had the great schools, but in the small, scattered, poor parishes where, perhaps, only 20 children had to be provided for by one master or mistress, and where, consequently, the rate of expenditure per child ran up to an amount far in excess of what it did in West Ham, London, or in great cities. ["Hear, hear !"] Another thing to be remembered was that the rate of expenditure really did not depend upon any determination made either by the School Board or the Education Department. They could not fix their rate of expenditure—because it depended upon economic considerations—upon the laws of supply and demand. The great cause of the increase of expenditure was the increase of teachers' salaries. Teachers' salaries depended upon the economic law of supply and demand, and all the regulations of the Education Department and School Hoards throughout the country would not prevent the alteration of these economic laws. If the demand for teachers was great and the supply was small, the salaries must necessarily increase. The noble lord was mistaken in supposing that the cost of education depended upon the kind of education given in their great schools. Leeds was a town which received assistance under this Bill, and the noble Lord had alluded to the fact that Leeds had a higher grade school. Yes, it had; but that higher grade school was no burden to the ratepayers. Indeed, so far from, being a burden to the ratepayers, it was a profit. They had an immense demand in great towns for secondary education. They had nobody here to supply it except the School Board, which had undoubtedly the means of investing the capital of the ratepayers in secondary education; fees were charged, the people were glad to pay, and actually a profit was made for the ratepayers of Leeds by the fact that the School Board discharged the function of providing secondary education. ["Hear, hear!"] No mistake could be greater than to imagine that because a place gave a high education and efficient instruction to the children, that therefore the expenditure was extravagant, or that a reduction of that education would lessen the expense. ["Hear, hear!"] He agreed with the noble Lord in the statement that children left school too early. They were now turned out of school in many cases at 11 years of age. He admitted the force of that objection, which he should remedy, not by reducing the quality of the education, but by 'keeping" the children longer at school.[Cheers.]

MR. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN (Kent, Tunbridge)

regretted that the right hon. Gentleman had not seen his way to accept this Amendment, which carried out what was intended by the Bill, and gave an absolute guarantee that the money voted under it should go to the relief of the ratepayers. He could not understand the ground upon which the right hon. Gentleman refused to accept the Amendment. He had told them the Government could not accept the new clause because it would be giving the Department control only over a small fraction of the School Boards' expenditure. But the reason why such control should be given over that small fraction was that in these limited cases an extra grant was to be made, and for a special purpose. For his part he should certainly be glad to see some limit put to the expenses of School Boards, either by the control of the Department, or, if that was impossible, by local bodies. Surely when an extra grunt was being given for a special purpose it was not seeking too much to ask that the Department should have the right to control the expenditure if they thought proper, and to see that the money was devoted to the purpose for which Parliament intended it. The right hon. Gentleman told them that the Department could not do it. Why were they incompetent? They were not-incompetent to see that a large number of conditions were fulfilled in the case of the Voluntary Schools which got relief under the Voluntary Schools Act, and if they interposed those conditions in that Act as a guarantee for its doing what Parliament intended, why wag it not right and proper, and why were the Education Department incompetent to see that conditions were fulfilled in this Bill to carry out the intentions of Parliament? The Duke of Devonshire, replying to a deputation at the Foreign Office on the 26th February, said that the matter with which the present Bill dealt was almost entirely a ratepayers' question. That being so, he asked the Committee to regard it as a ratepayers' question, and see that the money went to the relief of the ratepayers. Neither he nor the noble Lord desired to bar the progress of education; nothing was further from their wishes. They had the authority of the Duke of Devonshire himself, and of everybody who had discussed the Bill, for saying that it was not a Measure for the furtherance or efficiency of education, but merely for the relief of ratepayers. That being so he asked why should they not try to see that that object was carried out. If the clause were adopted it would not in any way impede the progress of education. It was really permissive. It said that the Education Department might limit the rate of expenditure if it thought fit, and saw sufficient reasons for it. They had to look at this Bill from the point of view of the Voluntary Schools Bill. In the latter Bill they tried to make up the enormous disparities which existed between the cost of each child in the Voluntary and the Board Schools, by giving the Voluntary Schools 5s. per head. Parliament had endeavoured to make up the disparity of 11s. between the cost of education in Board and in Voluntary Schools by giving 5s. per scholar to the latter. But if they allowed the money granted by this Bill, which averaged 1s. per scholar in attendance in Board Schools, to be used in creating fresh competition with Voluntary Schools, the result would be that the advantage which Voluntary Schools would receive would only represent 4s. per scholar. There were cases where School Boards had determined to try and drive Voluntary Schools out of existence by unfair competition. ["Oh !"] Having tried to stop that by giving a small grant to Voluntary Schools, were they now going to put money into the pockets of certain School Boards in order that they might use it to renew that competition? ["Hear, hear!"] He would support the Amendment because it carried out the policy of the Government—the maintenance of the dual system of education in this country.

MR. SYDNEY BUXTON (Tower Hamlets, Poplar)

said the amount involved in the Bill was equal only to about the average annual increase in the School Board rate. Therefore the additional competition which it would create was practically infinitesimal.

*VISCOUNT CRANBORNE

In particular cases it is by no means infinitesimal.

MR. BUXTON

said it would be found that the grant under the Bill would go chiefly to places where competition was least felt. With the exception of one or two places like West Ham and Tottenham, where they might take it for granted that a large amount of the money would go in relief of rates, very few of the great School Boards would be able by means of this grant to burst out into wild and overwhelming extravagance. In this opinion, the way to improve national education in this country was not by curtailing the powers of expenditure upon that education. They must in this matter trust the ratepayers. If in some cases the ratepayers were apathetic that was their affair; and it was for the noble Lord and his friends to stir them up, and to induce them to protest against the burden of the rate. Taking the system of education throughout, he denied that the School Boards were extravagant. The bulk of the expenditure was forced upon them. In many cases the ratepayers were unwilling to spend these large sums, and only sanctioned them because of the necessity for improving education. It must be obvious that they could not deal with the matter in this small way. They must deal with it on a general basis, not in regard to this £110,000, but in regard to the £3,500,000 spent by the ratepayers under the system of national education.

MR. J. G. TALBOT (Oxford University)

said he thought hon. Gentlemen opposite had failed to appreciate the point of the new clause. The object of the Bill, he understood, was to redress some inequalities which were supposed to exist between the Voluntary Schools which had been assisted and certain Board Schools. But, if in doing that they undid the work they had already done, they would stultify the work of Parliament. The intolerable strain from which the Voluntary Schools had sought relief arose in great measure from the fact that the School Board expenditure in many districts was so high that the Voluntary Schools had to raise large sums from voluntary sources to meet the competition. Parliament had relieved that strain, but if they raised the School Board expenditure again in districts where they had just assisted the Voluntary Schools, they would be undoing with one hand what they had done with the other. This proposal had been described as an attempt to limit the rate of School Board expenditure. Nothing could be less consistent with the facts. A correspondent had called his attention to the case of Leeds. He should never have thought of calling Leeds School Board necessitous, but under this Bill it received £6,000, whereas the Voluntary Schools of Leeds only received £5,000. At the present moment the School Board of Leeds was favourable to Voluntary Schools, and no doubt, in the existing circumstances, the £6,000 would go in reduction of rates. But it was quite possible that at the election next November the tables would be turned, and the majority now on the side of the Voluntary Schools would become a majority on the other side. What was to prevent the new School Board from using this £6,000 in producing excessive competition with the Voluntary Schools of Leeds?

*MR. CARVELL WILLIAMS (Notts, Mansfield)

observed that it was reported that the noble Lord the Member for Rochester had said at a recent public meeting that the Voluntary Schools Act had "smashed up" the Education Act of 1870; but apparently he now thought that the work of destruction was incomplete, and therefore he had proposed this clause. It was practically a reproduction of one of the worst provisions of the Bill of last year, and one which had largely helped to bring about its defeat. Let the Committee consider the irony of the situation. The Government had been appealed to for pecuniary aid by the supporters of Voluntary Schools, and had given them substantial relief; but they had originally no intention of doing anything for the Board Schools. They were, however, shamed by public opinion into the production of the wretchedly inadequate Bill now before the House. Thereupon the noble Lord sought to convert it into a disabling Measure—to turn what was meant to be an olive branch into a rod for chastising luxurious School Boards. Why was it wished to intervene between the School Boards and the ratepayers? The noble Lord had said that County and District Councils represented the ratepayers better than School Boards; but why? All three were equally elected by the ratepayers, and those who disapproved of the expenditure of School Boards could dismiss the members at the next election and put others in their place. The ratepayers might safely be entrusted with the duty of seeing that there was no unnecessary expenditure on education. They were indeed too prone to limit it, and that was the great weapon of the opponents of School Boards, who appealed to the niggardliness and small-mindedness of ratepayers to prevent their coming into existence. He thought that that part of the noble Lord's speech which objected to the higher education of School Boards came with an ill grace from one who had had all the advantages of high culture, and yet seemed to grudge similar opportunities to the working classes. He (the speaker) regarded the clause as an anti-educational clause—a proposal which would stereotype education and stunt the growth of our educational system, and as such he hoped it would be decisively rejected. He was amused with the fact that both the noble Lord and the hon. Member for the Tunbridge Division had kept back till the end of their speeches what was probably the motive of their action—it was a dread of the competition between the Voluntary and the Board Schools. Their objections were, in fact, directed against the entire Bill. They wished the Voluntary Schools to have everything and the Board Schools nothing; but that was a policy which would have very little sympathy in that House, and still less in the country.

*SIR JOHN LUBBOCK (London University)

did not believe that this money would, as a rule, be extravagantly spent. He hoped it would go to improve education. He might remind the noble Lord the Member for Rochester that elementary science was the subject which children found to be most interesting. In one district where lectures on this subject were delivered, mothers found it necessary to change their washing-day so that it should not clash with the teaching, so great was the daughters' interest in it. The clause would deprive the ratepayers of that right of self-government which was so dear to the Anglo-Saxon race. He believed that the clause would either be inoperative or harmful, and he therefore hoped that it would not be pressed to a division.

*MR. J. H. YOXALL (Nottingham, W.)

observed that the noble Lord the Member for Rochester wished the Committee to believe that much of this money would be spent in teaching girls specific subjects, including the properties of hydrogen and the gymnastics of the boiling point. But that would not be the case. Last year there were only 3,850 who were taught science at all; 23,000 were taught mechanics, and 162,000 were taught specific subjects. Only one child in 300 in public elementary schools received that kind of advanced instruction to which the noble Lord contended that this money would be wastefully applied. It might be found convenient in some Board Schools to add to a class of boys some few girls who wished to have the advantage of instruction in chemistry and mechanics, but as a rule the instruction given to girls under the head of extra subjects was instruction in domestic economy, physiology, hygiene, cookery, laundry, dairy, and needlework. Those were the subjects which were taught, and not the properties of hydrogen or the gymnastics of the boiling point. He was sure the noble Lord had no intention to mislead the Committee, and he hoped he would accept his correction. The interests of the Voluntary Schools had been cared for to some extent, and he would beg the noble Lord to allow the interests of the Board Schools to be cared for to some extent under this Bill. ["Hear, hear!"]

LORD HUGH CECIL (Greenwich)

said he believed that in many respects the energy of the Board Schools as well as their money was frittered away on things which really had no educational value, but which happened to be the fancy of this or that educational expert. The peculiarity of a School Board was that it must be composed of educational experts, who only wished to spend as much money as possible on education, and could not look at the matter from an economical point of view. His right hon. Friend the Vice President complained that the Amendment would only give the Department control over a certain number of schools; but the case of his own Bill was that a certain number of School Boards were in a peculiar position. If so, it was quite fair to treat them in a peculiar way. ["Hear, hear!"] If his right hon. Friend objected to deal with certain schools in a peculiar way, why did he not include all Board Schools in this Bill? [Opposition cheers.] If this Bill had not been introduced for the relief of the rates, but for the general value of education, then his right hon. Friend ought to have included London, arid Hull, and Manchester, as well as Leeds and Nottingham. ["Hear, hear!"] The only defence of the Bill was that relief was to be given to poor ratepayers. If so, was it not right to secure that the money voted for that purpose should go where it was intended to go? His right hon. Friend further said that the Department would be incapable of carrying out the work which the Amendment proposed to put upon it. "How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" [Laughter.] How have the Department changed! They had now become merely ignoramuses; they did not understand political economy, they did not understand the law of supply and demand, they could not contemplate the possibility of a successful argument with bodies less superior in knowledge and intention. [Laughter.] Surely, if the Education Department was equal to the elaborate control which was to be exercised over Voluntary Schools under the Act just passed, and the task of accurately forming a judgment on the question of what constituted a "necessitous" School Board—[laughter]—and he would like his right hon. Friend, by-the-bye, to explain how they were going to find out what constituted a "necessitous" School Board—[Opposition cheers]—they were capable of deciding what was a proper rate of expenditure. It appeared to him that the one was preliminary to the other. He was quite unable to understand why their intellects should have suddenly shrunk like a magic wallet—[laughter]—and why they should have become incapable of carrying out the functions assigned to them by the Amendment. He believed that in some of the large towns, particularly in Leeds, this Bill would make a very important difference to the value of the grant given under the Voluntary Schools Act, and would thus create great discontent among the supporters of Voluntary Schools. They would find, he believed, that the grant under the Voluntary Schools Act was too small, or in any case that it was an inadequate substitute for the rates, and, therefore, Board Schools would still have an immense advantage in the case of competition. ["Hear, hear!"]

MR. STUART

thought that everyone on his side of the House would have listened with great satisfaction to the speech which emanated from the Vice President. The right hon. Gentleman, in the course of his occupation of that office had made a number of very good speeches on education, and had produced some educational gems. The only thing he regretted was that the setting in which they were placed was sometimes so inadequate. It had been argued that this money was to go to the relief of the ratepayers, but he wished the House to observe that there was as much need of money for the improvement of education in the areas that would be benefited by the Bill as for the relief of the ratepayers. If it was laid down that this money was not to be spent in improving education, much of the benefit of the Bill would be taken away. If hon. Members on the other side of the House were so anxious to prevent Board Schools competing with Voluntary Schools, he was surprised that they did not side with the Opposition when the Voluntary Schools Act was before the House in trying to secure the maintenance of Voluntary subscriptions. ["Hear, hear!"] He maintained that education in all directions was always a necessity, and would always remain so, and the desire for increasing the excellence of education arose not from the requirements of the Department, but from the wish of the people of the country generally. ["Hear, hear!"] He believed there was a great deal of mistaken energy in education, but that was the result of the Code; but, if the House was desirous of making education what it ought to be, they would not do so by cutting off money that might be improperly spent, but by seeing that the money was spent properly. He believed the whole of this Debate might have been concluded by the speech of the Vice President, because it accurately gauged the situation, and he trusted the right hon. Gentleman would be able to keep his Friends on the Front Bench up to the spirit of the speech he had delivered. ["Hear, hear!"]

*SIR FRANCIS POWELL (Wigan)

said that he could not support the Amendment. The Bill had been introduced by the Government as an act of justice to the Board Schools, and he was sure that the Debates which took place on the last Bill as well as on this showed that the School Boards enjoyed a larger amount of confidence, even of affection, among Members on that side of the House than there had been reason to suppose. He greatly regretted that any proposal had been made from that side of the House to limit the generosity of the Government towards School Boards, or to minimise the expression of confidence in them. As to the administration of the grant, the Voluntary Schools Act was framed on the hypothesis that the Government was not able to administer each association of schools, and the Government had only to distribute the money in accordance with the recommendations of the associations. There was another argument worthy of consideration. Could the Government carry out the provisions of the Bill, supposing they had the administrative capacity? He believed that no Government, however anxious to do so, could perform such a task. It was beyond the power of any Government. No administration could be strong enough to say to a School Board representing a great constituency that their expenditure was excessive. The work would have to be accomplished through the inspectors, whose duty it was to keep up the standard of education. If this Bill passed the inspectors would say that the standard was too high, and the expenditure too great; and he did not think it was possible to obtain such services from the inspectors. Something had been said about Leeds; but why was the claim of Leeds so great? Because the children were so many. There were 42,872 children there, and, therefore, it was clear that the sum assigned must be large. The sum for West Ham was also large because the children there were numerous. There were, however, a comparatively small number of great towns which would have the benefit of the Bill. Personally he had some anxiety as to Lancashire, because it was there that the competition was strongly felt. In the county of Lancaster there were only four districts which obtained any advantage under the Bill; the total amount of aid given to the Lancashire School Boards was £291. He thought that a figure like that ought to console his friends in Lancashire. The majority of places deriving advantage under the Bill were small, and the sums were so insignificant that they could not disturb the balance of competition between the School Boards and the Voluntary Schools. He hoped that the Committee would accept the advice of his right lion. Friend, and would not accept the Amendment.

*SIR C. DILKE

invited the noble Lord (Viscount Cranborne) to visit some of the schools in the poorer districts. The schools in the poorest districts were of different types, one represented by the schools in West Ham and in the neighbourhood of the Metropolis, and the other by the schools in Cornwall and the district which he represented. But those poor districts had one point in common. They were districts where generally the rate was so high that anything like extravagance was utterly out of the question. They were districts also which would educate children who worked elsewhere either at the time, or who would go elsewhere to work as soon as they were educated. The pressure of the rates in those districts was so extreme that there was no risk of extravagance at all; a rigid, parsimonious, penurious economy was much more to be feared. In the poorest districts, moreover, all the local authorities took the same view, and they would be equally fair about the relief to the rates. In the Forest of Dean School Boards the advantage would amount to 7d. in the rate, and this was a district where the ordinary rates were 8s. in the pound, and in the next half-year would be 9s. He believed it would be found that in West Ham, also the representative authorities, however elected, all took the same view, and it was a delusion to believe in the existence of extravagance in those districts.

*SIR W. HART DYKE

said that he was opposed to the proposed clause being added to the Bill. Although the Government had done much to reduce the inequality between the School Boards and the Voluntary Schools, it was yet suggested that they took back with one hand what they gave with the other. He did not think that his noble Friend ought to be afraid of this when they looked at the figures and compared the sum allocated in each case. If his noble Friend wished to apply his principle he must apply it to all the Board Schools of the country. That would be Intelligible, but he pointed out that in this case the Bill would be a grievous educational failure in many of the poor districts of the country. One word as to the inequality under this Bill. No doubt it was true. The case of Leeds had been quoted over and over again, but he did not think it necessary to detain the Committee on that point.

*MR. ERNEST GRAY

said he should be1 sorry to allow this Amendment to pass without saying a word upon it. He admired the courage with which the Amendment was brought forward, but regretted that such an Amendment had been moved from those Benches. He condemned the Amendment, as not only impracticable, but an unnecessary interference with the rights of the ratepayers. He thought the Amendment would give some colour to the allegations which were sometimes made against the Unionist Party to the effect that they were opposed to the progress of national education. The Amendment was in his view totally unnecessary, and would not accomplish the object which the noble Lord had in view. It was ridiculous to talk of extravagance in these heavily-rated districts, for the persons who would be returned to these School Boards would be those who gave an unlimited number of promises to keep down the rate. He feared if the Amendment were carried it would either be inoperative and useless or effective, and, therefore, objectionable. Whatever schools they were in, whether Board or Voluntary, they wanted the children educated. ["Hear, hear!"]

VISCOUNT CRANBORNE

said, before the Committee went to a division, he desired to say that he had no wish to bring any charge against poor Board Schools; but it did seem to him that, when those Boards came to ask for money, Parliament had a right to see how the money was spent. Let it be understood that everyone who voted against this Amendment set himself against any reduction which, he believed, the ratepayers were demanding on every hand. [Cries of "No, no!"] He believed this Amendment was popular with the ratepayers.

Question put, "That the Clause be read a Second time."

The Committee divided:—Ayes, 20; Noes, 294.—(Division List, No. 199.)

The announcement of the numbers was received with derisive Opposition cheers.

On the Question, "That this be the preamble,"

MR. J. SAMUEL (Stockton)

asked whether average attendance would be calculated in, the same way as under the principal grant, or as under the fee grant?

SIR J. GORST

said that, as he understood it, "average attendance" in all but one of the Education Acts meant average attendance according to the minutes of the Committee of Council in existence at the time. The single exception was the Fee Grant Act, where "average attendance" was calculated according to the rules existing when the Act was passed.

MR. J. SAMUEL

said that he had a letter from the Education Department in respect of a particular School Board, the terms of which were at variance with the right hon. Gentleman's statement.

SIR J. GORST

said that he should have had notice of such a matter; but if a Question were put on the Paper, he would give an answer on which the hon. Member could rely.

MR. ACLAND

pointed out that, the grant under the Free Education Act being governed permanently by the Code for the year preceding the passage of that Act, great hardship was sometimes involved, both to Board Schools and Voluntary Schools. He would suggest a little Bill enabling the Department to alter the rules in regard to average attendance under the Free Education Act.

SIR J. GORST

said that in the Bill of last year such an amendment was proposed, and might now have become law, had the Bill not been refused by right hon. Gentlemen opposite. [Laughter.]

Preamble agreed to.

Bill reported, with an Amendment; as amended, to be considered To-morrow, at Two of the clock, and to be printed.—[Bill 237.]

MR. ACLAND

Will the Bill be the first Order?

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY

Yes. I hope that will not be inconvenient.