HC Deb 11 March 1901 vol 90 cc1160-1
DR. MACNAMARA (Camberwell, N.)

I beg to ask the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education whether he can give the House an assurance that in the future administration of the Higher Elementary Minute local authorities applying to have schools recognised under the Minute will be granted freedom in the preparation of proposed curricula for their schools, so that, as in the terms of the Minute, they may adapt the instruction to the circumstances of the scholars and the neighbourhood; and, further, whether he can hold out any prospect that the recognition of schools on whose account application for grants under the Minute is made will be on a more generous scale in the present year than in the past.

THE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE BEARD OF EDUCATION (Sir J. GORST,) Cambridge University

The Board of Education give full freedom to managers in all public elementary schools to submit their own courses of study. The only special conditions as to course of instruction attaching to higher elementary schools are (1) that a certain amount of science, proper to a course of general education, is taken; and (2) that technological subjects are not generally admissible. The recognition of higher elementary schools depends not on the generosity of the Board of Education, but upon the existence in the locality of the conditions specified in the Minute.

DR. MACNAMARA

Is it a fact that the Board of Education has declined to sanction business training as part of the curriculum for higher grade schools under the London Board?

SIR J. GORST

Yes, Sir. They regard business training as technological.