§ MR. TREVELYAN (Yorkshire, E.R., Elland)To ask the Nice President of the Committee of Council on Education, whether his attention has been called to the dismissal of the headmistress of the Public Elementary School at Toft, in Cambridgeshire, by the Board of managers; whether he is aware that the Parish Council has protested against this dismissal; that the schoolmistress has consented to continue to teach, without any salary, the children of parents who wish for her instruction; and, seeing that she is now teaching half the children of the parish in the village chapel, whether he can take any steps by which this teacher may be restored to the position which she held for eight years, or the school which she is now conducting may be made eligible for the Parliamentary grant.
(Answer.) The headmistress of the Toft School was dismissed, after three months notice, on the 20th May, 1901. The managers of the school are the 689 trustees of Bedlow's Charity. She has since conducted a school in the village in the Primitive Methodist Chapel, but the Board of Education are not aware whether with or without salary. There is no Parish Council, and no protest against the dismissal has reached the Board of Education. But the Board of Education received on 27th April, 1902, an application from the chairman of the parish meeting of Toft and others, for an inquiry into the management of the charity, with a view to a fresh scheme providing for some representation of the parishioners. This application is now under the consideration of the Board of Education. The Board of Education have no power to require the trustees of Bedlow's Charity to reinstate the headmistress. No application has been made to the Board of Education to recognise as a public elementary school the school which is now being held in the Primitive Methodist Chapel. It could only be so recognised if it fulfilled the conditions laid down in the Code.—(Board of Education.)