§ MR. WARDLE (Stockport)To ask the President of the Board of Education whether he will consider the advisability of directing local education authorities to omit the question from their forms of application for head and assistant teacher-ships which seeks to ascertain the name of the particular college in which the applicant was trained, seeing that such training colleges are mainly of a denominational character, and the question partakes of the nature of a religious test.
(Answered by Mr. Birrell.) I think it would be undesirable that I should attempt, in the manner suggested in the Question, to fetter the discretion of local authorities as to the steps they may find it desirable to take for satisfying themselves as to the educational qualifications of candidates for teaching posts in their schools. To know something of the educational record of the candidate while he was a student in a training college is one of the most useful means available for gauging the candidate's powers of work and intellectual attainments, quite apart from religious questions.