§ MR. GIBB (Middlesex, Harrow)To ask the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware that an experimental school system has been imposed by the education committee of the Middlesex County Council upon the 1554 Harrow elementary school district against the advice of the Harrow school managers, and against the desire of the parents and ratepayers of the said district, as expressed at a public meeting and embodied in a petition to the Middlesex education committee; and whether he proposes to take any action in the matter.
(Answered by Mr. McKenna.) I have been informed by the local education authority that they propose to take the opportunity of the opening of the new council school at Vaughan Road, Harrow, to rearrange the schools in the district, and to restrict the Greenhill boys' and girls' departments to Standards V. and upwards, keeping the Wealdstone Bridge School and the Vaughan Road School as lower standard schools. The object appears to be to grade the schools with a view to bringing the older and more advanced scholars into one school in which arrangements could be made for their more efficient instruction. The reorganisation is within the competence of the authority, and has been approved by the Board subject to its reconsideration should the experiment prove unsuccessful.