EDUCATION.

HC Deb 20 April 1910 vol 16 cc2200-35

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

I beg to move, "That, in view of the relation of unemployment to adolescent and child labour, this House regards an improved educational system, with more adequate provision for the care and training of adolescents, as a matter of urgent necessity, and considers that the Imperial Exchequer should bear an increased share of the cost of this national service."

I had hoped that in this day of mandates it might be possible that I could claim that a mandate had been given at the last election for the cause of educational reform, and I went so far as to begin the examination of the election addresses of Members of the present House. I trust hon. Members will forgive me if I say that I found the examination of election oratory in such bulk peculiarly fatiguing. I should say that the examination of the whole of the great thoughts enshrined—I dare not say entombed—in that election literature remains incomplete. But I did examine no inconsiderable number of election addresses, and I very much regret to say that I only found two which referred to matters of education in the sense in which they are referred to in the terms of this Motion, so that I cannot claim an electoral mandate in this connection. I did, indeed, find the word "education" was frequently referred to. but it stood for that unhappy religious dispute which has so long, I think, prevented the real vital needs of education being satisfactorily dealt with. I think I am expressing not the opinion on this side of the House only when I say that one reason why we looked forward with such great hope to the formation of the Education Settlement Committee was because we thought with this unhappy religious and sectarian question out of the road it would be possible to make much speedier progress with those reforms in education for which we have waited so long. I think, though the immediate settlement has failed, we do not regard the labours of the Committee as thrown away. We believe we have been drawn nearer to a settlement which will satisfy all reasonable people.

If I can claim no electoral mandate, I can at least claim for this Resolution that it represents the views of all social workers, inquirers, experts and economists, who have been brought- into direct touch with the problems of the youth of our country. Nor does the case rest on such evidence alone, for we have had presented to this House during the last year or two certain reports of unparalleled importance which no nation could delay long in giving its serious attention to. I refer particularly in this connection to the Reports presented by the Royal Commission on the Poor Law. Both the Majority and the Minority Reports devote a considerable amount of attention to the consideration of these educational problems. But I refer especially to the Report of the Consulta- tive Committee of the Board of Education on Continuation Schools, which appears to me to stand out amidst all the other reports as of very great importance indeed. The facts of the case arc there gathered together and marshalled with great care, skill and accuracy, and the deductions which are made from these facts are, I think, very clearly established. It is such a Report, in short, as we should have expected from this Committee when we remember the names of the men who composed it, and especially when we remember that it included a thinker like Mr. Michael Sadler, who has done so much for this cause, and a practical worker like Mr. Lewis Paton, of the Manchester Grammar School.

The criticism I make at the beginning on our system of elementary education is that it has made very slow progress indeed. It has kept for the most part in a certain narrow groove. I must not spend time now in examining the reason for this. I think if we entered upon any minute examination we should find that the terms "code" and "cost" would be used in this connection, but we have not shown any considerable enterprise in amending our system of education, though during the time it has existed we have seen unparalleled developments in our industrial system. We have seen very many changes and developments which require very important alterations in our method of education. Our system of elementary education remains a series of unrelated episodes. The system under which an elementary school boy is trained is not related as it should be to his after life and to the industrial future that awaits him. The Resolution I have the honour to submit affirms the existence of a direct relationship between the great national problem of unemployment and our system of child and adolescent labour. I need not remind the House that this is established in the Reports I have referred to, but I want to express in a sentence or two what this great problem of boy labour is, and how our system works. Under it many thousands of schoolboys, leaving each year the elementary schools, are compelled or driven through their ignorance and the ignorance of their parents, and through the poverty of their parents, into what I think are very aptly called "blind alley occupations." They leave the elementary schools, and without guidance and without knowledge they become van boys, errand boys, or newspaper boys. They go on the streets as traders, or they go to those many forms of industrial life where, owing to the specialisation of industry, they cannot hope to be absorbed as men. There is an ever-increasing demand for boy labour. The old apprenticeship system has died away, in consequence of changes in industrial conditions, and what particularly causes the employment of boy labour are these changes, and especially the great increase in our transport services. A boy goes immature in mind and body, and during the years he spends in these blind alley occupations he is not only under no educative influence, not only not learning any trade or industry which will give him a career in later life, but when he becomes a man he is worse off than on the day when he left school. He is physically, morally and mentally worse off. He has lost the little learning that he had. He has been subject to no discipline. He has deteriorated in every way, and it is not to be wondered at that such boys as young men are thrown aside on to the industrial scrap heap in order that their places may be taken by other members of this great army of boys. They not only enter the ranks of the unemployed, but speedily enter the ranks of the unemployable. In this connection I venture to read two short extractions, the first from the Majority Report, and the second from the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission. The first says:— The almost universal experience is that in large towns boys, owing to carelessness or selfishness on the part of the parents, or their own want of knowledge or foresight—for the parents very often have very little voice in the matter—plunge haphazard immediately on leaving school into occupations in which they earn wages sufficient to make them independent of parental control and disinclined for the lower wages of apprenticeships and workshops, and whence, if they remain on, they are excluded when they come to manhood. According to the main statistical sources of information, we find the very serious fact emerges that between 70 and 80 per cent. of hoys leaving elementary schools enter unskilled occupations. All our investigations go to show that there is a regular drift from such boys occupation into the low skilled labour market. The Minority Report says:— There is no subject as to which we have received so much and such conclusive evidence as upon the extent to which thousands of boys, from lack of any sort of training or industrial occupation, grow up almost inevitably so as to become chronically unemployed or under-employed, and presently to recruit the ranks of the unemployable. We regard this perpetual recruitment of the unemployable by tens of thousands of boys who, through neglect to provide them with suitable industrial training, may be said to graduate into unemployment as a matter of course, as perhaps the gravest of all the grave facts which the Commission has laid bare. But I take it that in every part of this House, as, indeed, all over the country. the facts which I have outlined as to the present working of our education and industrial system will not be denied. I think that there is a substantial measure of agreement between all parties as to the present grave evils connected with boy labour, and I propose in the few minutes that remain to me to deal with some of the remedies that we suggest, and which we think the situation calls for and public opinion is ready for. I wish first to speak of improvements in our existing schools. I dismiss for the moment the problem of the care of adolescents. It has been, I think, generally felt that the curriculum of our elementary schools is too limited, that it is too literary, and that it attempts too much and achieves too little. We think that the curriculum should be so improved as to include a much greater amount of manual training. We think that the classes of the elementary schools would be much smaller. In this connection we should all desire to acknowledge our great debt of gratitude to the present Minister of Education for the important step forward he has taken in this matter.

Closely related to the subject, of course, and to these points is the question of teaching. We look for a larger number of fully-qualified teachers, and we believe as we adopt these methods of improvement that we shall attract in an ever-increasing degree these men whom we so much wish to attract. Surely we want to aim at the same spirit of personal influence, the strongest of all influences, the human influence, in the elementary school, which we have used to so much advantage in our secondary schools and higher schools generally. That new spirit can only come with the improvements that I have mentioned. We desire to see the physical needs of the elementary school children paid more attention to, and I for one look forward to the day when we shall cease to build our elementary schools in the slums, without playgrounds, at the doors of the children they are intended for. I hope that under our new scheme of town planning the school bases will be a recognised institution, the school base in a country or semi-country place with ample playground; and if that day is in the distant future, I hope we shall take more advantage of our great parks. It appears to me that much good might be done by building our elementary schools on the margin of or very near to our great parks, so that they can be used to foster the outdoor life of elementary school children.

We have an example of what these new methods in education are capable of when we see what has been achieved in the work of the Boy Scouts. I do not speak of, I am not interested in, any scheme of Boy Scouts which is promoted on the assumption that when the bogey of invasion materialises they will be of assistance to us. I am thinking only of Boy Scouts as a Boys Order of Chivalry, where he is encouraged to live the outdoor life, where he is taught to use his powers of observation, to use his hands, and to become a handy boy, and where he is brought into contact with men of strong character. We have seen in connection with that movement the admirable phase of it developed by Sir Francis Vane, and what extremely good results are achieved from this most promising of all material. But I pass now to the more direct consideration of the problem given us by boys who have left our elementary school system. I suggest that we are agreed that we are making a fatal mistake when we withdraw our care for and supervision of these boys at an age when they most require such care and supervision, and that if we longer neglect it in connection with the elementary system we can only longer neglect it at the cost of the national well-being. All the Reports I have mentioned agree in recommending the raising of the school age. It is true that the Reports and opinions of experts vary as to the extent to which at once the school age should be raised, but there is this substantial measure of agreement, that the school age should be raised. We are losing our control of our children at too early an age. I will not go in detail through the separate recommendations of the Poor Law Report, of the Consultative Committee's Report, and others, but I do wish, in connection with the raising of the school age, to call the attention of the House to a few very important figures. It is estimated—and it is a very careful estimate, probably under rather than, over—that at the present time there are 211,000 children of school age—that is, between the ages of twelve and fourteen—who have obtained full-time exemption. They have gone to these blind alley occupations, and we have lost in the majority of cases all control over them. Of these 211,000 we know there are only 40,000 in attendance at any sort of evening school or any sort of continuation school, so that we have to do with 171,000 boys and girls between the ages of twelve and fourteen who are under no sort of educational care or discipline. I suggest that these figures are of vital importance, and in considering them we have to remember also that this total, great as it is, takes no heed whatever of the large number of children who are partially exempt from school attendance. It takes no notice whatever of the great army of child traders and what may be described as half-timers. If we go above the age of fourteen and consider the children from fourteen to seventeen years of age, we find in round figures that there are 2,000,000, and of that number only 25 per cent, are under any sort of educational care. Seventy-five per cent, of these 2,000,000 between the ages of fourteen and seventeen are under no sort of educational care, so that the case for raising the school age is justified by the gravity of the position as to which we have so much evidence that cannot be minimised in any way.

9.0 P.M.

In reference to the raising of the school age I am not concerned now to suggest to what point it should be raised, and what should be the special conditions, what the exceptions for local districts and for agricultural districts, for instance. I am not concerned to go into these details, but I say the raising of the school age in itself and by itself cannot meet the national need that exists to-day. It must be accompanied by a great development in our educational facilities, in our types of schools, in our methods of instruction, and especially in our technical and manual training schools. I suggest, too, that if, for instance, we follow the advice of the Consultative Committee and raise the age to fourteen, which is their advice, and is more cautious than the advice of the Poor Law Commissioners, I think it could well be said, with perfect truth, that a child of the age of fourteen should not be sent into the world and our care for him withdrawn. I come now to the chief educational claim which is considered to be necessary, and that is the system of compulsory education, of continuation schooling from the time of leaving the school until, say, the age of seventeen or eighteen. Any such system of compulsory training must, we think, be accompanied by a statutory limitation of the hours of labour. I think it only requires to be stated to be proved that it would be absurd to expect a boy, working long hours in the factory or in other existing employments at this period of his life to reap any real benefit by the system of instruction in evening schools. With regard to the kind of in- struction to be given in these years of adolescence, I will only add that I think it should aim not only at making him adaptable, making him resourceful, giving him technical training, and securing for him the ability to make a career for himself in later life, but it should aim also at his physical well-being, and it should bring to bear upon him moral influences, thus turning out a man qualified to discharge the duties of citizenship. I wish to say also, and it is a great defect in our present system, that we allow a child to enter industrial life in an improper way, and any reform must surely include supervision of employment as well as supervision of education. Indeed, the machinery for this supervision of employment is being rapidly brought into play, or may be rapidly brought into play, through the operation of Labour Exchanges. We think that the juvenile department in connection with these Labour Exchanges is one of very great importance, and without going into details, I think we must not be content with less than this, that whatever arrangements are made we should see to it that every boy or girl before he or she leaves the elementary school, has brought to bear upon him or her personal influence, so that no child shall enter industrial life without having had the very fullest information and the best education that it has been possible to give.

I have not had the time to deal with the objections which are raised and which will be raised to schemes such as those I have mentioned. I would venture to suggest our guiding principle should be the welfare of our youth, that they are our best assets as a nation, and that we should not allow them to be sacrificed for any consideration. Bon. Members in every part of the House have been brought into direct touch with social problems by their personal services in our great settlements and in other ways in the slums of our great cities, and I think they will agree with me as to the wastefulness of our present system. If I may venture to speak for them, and to interpret their views, and if their thoughts be mine, I would venture to say that they do not lose heart in social work, because whilst they realise that the best social schemes will not save many of the present generation, we yet can save the generations that are to come. Therefore, I submit, with much respect to the House, the Resolution which stands in my name.

Mr. S. H. BUTCHER

I beg to second the Resolution. I am sure the House must feel that the hon. Gentleman who has Moved has made out a very powerful and a convincing case. I will merely attempt to supplement slightly what he has said. I start from this significant fact that the Distress Committees of 1905–1907 report that nearly one out of every three qualified applicants are below the age of thirty. That startling fact is carried a step further in both the Majority and Minority Reports of the Poor Law Commission. There we find that among the chief causes of unemployment, the chief cause, which accounts for the ever-increasing ranks of the casually employed, is boy labour. That boy labour may be looked on from two points of view, either from the economic or the educational side. Its effects on the economic side are mainly these, that boy labour tends to displace adult labour by a cheaper and less efficient form of labour. On the educational side the effects are even more ruinous, because they go to the very heart of the matter, and touch the question of character. The kind of employment which those boys get is employment which is uneducational, unintelligent and monotonous. A boy goes from job to job with intervals of idleness, during which he loses all power of mental concentration. The work he does is in no sense a training. It is work that leads to nothing, it is work that has no future before it, and is, in fact, that kind of work that offers no prospect of regular adult employment to that boy when the boy becomes a man. His work does not fit him, it merely unfits him for his future life.

Can there be a more pathetic contrast than when you reflect that a boy at the age when he is least capable of labour has employment even more than he ought to have, and that afterwards, perhaps for the remainder of his life, he is either unemployed or under-employed, and that you can follow him through the whole course down that blind alley, as it has been called, of boy labour, through every grade of unemployment, or of under-employment which leads in very many instances either at the workhouse or the gaol. That surely is a great blot on our whole educational system. We spend millions of money lavishly and ungrudgingly upon elementary education, and while we do that with one hand, with another hand we throw away a large part of the results dl that education. There is so much sheer waste, lavish expenditure on one side, sheer waste on another, because at the most critical age of those young people we send them out adrift, without any care and without any provision. One thing we know a good education ought to have, and that is to make you hunger for more, to make you know when you are leaving school you are beginning your education, instead of ending it. One sees in the elementary schools that there are children who have got a sense of delight so long as they feel that they are making progress and going forward. Then comes the moment which means a loss of interest, and that fatal gap which has been spoken of as being filled up by years of mechanical and unintelligent toil, the result of which is that the love of learning is entirely deadened and the power of concentration gone, and intelligence and physique are both stunted, and character deteriorates and general incapacity is entailed. That is the real problem we have to deal with. It is quite true there are a certain number of young people who do now go to evening and continuation schools, but I would point out this fact, that comes out through statistics, that they do not go to those schools for the most part, in fact the great majority, direct from the day schools to the continuation schools. A couple of years are wasted in the interval, and with what result? The result is that when they go back to their learning, instead of going forward from the point at which they stopped, they have to go back to begin over again what they have already done to try to recover lost ground, to learn things that are half forgotten, and they bring into it a jaded mind instead of the old keen and alert intelligence. The very interesting and significant figures which have been given as to the number of those who, after they are fourteen years of age, get no education, or so slight an amount that it is almost negligible, point to the fact that at eighteen a young fellow has to begin all over again at enormous disadvantage. No one who considers the facts can doubt that a system which leads to such results is economically unsound and educationally ruinous.

What are the remedies? The interesting thing to my mind is that the different bodies which have investigated the problem have come so very nearly to the same conclusions. That applies to both the Majority and the Minority Reports of the Poor Law Commission, and also to the report of the Consultative Committee. Without going through the proposals in detail, I would just enumerate those which find favour in my mind. First, as regards elementary or day schools, I fully agree with the Mover of the Resolution that a change is needed in the curriculum, and that that change ought to be in the direction of less insistence upon mere book work, more direct contact with nature, and more manual training. Personally, I would be the last to say a word to underrate the value of literary education, but I am sure we have overdone it, and there we must learn some new lessons. In particular I must insist on the need of some variety of practice in the schools, and put in a special plea for the rural districts. You cannot advantageously have precisely the same curriculum in agricultural districts that you have in the city. I would urge on the Board of Education that they might well have more flexible regulations as regards such things as the equipment of workshops. The workshop in a rural village may well be a very different thing from the more costly workshop in the city. The identity of regulations which I believe exists is nothing short of pedantry. Next, I think the age of school attendance might be raised either to fifteen, as both the Majority and the Minority Reports agree, or to fourteen. You must abolish the half-time exemption under thirteen. You should abolish it, I think, by degrees, but ultimately altogether. In connection with that we have a very good example in the Scottish Act of 1901, which I am told is working remarkably well in Edinburgh. As an instance, I may give the one figure that the number of exemptions granted all over Scotland between the ages of twelve and fourteen was only 4.2 per cent, of the total scholars. Again, I would put in a claim for the rural schools. While believing in raising the age, I would give exceptional treatment to rural schools. A boy does not successfully engage in or get to like agriculture unless he takes to it young. I think a boy in an agricultural district would get a better education if he left school at twelve or thirteen, provided he afterwards carried on his education in a continuation school, than if he remained on to fifteen, afterwards becoming a loafer and learning nothing more. As to the raising of the age, I would certainly give a permissive power to the local authorities. Local conditions differ so greatly that you must not make a perfectly uniform rule. Local authorities ought to have power to make by-laws compelling attendance up to fourteen or fifteen years of age, whatever it may be, with special exemptions if necessary.

Second among the remedies I would name continuation schools. The subject of study and the work done in those schools ought, I imagine, to include both physical and technical training, with special reference to the local industries, including agriculture. I would also include moral instruction in the duties of citizenship. But continuation schools will not solve or help to solve the problem unless you have a measure of compulsion. What should be the form of that compulsion? You will have to compel three different sets of people. First of all, local authorities must be put under a statutory obligation to provide continuation schools for young people up to seventeen, or whatever the age is, as they do in several foreign countries. Secondly, you will have to compel the attendance of the young people. That can only be done by giving the local authorities permissive power to enforce attendance. I would not make attendance obligatory everywhere. In some country parts it would be a mistake to enforce that; but by arrangement, by choosing the seasons of the year and the time of the day or evening it would be possible for the local authorities who know their business to produce reasonable rules for compulsory attendance. Thirdly, compulsion on the employers is absolutely necessary if the scheme is to work. That is to say, it should be made illegal for an employer to have in his employment young people at the age of which we are speaking unless they are in regular attendance at a continuation school. Personally, I would add one other thing, in regard to which I am afraid the Mover of the Resolution will entirely part company with me. I would add a short period of universal and compulsory military training. That is not the spirit of militarism. I feel confident that that short period of training, quite apart from whatever effect it might have in connection with the defence of the country, would turn out men physically sound, industrially fit, and more capable of performing the larger duties of citizenship. The last word I should say is: There are objections that may be raised, and real difficulties to be met. The difficulties are mainly of an industrial and financial order. First of all, it may be said, that if you withdraw so many young people, boys and girls, from employment that you will very seriously disturb the labour market, and that you will produce some industrial disorganisation. Undoubtedly there is force in that objection. I would submit, however, that if the changes which we are suggesting on both sides of the House came into existence they would not come in very rapidly. They would come in gradually, and would be spread over a sufficient time to allow the labour market to adjust itself to the new conditions. Of this, I think, we are all agreed, if those changes came gradually, that the result in the end would be to establish much sounder economic conditions than exist to-day. The other objection, the other difficulty, possibly the greatest of all, is the cost of this educational reform. Whether we look at the cost of the elementary schools and the proposed changes, or the continuation schools, it will mean large subsidies from the central authority. There is no doubt about that. If the State is not prepared to spend that money I fear these reforms cannot come about.

But what I would submit is this: that if the cost is thereby increased the efficiency of our citizens will be increased out of all proportion to the cost. If ever the expenditure of money repaid itself, in the truest sense of the word that expenditure would be reproductive. Anyhow, I would express the hope that both sides of the House may help to work out this problem. I believe we are almost in complete agreement —for I do not think there is any party in this. It is a problem which is urgent. All the facts of it have been supplied to us. We have had time to make up our minds, or at least to consider the various schemes. We ought, I think, to unite in making a national effort to check the waste of human material and to prevent that which is the saddest of all things, the wreckage of young lives, and the loss of early hope in many who have as yet hardly entered upon their career. The future of this country, as a great industrial nation, and, I believe, even as an Imperial race, will depend very largely on the measures we take to meet this gigantic evil.

Mr. ELVERSTON

I think the hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid-Lanark has, by putting down this Motion, certainly drawn attention to an outstanding blot upon our educational system. The absence of adequate provision for those who have completed the elementary school course, and do not proceed to a secondary school, is one of the most serious outlooks at the present time before this country. We are, as the hon. Gentleman opposite said, spending millions of money upon the elementary education of our children up to the age of thirteen or fourteen. Then we turn them over to the education of the streets. Cast adrift, they can only rely upon their own efforts, and they are a serious and grave social menace. As a consequence they certainly add very largely to the ranks of the unemployed. It is a serious thing that at the present time only one out of every six persons between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one is receiving a systematic education; that no less than 2,000,000 out of 2,800,000 between the ages of fourteen and eighteen have done with education once and for all. In the interests of the country, quite as much as in the interests of the children themselves, it is essential that local authorities should be compelled to provide further educational facilities. I quite agree with hon. Gentlemen who have spoken to-night that it is essential also that attendance at these schools shall be made obligatory upon the children. I am of opinion that there should be attached to our elementary schools technical or industrial departments for boys who are serving their apprenticeship, and that they should attend in these schools for two years, from fourteen to sixteen, as part of their period of apprenticeship. Such a school as I have in my mind has recently been opened by the London County Council, who have a technical school for boys to teach them the business of book production—letterpress printing, bookbinding, and the rest. A similar department might be added to many of our higher elementary schools in accordance with the trades of the locality, agriculture, commerce, or whatever industry might be taught at such schools. Since I came into this House I have been very much impressed with the feverish anxiety that hon. Gentlemen on the opposite benches have displayed to try to prove that this country is not keeping pace with Germany in the race for "Dreadnoughts." I was glad to hear from the few hon. Gentlemen who have addressed the House remarks to the effect that they do desire that this country should keep pace with Germany in the race for education.

The German Government, at any rate, appears to be fully convinced that education will be the determining factor in the future of nations. Germany to-day is, at any rate, of opinion that brains and not bullets will eventually prevail. There is plenty of evidence to show that the extra- ordinary industrial development of Germany during the past generation is mainly attributable to its educational system, and not to another cause, which it is often attributed by hon. Gentlemen on the other side of this House. In elementary education Germany had a start of something like a century over Great Britain. Rich and poor alike were obliged to attend the elementary school in practically every German State for a hundred years before the Forster Act. Germany is now paying very great and special attention to this subject of continuation schools. We find that every year an increasing number of students are being taught commercial knowledge in the continuation schools which have been established in Germany during the last ten years. In 1907 there were 1,600 of these continuation schools, and in the same year no less than 50,000 students from the rural districts as compared with 8,000 students some twenty years ago. During the last eight or nine years Germany has increased her State grant for this particular kind of education by no less than 100 per cent. This extraordinary activity should surely stimulate the people of this country to something very similar. The same activity has been going on in Holland ever since 1900. In that country every Commune has been obliged to provide a continuation school for the children, at which they may attend if they wish. Attendance at the German continuation schools is an obligatory matter.

We have in this country technical schools which compare with those of any other country in the world, but we do lack in this country a better quality of pupils for these technical schools. A sound general education is an essential necessity to successful technical training, and if we were to insist upon children attending continuation schools after the age of fourteen, we should be doing something towards supplying our technical institutions with better materials, and would produce better results. Believing, as I do, that localities which provide a high standard of education are performing a great national service, I would venture to take advantage of the last line of this Resolution to ask the President of the Board of Education whether it would be possible for him to use his influence to secure further financial help for the poorer areas in this country, insisting, of course, that the Government should be satisfied with the manner in which the work was carried on. I know perfectly well that when public money is to be secured there is a general scramble for it from every part of the country, and I also know that it is generally thought that Imperial grants may lead to extravagance of administration, but those fears are more imaginary than real. Certainly the experience of the last seventeen years points to this. But there is a fear, and very real fear at the present time that local authorities, finding the cost of education such a heavy burden upon them will pinch and starve that great service whenever and wherever they can.

I have had the honour of serving upon the Manchester Education Committee for a good many years, and I must say there is a difference of feeling on that Committee now from what there was five or six years ago. The increased demands put upon the local authorities by the Board of Education are making it literally impossible for them to do more than they are doing at the present time, and if there are to be further developments the money can only come from one source, and that is the Imperial Exchequer. I would most respectfully ask the President of the Board of Education if he cannot see his way to do what I have suggested, to, at any rate, see if it is not possible to readjust the basis upon which special grants are given at the present time. I might remind the House that since 1905 the sum of £200,000 a year has been provided for the purpose of helping certain local authorities in whose area the rate for elementary education is specially high. The regulation under which the grant is paid provides that where this part of the expenditure for education is met by a rate exceeding one-sixth in the £ the Imperial Exchequer may come to its aid to the extent of about 75 per cent, of the balance, but, having offered this encouragement and help to the poorer local authorities, it was forthwith modified. After the first year a Clause was inserted in the regulations to the effect that grants would not be paid to any local authority which had not already participated in the special grant. We know, of course, it is a very difficult matter to readjust grants from year to year. The House will remember that on 8th April last the President of the Board of Education, in answer to a question, admitted that some seventeen authorities raised rates of more than Is. 6d. in the £ for elementary education, but they are excluded from any participation in the special grant because of the autocratic regulation that only first comers should share in these particular benefits.

I think many hon. Members will agree with me that the present basis of distribution is rather a curious one for a Liberal Government to perpetuate. Certainly it is lacking in the open-minded-ness and the ready adaptability to change which we usually associate with Liberal administration. I see that according to the latest Blue Book in my possession out of £157,000 distributed by the Board for this purpose £97,000 went to the county of Essex. West Ham alone received £55,700 in one year. Speaking on behalf of these other seventeen areas—and I may say the area which I have the privilege to represent in this House is one of them—I venture to ask whether now, after a period of five years, it is not possible for this matter to be at any rate reconsidered. The restriction, we know, was doubtless originally created for the purpose of keeping the grant within the limit of £200,000, and we know the grant was originally intended to be only a temporary affair, but, as I have already said, education is a national rather than a local service, and Parliament ought to equalise the burden of this service upon the various localities and not leave some to be doing work which ought to be done by others.

Mr. HOARE

As the only member of the London education authority who is also a Member of this House it may be interesting in this discussion for me to briefly allude to one or two points that seem to me to have weight in connection with the question raised by the hon. Member for Mid-Lanark. Reference was made by my hon. Friend (Mr. S. II. Butcher) to the insistency of the problem with reference to rural schools. The problem is insistent, but I venture to urge, from its magnitude in the county of London, that problem is even more insistent in London than in the rural districts. In London we are dealing with something like 1,000.000 children, and we are spending considerably over £5.000,000 a year on our elementary and other schools. We are administering educational institutions of every kind. If a child desires to go to a secondary school a large quantity of those schools are supported by the London County Council to which such children can go. If a child wishes to go to those schools and its parents have not the means to maintain the child there we have a very liberal and generous scholarship system which the London County Council adopted several years ago. At the present moment we are spending £250,000 a year on our.scholarship system by which children have been provided with a ladder enabling them to pass from the provided, or non-provided schools, to the secondary school and the university. I may mention only last year one of our scholars was senior wrangler at Cambridge. We also have a large number of technical institutions and trade schools; indeed, I think I may very well quote the lines of Crahbe:— To every class we have a school assigned; Rules for all ranks and food for every mind. Side by side with all these educational facilities, there are remarkable industrial opportunities as well. It may sound a hackneyed thing to say, but it is a true one, that the county of London is the greatest industrial centre in the world. I have taken the trouble to get out a few figures from the 1901 Census. I find that the number of men, women, boys and girls employed in the factories and workshops in London, apart from the commercial warehouses, business institutions, and domestic service, is very nearly 600,000. One would think the London child with all these various educational opportunities and all these industrial advantages in regard to employment ought to be in a particularly favourable position. But what do we find? If we consider the statistics given and the researches of such authorities as Mr. Charles Booth, we find that at the present time London is dependent for two-thirds of its skilled labour not on boys and girls who are London born and bred, but on boys and girls and men and women who come from the provinces. If we look to the ranks of casual labour we find that no less than 70 per cent. of the dock labour in the Metropolis is London born and bred. If we take institutions like common lodging houses and the Salvation Army and the Church Army shelters, we find eight or nine out of every ten men and women who take refuge there are London born and bred. If we ask ourselves what is the reason for this very remarkable disproportion between educational facilities and the opportunities that are taken advantage of by London children, it seems to me that two reasons at least can be given. In the first place the London child has a peculiar temptation to enter those blind alleys about which we have heard to-night. There are probably better facilities for transport in a metropolitan area than there is anywhere else. In the case of the London child it is very often the child who decides what profession or trade he shall enter. The child generally decides this at the age of fourteen or fifteen years, when he is manifestly unfit to make that choice. No wonder, then, with the encouragement that the parents give him in nine cases out of ten, he chooses to earn at once a certain amount of money rather than to learn for a longer period, and defer the receiving of high wages for two or three years during which he may continue his education.

Side by side with this there is very good reason for an employer in London giving a preference consciously or unconsciously to provincial men and women. This is due to the fact that in the provinces rents and rates are lower, and there is much more opportunity for a boy to attach himself to some particular trade and to learn the elementary details of that trade, whereas in London, with high rates and high rents, a great many employers cannot afford to have a beginner on their staff. That is the reason why they give a preference to a boy who has had this opportunity in the provinces when he has not had a similar opportunity in London. Side by side with the great temptation to casual labour and casual occupation in London there is this preference, which, consciously or unconsciously, the employer gives to a country child. With these two facts before us it is of the utmost importance for this House to consider what steps can be taken to remedy this very grave evil.

Let me say at once that I am in entire agreement with the suggestions that have fallen from hon. Gentlemen who have already spoken. There is one exception, and that is with reference to the commercial superiority of Germany, but this point, as the Debate has been non-controversial, I shall not elaborate. There are many lines upon which the problem can be simplified and differentiated. There are the Labour Exchanges, the work being done by the teachers in the elementary schools, the Care Committees, and the apprenticeship and skilled employment associations. All these bodies, each in their own particular way, are doing excellent work, but you cannot get the full benefit of that work until you have adopted the recommendations urged to-night. In the first place you must alter or modify the present curriculum in our elementary schools. In the past that curriculum has been too much in the direction of academic and commercial occupations, and it must needs be that if we are to remedy this state of affairs we must import an industrial bias to the education given in the majority of our elementary schools. If you are to have an industrial bias successfully imparted in the elementary schools you must go back a step further, and see that the teachers are qualified to give industrial training. In the training colleges the same preponderance is given to academic learning as in the elementary schools; therefore, if you wish an industrial bias imparted in our elementary schools, you must see that the atmosphere of the training colleges must be altered, so that the teachers may be well qualified to give this particular kind of industrial training. Side by side with that you must increase the accommodation now provided in the higher trade schools such as we possess in London and the various technical institutions. I am glad to think that the London education authority is realising the importance of this particular movement, and is pressing on as fast as it can with an increase in the accommodation of its trade and technical classes. I find that during the last three years something like 1,000 new places have been provided in the trade schools or technical classes, but, in order to get the full benefit of this new tendency in elementary and higher education, you must go a step further, and increase the school age.

There have been several alterations in the school age, but it is a noteworthy fact that the last alteration took place, I think I am right in saying, as long ago as 1889. Since that time there have been many changes in our industrial outlook, and it does seem to me the time has now come to further extend the age of compulsory attendance at any rate up to fifteen. That, of course, will cost a very large sum of money, and here I come to the second part of the hon. Member's Resolution, a part to which I do not think he paid sufficient attention, because it is a very material point. If we are to extend the age of compulsory attendance in the county of London it will cost the London ratepayers £188,000 a year. It will mean providing something like 60,000 new places for boys and girls in our elementary schools, and that comes to £188,000. We are already at our wits end to find the money for the various branches of public education in London, and I am certain, if we do not receive a very large extra grant from the National Exchequer, there is no chance whatever of this most necessary and urgent reform being carried out.

May I, before I sit down, refer to the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Local Taxation? The President of the Board of Education will there find the case for increased grants to education set out in a forcible and undeniable manner. It is shown how education is one of the most national of all the services, and I venture, as a member of the London education authority, to press upon him as strongly as I can that if these most necessary reforms are to be carried out, and carried out soon, he will have to find very largely increased grants from the National Exchequer.

10.0 P.M.

Mr. GEORGE ROBERTS

I think we are all glad to find that there is so much unanimity on this question. We are all agreed that our present educational system is most unsatisfactory, and that reform is urgent; and there are points on which all parties are agreed in order to promote the educational efficiency of the country. I know various opinions are held as to what is essential in order to attain the desired end, but I will endeavour to emulate the example of previous speakers and avoid anything of a violently controversial nature. First of all, I think we shall have to admit that school life at present is far too short. I find there is some little dissent from that, but I do not think it is great. We endeavour to cram too much education into a comparatively few years of a child's life, and all education reformers are agreed that it is absolutely essential to raise the school age as early as possible. Side by side with that there is another problem which is receiving considerable attention, and in regard to which I believe a great consensus of opinion is being formed in favour of its solution.

The half-time system is inseparably wrapped up with this question of the raising of the school age, and I feel the time has arrived when all parties in the State might unite for the purpose of solving that problem. I believe that the opposition which has prevailed in Lancashire and Yorkshire is now being allayed. We have been compelled to recognise that parents have been at fault in this particular phase of the educational question, and one of our first considerations has been the necessity of bringing them round to a greater recognition of their duty to their children, I believe we are now coming to the conclusion that, after all, a section of parents cannot be allowed to alone dominate this question. The nation recognises that an efficient education for every unit of its population is desirable and essential, and, if it should be that any fault of a given number of parents stands in the way of this attainment, then I think we ought to recognise our duty to overcome the fault of those parents in order that we may attain to this higher form of educational efficiency. It is not only a question affecting the particular parent or the particular child. The prevalence of the half-time system in certain of our schools is inimical to the educational progress of those even in attendance during the whole of the school hours. I am glad to observe that there is an increasing recognition of the necessity for educational reform, and, having arrived at that conclusion, I feel we must contemplate this matter of the half-time system as one of the essential parts of that reform. Progress has undoubtedly been made during recent years.

The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Education has been congratulated upon the issue of what is known as Circular No. 709. This is a very good administrative improvement long overdue, but it does not altogether concede what educational reformers desire. Nevertheless, it is a tangible step in the right direction. We are gratified that it should have been undertaken, and we hope that the success which will inevitably attend upon this reform may be an inspiration to the right hon. Gentleman and his successors to proceed further along the same line. Unless our teachers are able to have restricted classes they cannot note the various qualities of the children. When I was connected with educational administration and used to visit a number of public schools, I used to regard some of the teachers as more in the nature of drill sergeants than instructors. A great deal of their time was occupied in maintaining order and discipline in their classes. An hon. Member says that is a very good thing, but it is not the altogether absorbing quality of our teaching profession. Therefore all educationists are getting to recognise that classes should be made.smaller in order that the teachers may give closer individual attention to the various qualities of their children, because, as was well observed by the Seconder of the Resolution, it is not alone the question of cramming instruction into our children that is aimed at. The real purpose of education is to create a desire on the part of the child for more of that education. I am one of those who believe that without education our people will never learn how to live. It is only educated persons who realise the loftiest pleasures of life, and, therefore, I view the question from a dual aspect. Not only do I agree that the productivity and quality of labour should be promoted, but I desire it also to be cultured and refined, in order that the people may enjoy life as fully and completely as any other class. I am quite prepared to accept the standard set and enjoyed by other classes of society, which keep their children at school till they are over twenty. That is a good thing, and I am hoping to see the pathway opened for children of the working classes to enjoy equal facilities, which, alone, shall be restricted by the possibility of assimilating the education which may be provided in those higher stages. I feel we have cause to congratulate ourselves on some little progress having been made in encouraging it.

Emerging from this discussion has been the insistence on the necessity of looping up the various phases of education so that children may pass from one scheme to another without break. Therefore the idea of continuation schools has been suggested, and is receiving considerable attention in the country. It is but right it should have been introduced into this discussion. I quite agree that every inducement should be given to compel our children to avail themselves of the highest forms of education that the State can provide for them. I am a strenuous advocate, therefore, of the extension of the school age. I feel that fifteen might be the immediate enactment, and, subsequently, sixteen might be adopted, and even then the education should not be broken, but provision should be incorporated for the attendance of the lads and girls at continuation classes in connection with the employment that they may be adopting. There is just one little danger that we on these benches are too apprehensive of. We are fearful, unless we restrict the hours of labour during which children may be employed of their, being overworked and being rendered unable to avail themselves of the facilities provided in our continuation classes. Therefore we are putting forward as an essential feature of the continuation school system a proposal that the permissible hours of boy labour shall be curtailed. In brief the idea is that the time spent in the continuation school and in the workshop or factory shall not exceed the normal working day applicable to that class of labour. I find a general recognition when we are dealing with the unemployed problem that we are brought into close contact with large masses of unskilled and uneducated labour. Some are inclined to think that if we simply educate those who are uneducated at the present time, and if we give trades to those classes which do not practice trades, we are solving the unemployed problem. I do not think we are justified in putting that forward in serious fashion, for there are large groups of highly skilled labour in our midst even at the present time who are unable to find a market for their labour. But during times of depression the ranks of unemployment are no doubt recruited first from the ranks of those who are least skilled and least educated. Therefore one is bound to recognise that the promotion of education and the creation of a higher amount of skill amongst those classes may do something to mitigate the evil, though, possibly, some people expect a great deal more in that direction than is likely to be realised even if their ideas were put into an enactment.

I recognise, too, that a higher amount of technical training is desirable. There is a great misuse of boy labour in our midst owing to the ever-increasing encroachments of machinery into the domains of industry as a consequence of the subdivision of industries we find that there is a great demand for boy labour for a limited number of years. These boys enter the mill or factory, and they are engaged in one small monotonous operation during the whole time of their employment. Subsequently, when they reach the adult stage and make a demand for a man's remuneration they are passed on one side, and more boys are introduced, and it is quite true that these lads have no outlook in life, and undoubtedly go largely to recruit the unemployed army in our midst. I admit, therefore, the necessity for a greater amount of technical skill and training in connection with our educational system. Nevertheless, we must recognise that we should provide employment for that class of labour, and it will become incumbent on the State to organise national labour so that it may be absorbed within its ranks. One hon. Gentleman has introduced the question of transit labour in the country. It is widely recognised that the hours in this form of industry are inordinately long, and were they re- duced it would provide avenues of employment for large numbers of people. I stated at the outset of my brief observations that I desired to avoid unduly controversial questions, but I will venture to lay down this proposition. If we are able to place within the reach of every lad in the community a high form of education with skill in some form of craft, it will then become necessary on the part of the State, in order that it may not forfeit the expenditure incurred, to regularise the hours of labour and to organise national labour conditions in order that these men may find their proper place therein. I recognise that the concluding portion of the Resolution is not the least important part of it. Undoubtedly every Minister at the Education Department has been pressed for larger grants in aid of the educational administration of the country. Undoubtedly this demand will have to be insisted upon and further grants will have subsequently to be made, because there is a, large margin in this problem which is really a poverty characteristic. There are some parents, however much they might desire it, who could not afford to keep their children at school for the higher age, and if we are really anxious that every child should have equal opportunity for availing themselves of educational facilities, then I contemplate that we shall have to recognise the poverty conditions and come to the aid of the parents in those cases. Of course I contemplate that this will immediately conjure up evils in the minds of some people, but I venture to look upon this as merely a temporary liability, because I am certain that if we give the children a fair start in the form of educational and technical equipment then we shall make it possible for them to work out their own salvation and become independent citizens in our land, and it will not be necessary for them to rely upon the social effort and assistance which their parents might require at the present time. I said that there were one or two controversial points introduced into the discussion, but on the whole I am pleased to observe so much harmony and unanimity on this question that I hesitate to make anything in the nature of critical observations thereon. I can simply say as far as the party with whom I am associated, and on whose behalf I speak tonight are concerned, that we support the Resolution, because it moves in the right direction, and because we recognise a desire that every child of every class in the country should have placed within its reach the highest form of education that it can absorb, and because we realise that it is the highest interest of the State that the best which is in every child shall be brought out.

Sir W. ANSON

There is a great deal in this Resolution with which I think both sides of the House are heartily in accord, but it must be admitted that it is a proposition of the most general character, and the important part of it which comes at the end was hardly touched upon by the hon. Member who moved it. After all, when we are making a considerable demand upon the Imperial Exchequer for a purpose which we think desirable it is well to have some notion of the amount which is being asked for and of the bodies to whom the money is to go, and the hon. Member who moved the Resolution gave us no indication of the cost of the various remedies which he suggested, nor did he tells us whether he proposed that this money should go direct to the local authorities or should be placed at the disposal of the Board of Education to be doled out as they thought fit. For my own part, I should not be prepared to support the Resolution at all unless I thought the money was going to the local authorities, because, for one thing, the local authorities are precluded from differentiating in their assistance to any school by any other than educational considerations, whereas the Board of Education have a wider latitude. I will not, however, pursue that matter further. And, further, the local authorities have been greatly disappointed in the amount of whisky money placed at their disposal. I believe a good many of them are in serious financial straits, and that is a matter which I hope will engage the attention of the Board of Education and the Treasury. It is a matter which is left so vague that one would have been very glad to have some notion what it was that we were asking for when we made this general demand of the general character of which we all approve.

But the serious evil which we are asked to remedy is, I understand, that there is a great number of boys in all our large towns, and more particularly in London, who, as soon as they leave school, go into some employment which is of material assistance to the family for a limited number of years, but which leaves the boy stranded, having forgotten what he has learned at school, with no future before him, to drift into the ranks, first of the unemployed, and then of the unemployable. How is this to be remedied? The hon. Member spoke of "our" care and "our" supervision, as if there was no one responsible for the child but the State. I think the parent ought not to be left out of sight when we are considering how the child should best be brought up and how his future should be marked out. I quite agree that once we have taken away the child, as we do under our Education Acts, for the greater part of the working hours of every day from the control of his parents, the State incurs a certain responsibility in many respects which it cannot relieve itself of. On the other hand, we must not forget that the child is a member of the family and that the family is responsible as well as the State. I should be very sorry to use any language or accept any Resolution which in any way weakened parental responsibility over the child. The hon. Member suggested as remedies a better course of instruction at the elementary schools so as to fit boys to take better care of themselves when they left school and to go into some higher grade of education or to take up some employment. He said the curriculum was too literary, and ought to be made more scientific. At one time the pendulum in education had swung so completely over to the side of science—that was when I first had anything to do with the education of the children of this country—that it was necessary to redress the balance in order that the boy should have sufficient command of his own language to be able to express in intelligible terms what he had learnt. What I understand the hon. Member really meant was that literary education was of a pedantic character, that it did not really stimulate the intelligence of the child, and what we want is that such literary education as the child gets at the public elementary school, apart from the practical work, which I desire to see extended, should be the sort of teaching which makes the boy or girl wish to read, and to go on reading, books, and something besides the halfpenny papers.

Then the hon. Member thought that if the staffing of the schools was better, and the influence of the teacher more closely brought to bear upon the child, that would have a good effect. The personal influence of the teacher depends, of course entirely, in its value, or the quality of the teacher himself and the training of the teacher. It seems to me that the distinction between the good teacher and the mere lecturer is—[An HON. MEMBER: "The size of the class."]—whether he looks upon each child as a separate individual, as a creature in whom he can personally interest himself, and not as a mere member of a class, the size of which is comparatively immaterial. These are both desirable things, but they do not bring us to a solution of the problem of how, when a child leaves school, care is to be taken that he is embarked in an occupation which will be to his advantage. Hon. Members who have spoken adopted as a universal panacea the raising of the school age. While the raising of the school age would be a very good thing in many cases, it would not be a good thing in every case. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge University (Mr. S. H. Butcher) that in the rural schools we should rather lower than raise the age of compulsory school attendance. If you are to keep a man on the land you must get the child out of school at an earlier age than now. That is not inconsistent with the child's education. I would not take him out of school without keeping some hold upon him. Whoever employs him should be bound to see that he is worked properly, that he attends classes in the long evenings, and that his education is not lost sight of. I believe that combination of practical work and continuation studies would tend to keep our agricultural population on the land, and also to place their education at a higher level than it is now. Then as regards town schools, the occupations in one place are not the occupations in another. One sort of occupation is inconsistent with a continuance of school life, and another form of occupation makes it practically necessary that a boy should go on learning; but in all cases I entirely agree that whether the school age is increased or diminished, a boy should not be relieved from the liability to attend classes of some sort until he reaches the age of sixteen or seventeen. But we must bear in mind that when we lay down this hard and fast rule that no boy should leave an elementary school until he is fifteen, the Board of Education and the local authorities have provided a great variety of educational opportunities. There is beyond the elementary school the secondary school, which involves an outlay of time which many children are not able to give. Then there are the higher schools, the technical institutes, continuation classes, and various ways in which a boy may continue his education although he is engaged in some sort of occupation during the day which does not disable him from working at evening classes. From reading the Report of the Board of Education it is very encouraging to find how much trouble employers now take to ensure that those whom they employ continue their education and attend classes. That is done to a very much larger extent than formerly, and that interest which employers take in the continued education of the boys they employ is really an essential feature in the development of our education.

But there is one point on which I agree entirely with what fell from the Mover of the Resolution, that a boy should not be allowed to embark in any occupation without good advice and without some security that he is not taking up work which will lead to nothing and which will land him in difficulties a few years later. One way of doing that might be to put some constraint upon employers that those whom they employ must either continue their education or must be engaged in work which will lead to something in the future. But after all what is really wanted is that those who look after our elementary schools should take some interest in the future of the children as well as in their present teaching. What I have always thought is that the position of manager in one of our great elementary schools should be one of interest and ambition for anyone who cares about the future of our children, because we shall never solve this problem merely by legislation, nor by the use of public money, nor by successful administration, nor by the best of teachers, nor the best of curriculums. What is really wanted is that we should care more individually about one another, and that those who are well-to-do and those who have leisure should take more trouble about the lives and the homes of the poor.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Trevelyan)

I think the House will unquestionably feel that it owes a debt of gratitude to the Mover and Seconder of this Resolution for the large-minded experience with which they addressed themselves to the Question. I am myself rising at the conclusion of this Debate simply to express my sympathy with the Resolution on behalf of the Department for which I am speaking, and even, perhaps, more than sympathy, strong approval. In the few minutes during which I shall speak I do not propose to spend any time over the financial problem and the question of increased subsidy from the nation if any large reforms are initiated in the direction suggested by any of the speakers. It is not peculiar to the question which my hon. Friend has brought forward. The financial difficulty of local taxation is a general one which meets every reform and in particular obstructs the work of our Department at every turn. No one doubts that any great educational reform in the future must mean a greater expenditure of money. But neither do I doubt that if the conscience and imagination of the nation are struck by great reforms such as many of the speakers have foreshadowed to-night the nation will feel how small the sum is compared with their national resources which we are now spending on purposes of this sort. Consider how small the expenditure at this moment is upon our technical and evening schools. The nation is giving under half a million and the localities are providing about a million. That is to say, less than the cost of one battleship is being spent every year in dealing with what a great many of the very best judges in Church and State are apt now to say is the biggest social problem of all—how to give a fair start to the boys and girls leaving school, in some way that will enable them to start in employments that will not lead to nothing. The biggest question which we are discussing to-night is this immense, uncontrolled, unapprenticed army of children between thirteen and eighteen. Of all times in life the ages from thirteen to eighteen is perhaps the most critical. It is the age when children are still almost entirely imitative; they have no confirmed moral standard; it is an age in which everything is interesting to them, vice and virtue alike, and when they have no power of selection. It is an impressionable age in every way, and the great educational motto of the upper class is that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. They recognise that the public school is a most important part of education. It is a time when children, are most impressionable; and, when my right hon. Friend talks of parental responsibility, the way the upper classes, who have the chance of keeping their children at school, exercise parental responsibility is to insist on their continued education. What we ask to-day is that other classes who are not so fortunately situated, should also have the opportunity of insisting on their parental responsibility in the same kind of way. The question is, I think, rather more serious than some people imagine. There is an impression that in the last few years great progress has been made in the increasing number of children who now go to technical and education classes of various kinds. It is true that the attendance at these classes has greatly increased, but, unfortunately, we find that the younger the age the less has been the increase; in fact, that in the earliest ages of all up to fifteen there has not been an increase, but there has been an actual decrease of the number of children attending such classes. There has been no increase at all up to the age of twenty-one, and where the increase has taken place—an increase of something like 100,000 new students in the last seven or eight years—-it has been in adult students over the age of twenty-one, and not among the young, whose position, of course, we are really considering to-night. My hon. Friend, the Member for Mid-Lanark dealt with the way in which this immense number of children between fourteen and seventeen are at the present moment employed. I think the number getting no schooling at the present time is 1,500,000. Some of them are employed in ways that nobody would pretend to do other than regret. A large number of them are hardly distinguishable from loafers, or from those who do bits of street trading, which is a proficient school for the wastrels and thieves. Some time ago, I think it was the Commissioner of Police in Birmingham, who said that out of 713 children doing street trading in Birmingham, two-thirds of them had been prosecuted in the course of six months. Then the class of errand boys, messenger boys, and van boys, to which my hon. Friend alluded, are earning an honest wage, but, as everybody knows, their occupation lead to absolutely nothing. The boys are discarded at the age of sixteen or seventeen, or they discard themselves because they get a wage which is enough for a boy, but not enough for a man. But there is another thing which I hope the House will realise: Even those occupations in which boys and girls are engaged, and which are more or less skilled, often lead just as little to permanent occupations. I had the duty of going with a committee into the question of half-time in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and we went very thoroughly into it. We, of course, had to deal with one of the arguments which is always brought forward in favour of half-time—that it is a kind of apprenticeship for the children going into it. I do not say that that is altogether a false argument. But we found, when half-time work was under consideration in the neighbourhood of Bradford, the following conditions. I quote from the Report:— But the majority of the boys do not got permanent employment in the trade at all. Doffing or piecing is no apprenticeship to them because they do not continue in the trade. Between fifteen and eighteen years of age the greater part of the boys leave the trade, having lost an important part of their schooling, having acquired some preliminary knowledge of a trade which cannot find them employment, and are cast upon the labour market to try and find employment in a district, which is peculiarly deficient in well-paid male occupations. As far as the boys are concerned the system seems calculated to create casual and unskilled male labour. In Halifax the position is much the same as in Bradford. We are informed that it has been ascertained in the result of certain investigations into the careers of all the boys between thirteen and fourteen years of age in attendance at evening schools in that town in the Session 1903–4, that over 40 per cent. of the boys who had been half-timers, and subsequently remained in the mills as full-timers, drift into the unskilled labour market; and that 14 per cent, of the boys who hail been half-timers, but did not subsequently continue as mill hands, do the same. On the other hand, only 3 per cent, of the boys who did not work as half-timers drift into the unskilled labour market. That is the state of a great many of the children, who are naturally getting a certain skill in a particular occupation, and who are cast off when they are beginning to approach man's estate. I do not want to pretend, however, that the outlook is wholly bad. It is no doubt true that the great mass of children are at present not looked after as they should be; but when we consider in what direction the nation can move in order to remedy this evil we have no lack of guidance from experience. In the first place, there are local authorities in many of our big industrial towns who have done a great deal to get the whole of the child population into technical and continuation schools after the elementary period is over. Take the town of Halifax. 66 per cent, of the children who left elementary schools there regularly go on to the technical schools and the continuation schools. The principal of the technical school and the local authority do everything they can to induce them to continue at school. The result is, the custom of that town has begun to be that all children shall do so unless there is some obstacle which absolutely prevents them going on. I mention the case of Halifax, and there are other towns which, no doubt, are known to hon. Members. Then there are many employers at the present time, few it is true compared with the total number of employers, but a very perceptible number who insist on all their young employ½s under the age of seventeen and eighteen going to technical schools after their work, sometimes letting them off the last hour of their work, or, at any rate, seeing that they are not overworked, but insisting as a condition of employment that they shall go to the continuation classes. Great firms like Mather and Platt, Brunner and Mond, Crossley, and Vickers and Maxim all insist, although I am not quite certain of Vickers and Maxim, on the young men of their employ½s going to technical schools as part of their conditions of employment. The State also, I am glad to say, is trying in various directions to do the same thing. Apprentices in dockyards are expected to do it. The Postmaster-General is making up his mind that if by any plan boy messengers in the Post Office can obtain a steady education, they shall do so, and that the Post Office shall not be, as it is now to many boy messengers, a dead employment, ceasing at the age of sixteen. I think he hopes to find some plan by which that shall cease to be the case. This Session, unhappily, is not one in which there can be any legislation. I take it that both sides are largely agreed in regard to many of the things which have been said to-night, but there are few of the questions which will not lead to a great deal of discussion, even if they are not definitely contentious. Therefore, in a certain sense, I speak with greater freedom in that the Board of Education is not in this Session required to produce any legislation. But during the last year or two the Board, both its political head and its permanent officials, have been discussing many of these questions with a view to legislating as soon as possible. I am glad of this opportunity of stating publicly the directions in which the Board are prepared to move if time, money, and public opinion are favourable.

In the first place, as far as we are concerned, we have made up our mind that we want a more drastic method of dealing with street trading. The present law is insufficient. I will not say more than that, because a Committee is sitting on the subject, and will, I believe, report soon. All I can say is that the stronger their Report the better the Board of Education will be pleased, for I think there is very little, from all the evidence we have received, to show that street trading is anything but a curse. Further, we are certainly prepared for the abolition of the half-time system. The Committee over which I presided was unanimous in supporting the strong Report brought before it. The contentions in favour of half-time are steadily failing. Half-time is generally admitted to be educationally useless, and its industrial value to the children is greatly exaggerated. We are bound to recognise, however, that it is supported by a great deal of the stale force of custom. The working classes and the employers themselves do not like to change, not so much because they fear the change in regard to expense, but because they do not want to be bothered with it We think, also, that the time has come when children ought not, necessarily, to pass out of the guidance of the educational authorities at the age of fourteen, at any rate until they are provided with some kind of occupation which is of a more than temporary character. We ought to think of arriving at some kind of plan by which every boy or girl who is not apprenticed to some hopeful trade should be bound to continue to attend a day trade, secondary, or technical school, and in some way keep his mind and fingers alert until he can get a start.

This matter connects itself very closely with the new Labour Exchanges. We hope to be able to get statutory power to establish in this country what they have in Scotland statutory power to establish, namely, committees of the local education authorities, composed of educationists and others, systematically to watch the careers of children and to give them advice in co-operation with the heads of the Labour Exchanges. There are masses of parents who have not the knowledge of how to help their children, however much they may wish to do so. It is the children of these parents that we wish to help.

But I think the greatest question that has been raised to-day is the question of compulsory continuation schools. There are signs that opinion in England is coming round. This valuable Report of the Consultative Committee shows that by far the larger number of witnesses who gave evidence before it were in favour of some kind of compulsion. In the case of private firms they have insisted upon their young men going to technical continuation classes as a condition of their employment. 'The thing has been entirely satisfactory. Any objection, in the first instance by the parents themselves, and by the young people, has entirely disappeared. Everybody concerned recognises the advantage of a compulsory system enforced by private action of this sort. In many parts of Germany there is compulsion. I am not bringing that example forward only—for we have much better examples in our own country. Still it is a fact that within the last few years both employers and workmen in Germany have accepted willingly in many parts a system of compulsory evening schools. There is the case of Scotland. In 1908 the Scottish Education Bill included a clause which, enabled local authorities to adopt compulsory continuation classes. It is quite true that we do not know how it is going to work; but what we do know is this: that the proposal was supported by a great mass of Scottish opinion, and that there has been one interesting result of the discussions on that Bill which has brought the matter so closely before the public— that is, that the number of classes in Scotland in one year rose from 775 to 1,069.

We are bound, in considering the question of compulsion, to avoid the overstrain of children who have been working all day. I am anxious not to exaggerate, and there is no need to assume that a moderate amount of work cannot be followed in the evening by a moderate amount of intellectual exercise. In one of the cases I cited, Halifax, it is proved that there the great mass of the children do their day's work and afterwards go to the evening classes. Still there are unquestionably many trades in which the necessity for restriction is obvious—obvious if 'for no other reason than that some of the occupations go on till after the hour at which the classes begin. It certainly would be absolutely necessary, if you were to have any system of compulsion, to secure that the occupation should cease in time for the children to go to the classes. Therefore we have to face this: that if we are to have anything like a universal system of continuation schools we have got to impose some kind of obligation upon employers to shorten the hours, or at least to allow the children to come in" time for the classes. I quite admit that this, and, indeed, all the things of which I have spoken and which the greater part of the House are anxious to do, form a programme which requires a strong public opinion at its back. It will not be carried merely by people who are keen about education, as most of the Members of the House on both sides are. We have got to get the force of public opinion to override the objections of lesser and more immediate interests' by belief in greater national interests. For my part, I do not fear the lack of money. I think as surely as day follows the night the readiness to provide public money comes with enthusiasm for any great step forward such as we have been discussing to-night. We have not got to overcome Government reluctance or Treasury reluctance so much as other kinds of reluctance, such as the reluctance of the working classes to keep their children from the first profitable employment that comes to them. My hon. Friends below the Gangway know that. The scope for their energies in this direction is to get the working classes to accept that view if we are to push forward these things. Then there is the reluctance of the employers also to make arrangements for shorter hours for their young people. I believe it is possible to overcome that reluctance also.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War did ask a great many of the employers of the country, not only for their passive concurrence, but for their active co-operation in his Territorial scheme, and the result has been that large numbers of employers have inconvenienced themselves and allowed their employés to go for a much longer period of training which the Territorials now have than was required under former conditions. In the same way I believe it to be possible when our people understand that in this, as well.as in the defence of their country, it is a great patriotic duty to allow this sort of system of continued education to be set up, when we get that opinion formed, there will be no difficulty in this House, and there will be no political difficulty or Treasury difficulty, in enabling us to march on in the direction set out by those who moved this Resolution.

Question, "That in view of the relation of unemployment to adolescent and child labour, this House regards an improved educational system, with more adequate provision for the care and training of adolescents, as a matter of urgent necessity, and considers that the Imperial Exchequer should bear an increased share of the cost of this national service," put, and agreed to.