THE EDUCATION CODE. (Hansard, 12 July 1889)

§ * LORD NORTON

My Lords, I to move a Resolution, of which I given Notice— 239 That in the opinion of this House the Education Code should fix a certain general grant to all certified elementary schools, according to their circumstances, as the normal contribution of the State to the expenses incurred by managers, instead of the grants proposed in Article 100 (a) to be awarded on a graduated scale by the Department according to Reports of Inspectors on the efficiency, in various senses, of each school; and that any reported inefficiency should not be met by reducing the means of efficiency, but the grant should be continued until persistent refusal or neglect to amend the reported inefficiency should forfeit the certificate of the school. I hope your Lordships will accept my statement of petitions, of which I have about 50 to present, from Teachers' Associations and other bodies connected with national education in favour of this Motion. The 30th edition of the Education Code to which they refer, as your Lordships will have seen by the Report of what took place in the other House yesterday, is withdrawn, but some new edition must follow the Report of the Royal Commission, and the present is a favourable opportunity to pass in preparation such a Resolution as I now propose. It is most essential that that new edition of the Code should be based on sound principle, and should be upon permanent basis embodying the experience of so many years. There is nothing more injurious than constant change in a Code upon such a subject. I want to show your Lordships that all the demands for change may be traced to one source. At the bottom of all the dissatisfaction and faults found and demands for alteration is the radically vicious basis of co-operation between the managers who undertake national education and the State which subsidises their work. The managers are either school boards with unlimited command of local taxation, or voluntary bodies who began, and are carrying on, the work from private resources. Soon after I first reduced a mass of Minutes of Council on this subject to a Code, as Vice President of the Council Mr. Lowe (now Lord Sherbrooke) in revising it, following me in that office, originated the idea of the State dealing with managers on terms of bargain and sale. So many samples of instruction were to be produced for inspection, and were to be paid for, if approved, by the State. All the specified samples together, approved and accepted, would fall very 240 far short of anything that deserved to be called education; and, so purchased, must actually hinder it. Thirty years of such a mercenary system of piecemeal education have so utterly degraded the whole idea of the work, and so accustomed and practised those engaged in the trick of the bargain, that each yearly new edition of the terms is simply canvassed and estimated by the sum to be won out of it. I heard a leading educationalist the other day condemning the just withdrawn Code, on the ground that it would cause an actual loss of 4 ½d. a head in the school in which he was interested. One cannot but think when one reflects for a moment on what the real scope of education is, the formation of character, the instilling of sound principles of action, and the training of the intelligence of the great bulk of the nation, that it is a matter of grave importance to ascertain what is the cause of so much mischief. The educational value of the Code is merged in the simple cash calculation. The system is condemned. If anyone supposes I exaggerate in saying that the mode of payment is the root of all its evil, they have only to consider for a moment the grievances put forward. The Notice Paper of the other House shows 12 Amendments to the Code just withdrawn. I think that has been the cause for its withdrawal. Every grievance would be met by recognizing the true principle of a public support of education. For instance, complaints are made that under the present system there is a neglect of religious instruction. That is because a money grant cannot be attached even to elementary instruction in religion. Another very prominent grievance is that a sort of evanescent cramming of the memory has been substituted for the training of the intellect of children. Why is that? Simply because the payments depend on performances, and not on the requirement for education. Another grievance is the anxiety and distraction of mind arising from precarious income. Why is that? Because there has been substituted for a general contract for the great work of education, special payments for details of instruction. My Lords, I maintain that this system is condemned by all who have thought impartially about it. Nowhere is it more pointedly 241 condemned than in the Code which has just been withdrawn. That Code followed the Report of the Royal Commission in a wide departure from this system. It largely increased the fixed rate of support given by way of subsidy from the State, but at the same time it unfortunately retained a number of those special payments which have been the cause of mischief, enough to still vitiate the whole system. The Code, as withdrawn, after laying down most properly general conditions on which any subsidy should be obtained, proceeded only partially to enlarge the fixed part of the subsidy given by the State, and that in a precarious manner and with liability to total forfeiture; but it made up its amount by a number of the old grants in detail, and these would still be the most interesting stakes to play for, in hopes to cover expenses incurred. There were—a shilling for needle-work, a shilling for singing by note or sixpence by ear, one or two shillings for class subjects. English, geography, and history, and four shillings apiece for specific sciences and foreign languages, which the richer classes would monopolize. That Code recognized what was advocated only partially, and spoilt it by retaining what was condemned. There should, no doubt, be what this Code had not—namely, different curricula for schools in different circumstances; but in each case the State subsidy should be dependable and should be adequate for the contemplated work. What is the use of asking for half remedies, such as an extension of the 17s. 6d. limit of subsidy, which, indiscriminately applied, might be too much or too little; or for freedom from rates, which would be dangerous and unjustifiable indefinitely granted? Such is the necessary failure of a remedy which did not touch the cause of the old disease. What is wanted is not casual prizes, but means for the work to be done and for its necessary cost. So inveterate has become the earning, and eleemosynary, habit that a more definite contract between the State and managers is neither desired nor thought possible. Yet it is the practice of all other countries, including our Colonies. In Canada a supply from the Central School Fund is distributed to every school district simply in proportion to the school population, that is children between the age of five 242 and 15, and the rateable value of the district. The Mother Country might take a limit in practical wisdom from her daughter, and fix a normal scale of capitation for State subsidy to local managers, who would soon come to terms in detail with boards and voluntary contributors as to its application to their own particular requirements. But the Code made a further blunder in proposing the enlarged fixed subsidy to be awarded on a graduated scale, according to the inspectors' judgment of the comparative merit of schools as good, fair, or excellent. Inspectors were unanimous in their evidence of the impossibility of such discrimination, and the invidiousness and falsehood of the attempt. The fact that the sample turned out is not so good in one place as in another is no test of the merit of the teaching. The object is not competitive exhibitions, which, from the circumstances of the school or accident of pupils' intelligence, may vary inversely with the teachers' labour. The object is to put good education within the reach of all. A normal fixed State subsidy to local managers is the true principle for public support of national education, and this is gradually breaking on the long bewildered public mind. But there lingers still enough of the old fallacy to make some suppose a guarantee of work, and a stimulant to exertion, necessary in the shape of praemia on superior show, and fines on failure. It is strange that the teachers' profession should be thought incapable of the pride or honesty of good work, and to require enticing or flogging up to their duties by threats of their income being withdrawn, and of the very means for carrying on their service being mulcted—that they alone of all people in the country should be thought incapable of doing their duty, except by a 'petty system of rewards and punishments. I am convinced that your Lordships will not take that view. A false parallel has been put forward to bear out that view in the dependence of all work for profit on its success. The open market certainly will not come for nor remunerate unsuccessful product. But there is no parallel in that fact to a Government subsidy for national education by instalments of payment on details of approved instruction. The Government should take no 243 measure of the work required in subsidizing national education by non-success in particular performances. The Government should, by constant inspection, instead of that useless inspection which now goes on on fixed days, ascertain a bonâ fide service, and so long as is continued give a fixed subsidy of adequate amount. In case of persistent neglect or of misapplication of the means given they should withdraw them until their proper use was restored. The only objection that I have heard of any weight whatever is the notion that too much will have to be trusted to the inspector's judgment, but in any system there must be trust to the inspectors. In common with the Code proposal, on persistent refusal to correct faults the total grant should be taken away after, say, two years' warning. That I believe is the proposal that has been made in the Code, and I have made precisely the same proposal. But I would go further even than that. I would suggest that where an inspector's judgment is challenged there should be an appeal, to a sort of Committee of Inspectors. Your Lordships know there are similar means of appeal in other Department. My Lords, all I ask is the affirmation of a better principle for the New Code which must follow next year. I ask that a final draft of the Education Code should be made on a sound basis; that we must have at least the State subsidy fixed; and that the managers of our schools should be placed, in relation with the State, on terms suitable, independent, and adequate for the work of national education.

§ * VISCOUNT CRANBROOK

My Lords, I think it is a little hard of my noble Friend to repeat now to your 244 Lordships the same arguments as he urged on the last occasion when he brought the question before the House, and withdrew his Motion. My noble Friend who was a Member of the Royal Commission not only used all these arguments before, but he gave an opportunity to any Member of the Commission who might agree with him to sign the protest which he made upon this particular point, but he could not get any of his colleagues to join him in subscribing it, and it was made solely and entirely without their consent. The Report of the Royal Commission is most distinctly in contradiction to everything that my noble Friend has said in your Lordships' House. The New Code is no longer before the House, and we need no longer discuss it. But my noble Friend, after the explanation which he has given, finds at last that the principle embodied in the Report is the same as that which he himself adopted. I must ask your Lordships to see what it is that he proposes. It is that the House should lay down as the principle to be acted upon that any report of inefficiency in schools should not be met by reducing the means of efficiency, but that the "reported inefficiency" should be continued until persistent refusal or neglect to amend the reported inefficiency should forfeit the certificate of the school. The noble Lord does not mean this; but can he expect your Lordships to adopt a Resolution so drawn? Now, my Lords, just let me for one moment call your attention to the fact that the proposal of the Royal Commission, of which, as I have said, my noble Friend was a member, was that there should be a fixed grant of 10s. per child, and that the fluctuating grants beyond that should be so far modified as that their amount should depend upon and be regulated rather by the acquirements of the great majority of the scholars than the exact number of children who acquire the necessary standard. That is to say that they wanted it to depend no longer upon individual results, but upon the general condition of the school, the character of the teaching, and the order and discipline prevailing among the children. They expressed their conclusions in the most distinct terms, and they went on to say that the distribution of the 245 Parliamentary grant could not be made wholly free from the present system of examination, without greater evils resulting than those which it was sought to cure, nor could they believe that Parliament should make a larger grant without in some way satisfying itself that the quality of the education would justify the expenditure. But they also said that the present system of payment by results is carried too far, and is too rigidly applied, and that it ought to be applied for the interests of both the scholars and the teachers. That was the principle on which we proceeded. In that respect the Report of the minority was in practical agreement with that of the majority, and went distinctly in favour of that which had been voted by the majority. Therefore, I may say it is perfectly clear that what the Royal Commission recommended was a fixed grant, that each school should receive a certain amount in the course of the year, so that they would be enabled to make proper arrangements for teaching, and so forth, but that the teachers and managers should be able to earn more according to their qualifications and the manner in which they conducted the school. The inspectors were to report upon the moral training, accuracy, and general knowledge of each school, and upon the qualifications and instructions of the pupil teachers. They were to judge according to the best characteristics of the best schools, and according to the quality of each school they were to make the grant, and beyond that they were to give payment for certain subjects. I should have been very glad if an opportunity had been afforded of going into this question, and regret that the New Code has never yet undergone adequate discussion; but as my noble Friend is in opposition to all his colleagues on the Commission, as he has submitted to this House practically the same Motion once before, and it was withdrawn having received no support from your Lordships, I would ask you to negative the Resolution at present before you.