HL Deb 24 July 1900 vol 86 cc1024-37
LORD HENEAGE,

in rising to call attention to the Return issued in accordance with an Order of the House of Lords on 5th July, 1900, showing the results of the differential treatment in urban and rural schools, and to move— That the experiment of the last four years has been most injurious not only to the agricultural counties as a whole, but to the large majority of the Church of England voluntary schools associations, and should be discontinued, said: My Lords, I shall limit my very few remarks to the question of the differential treatment of schools in rural and urban districts. Some two months ago I asked my noble friend the Lord President of the Council if he would let me have a Return, which your Lordships have since had placed in your hands. My noble friend then made the very sensible suggestion that I should move for the Return as unopposed, and that any discussion should be taken after the Return had been laid. The Return has now been laid upon the Table, and we are now in a position to discuss the matter. In Lincolnshire we have lost a great deal of money, taking the rate at 5s. a head under the Act, under the differential treatment, and on two occasions the governing body of the Voluntary Schools Association of Lincolnshire has sent a memorial to the Education Department, which I hold in my hand, but with which I will not trouble your Lordships. Under the Voluntary Schools Act of 1897 the aid grant was to be not more than 5s. a j head, but no precise directions were laid down as to any differential treatment between schools in urban and rural districts. The principle or the experiment, whichever you like to call it, which has now been in practice ever since the Act was passed, I venture to say has not been satisfactory either to the rural schools or to the Church of England. In the few remarks I am going to make I propose to limit myself abso- lutely to facts and figures, and I am not going to make the slightest comment upon the Education Department. I think so far as the Departments are concerned they have given the associations every assistance they possibly could. They have shown considerable ability and the greatest courtesy to us when we have had reason to write to them for advice in conducting what has been a new and rather difficult experiment in legislation. I was told after the first year that the experiment had been a failure, and that it was likely not to be continued. Unfortunately it has now gone on for a period of four years. I am only dealing now with the throe years that are put forward in the Return, during which time the rate has been paid at 5s. 9d. per child for every child in the urban districts, and 3s. 3d. per child for every child in the rural districts. I am myself unable to see, and the members of the governing bodies to which I belong are utterly unable to see, why there should be this difference of treatment between the rural and urban districts. So far as we can judge, for what it is worth—and I have been on the executive body or central committee of the Lincolnshire Voluntary Schools Association for four years—it is the rural districts and not the urban districts which require the most favourable treatment. Again, it must be remembered that, although this aid grant is allocated at a differential rate towards urban and rural schools, the money is all pooled together when it arrives in the hands of the association, and the governing body can deal with it exactly as they like. As a matter of fact they do not care whether a school is in an urban or in a rural district. They only look to the necessities of the school, and they treat it as it ought to be treated, with equity and justice. But what is very material with regard to this differential treatment is that in associations where the children in rural schools are a larger number than in urban schools they are very great losers by this differential grant. The large towns and the large urban districts gain largely. The agricultural districts—your Lordships have only to look at the Return yourselves to see this—lose enormously, but they require the aid very much more, in my opinion, than the urban districts. In the large towns in most cases there are school boards, and therefore, looking at it entirely from an educational point of view, the children would receive education whether there were voluntary schools or not, but in the rural districts they would be without education altogether in a large proportion of the parishes if it were not for voluntary schools. You could not have boards at all—you could not get the men fitted to sit on the board; you could not get the rate to pay for the schools; these schools are very small schools. In Lincolnshire—I am speaking now from what I know—they do not average more than an attendance of thirty or forty children, and anyone who takes any interest in the education given in these very small schools knows that they get a very small education grant because there are so very few children to earn the grant. They are, therefore, in a very great difficulty in that respect, while if a competent staff is to be kept up to teach the children in their parishes as you would have them taught, it is kept up at greater relative expense. Therefore these small schools require special assistance, and I do not see why the grant to them should be less than the grant to the urban districts. I will give your Lordships only one example—I could give you a great number—of how absurd and ridiculous this distinction becomes. I am not going to say that there are not good reasons for it—no doubt the noble Duke will give your Lordships what he considers good reasons; but let me deal with three parishes close together in the north of Lincolnshire. Roxby, with a population of 378, has one school with an average attendance of 43 children. But that is an urban district, so that the allocation of the aid grant is at the rate of 5s. 9d. per child. The school is solvent and non-necessitous, and receives no aid grant. Close by are the two combined parishes —really one parish—Barsow-on-Humber and New Holland. They have two schools. Their population is 3,200. In the one school the average attendance is 222, and the school is non-necessitous; in the other the average attendance is 241, and the school is specially necessitous. Both these schools are in rural districts, and the money is paid on account of them to the governing association only at the rate of 3s. 3d. per child. Yet they want all the assistance that it is possible to give them. Now, I will not detain your Lordships at any length, but I should like to quote one or two figures to prove my case. I will ask your Lordships to allow me to deal with the results of the differential system of allocation of the Aid Grant on the agricultural county of Lincoln so far as the Church of England schools are concerned. In 1897 we had 44,253 children in average attendance. Of these 20,400 were in urban district schools, and were paid for at 5s. 9d. a head, and we received on their account £5,867 17s. 6d. The other children, 23,843, were at rural schools, and we received at the rate of 3s. 3d. a head for them, making £3,874 9s. 9d. So that, although there were 3,000 more children in the rural schools than in the urban schools, we received £2,000 less on account of payment of Aid Grant to deal with them. Similar results (I will not trouble your Lordships with the details) were arrived at in 1898 and 1899. In each of those three years we received, putting all the money together, at the rate of 4s. 5d. per head of the children. The total received in 1897 was £9,742 7s. 3d., instead of what we should have received at 5s. per head, £11,063 5s. In 1898 it was £9,731 2s., instead of £11,021 10s. In 1899 it was £9,692 3s., instead of £10,983 10s., or an actual loss of £3,759 19s. 5d. in three years, notwithstanding that we received 5s. 9d. for the children in the urban districts. Now, I have quoted the actual sums that were received on the allocation of the grant. Take those figures, in order to compare them with the figures in the Return, and you must add the second allotment, which is received some months afterwards, and in Lincolnshire amounts to one penny per child. I only say that because that shows the difference between the figures. Now, the general effect of this on the whole of the schools is that in forty-six Church of England Association schools only eight received at the rate of 5s. per head, whilst of those eight, five—London, Liverpool, Manchester, Wakefield, and Rochester—received at the rate of 5s. 6d. and upwards. The remaining thirty eight Church of England Association schools lose on an average 10 per cent. of the present differential rate allocated. As a consequence of this principle (I do not for a moment say that it is intentional) the Roman Catholic, the British and the Wesleyan schools gain very largely, because they are schools in the urban and not in rural districts. I may quote to your Lordships a paper which has been prepared upon this point which appears to me to be very accurate and worthy of notice. It is stated in the Schoolmaster of the 14th July that— In 1897 the Church Federations of London, Liverpool, and Manchester score no smaller amount than £15,295 above the 5s. limit, the chief losers being Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Wilts, Berkshire, Kent, Cumberland, Sussex, Dorset, Durham, and Essex. Therefore, it is practically at the cost of these other counties that these privileged federations receive their contributions. Thirty-eight Church Federations lose £27,684; that is, taking it at 5s. a head. Eight Church Federations gain £17,402, so that there is a net loss to the Church schools of over £10,000. That is the case I wish to bring forward. The memorial presented by the governing body last year, and which was again sent this year is as follows — The governing body of the Lincoln Diocesan Association of Voluntary Schools desire to represent to the Education Department that, in consequence of the different rates fixed for town and country schools, between which the distinction is in may cases artificial and anomalous, the total Aid Grant allotted to their Association fell short by no less a sum than £1,320 17s. 9d. of the amount which would have been received if 5s. per head had been given to town and country schools alike. The Association, having to deal with a large number of small country schools, in which the average cost per head of efficient maintenance must be greater than in any other class of schools, has therefore been unable to recommend grants adequate to help and increase the efficiency of many of the necessitous schools in its area; and it cannot with the present rates of allotment make satisfactory provision for improved training of pupil teachers, and for such objects as manual instruction in cookery. That is the case I have to present on behalf of the Lincolnshire governing body, and I am very sorry that it should have to come on at such a late period of the session and in so small a House. I am also exceeding sorry that I had to put this matter off from Friday last until this evening, because Lord Reay, who takes a very great interest in this matter, is unable to be here.

THE LORD BISHOP OF MAN-CHESTER

My Lords, as the Diocesan Associations of Liverpool and Manchester have been referred to as having been specially benefited by the distinction made between urban and rural schools, I think I should say a few words in favour of the discrimination. There are, I have no doubt, anomalies in special cases which it would be difficult to explain; but on the large scale I venture to think that there are very good reasons to be given for the present system. For instance, if you notice the number of children in the urban districts, that are spoken of rather depreciatingly by the noble Lord—

LORD HENEAGE

I did not intend to depreciate them at all.

THE LORD BISHOP OF MAN -CHESTER

I simply meant speaking of them depreciatingly in respect of the fact that they are a very small minority of the schools. I am trying to point out that, though they may seem to be a minority of the associations, they contain an enormous number of children in average attendance, and the London schools have as many as 120,000 children in average attendance, so that the number of children affected by any change in the present system will be considerable. Now I agree that if there be nothing different in the circumstances of the urban and village schools to justify discrimination there ought to be none; but I venture to think, at any rate, that these two reasons may be given for making the discrimination in Lancashire: first, the enormous number of school boards that exist there, the necessity of providing for rates in aid of these Board schools and also at the same time providing voluntary contributions, and the very much larger salaries that we are obliged to pay to our schoolmasters and our staff because of the competition of the Board schools making our expenses very much more than they would be. But the principal reason is this. There was an Act passed which if I am not misinformed (the Lord President will no doubt tell us) was intended mainly to benefit agricultural schools, an Act which enabled the parent of any child to demand that that child should be educated free of cost. Now that, I have no doubt, benefited greatly the agricultural districts. The fees paid there were very small, and the remission of the fee was therefore quite easy, but in the north the fees paid were very considerable— from 3d. to 6d. a week per child, and those fees wore easily paid because we had a large industrial population receiving high wages. It was never felt to be a burden. We had no difficulty in obtaining the money, but the moment the opportunity was afforded to those who were the poorer amongst the parents to demand free education, of course they demanded it. Further, I would venture to say to your Lordships, because I know it to be a fact, that a number of those who are unfriendly to Voluntary schools stimulated parents to make these demands with a view to making it more difficult to conduct voluntary schools, and then a feeling of chivalry on the part of those better paid of the working classes made them feel "Rather than leave the poorer of our brethren in an invidious position we will make the demand for free education." The result is that we have lost a very large proportion of the funds upon which we relied for the maintenance of elementary schools. That deficiency must be supplied in some way. I venture to say that the defency is small in agricultural districts because the fees charged were small and the remission was easy. The fees charged in manufacturing districts were considerable, and therefore their remission was a blow to the prosperity of the schools. Therefore, as they have those particular disabilities, I venture to submit to your Lordships it is fair that they should have a certain number of compensating advantages.

* THE BISHOP OF HEREFORD

My Lords, as representing a diocese quite at the opposite pole to that of my brother of Manchester, I should like to say a few words on this subject. I do not propose to follow him through the arguments that he has put before us, and I am not sure that I should agree absolutely and entirely with him, but my desire is rather to address myself to this question as representing one of the most rural of all the dioceses, and a diocese which has, if I may venture to say so, been more hardly hit by this method of distribution than any other diocese in the kingdom with possibly one or two exceptions. I was surprised that in the list of dioceses that had suffered the diocese of Hereford was not mentioned. The facts as put before us in this Return are that if the distribution had been at the rate of 5s. per child, we should have received for the Hereford diocese something like £5,914. As a matter of fact, we only received £4,795 a year, thus losing a sum of £1,119, or suffering, that is to say, to the extent of nearly 20 per cent. If we look at the rate per child which is received by my two associations, the Association of Hereford and the Association of Ludlow, it only averages 4s. 1d. per child. I venture to ask your Lordships to notice that this is one of the very lowest of all the averages throughout the kingdom. Now, my Lords, I wish to join with the noble Lord who has put this question to this extent, and to say that in the diocese of Hereford there is no doubt a good deal of feeling that we do not receive more than 4s. 1d. per child; but for myself I could not go further than saying that I shall be extremely grateful to the noble Duke if he sees his way by any means to give us a larger share of this Special Aid Grant, and in appealing to him I would venture to urge two reasons—both of them I feel to be strong reasons—why he should consider the possibility of giving us a little more money for our rural schools. One is that our schools throughout my diocese are many of them so very poor that we are obliged to employ a very large number of teachers, assistant teachers in particular, with qualifications which I am sure would not satisfy your Lordships. In my diocese, even in the city of Hereford, there are a very large number of teachers who are known in the language of the Education Department as Article 68. Now, my Lords, what is an Article 68? It is simply a respectable young woman who is eighteen years of age, and she has to present no other qualification whatever for employment as a teacher. Now, some of these young women are excellent teachers, but I cannot help thinking that it is unsatisfactory that, as part of our National school system, we should be obliged to employ so many assistant teachers who are not duly qualified. Many of them, I am bound to confess, are, in intellectual qualifications, hardly fitted to be teachers of the children of our rural population. Therefore, on this ground of want of more means—for these teachers are very poorly paid; indeed, the reason they are employed is that they can be got so cheap—I venture to appeal to the noble Duke to consider as favourably as possible this application. If he does entertain it he may rest assured that any additional money given for this purpose will be well administered. I have in my hands the report of my association, and I cannot but feel that it will be satisfactory for your Lordships to know how the Special Aid Grant which we have received has been spent. I find on looking at the matter that no less than 62 per cent. of the money that we receive has-been spent on the improvement of the salaries of the teachers—to my mind the very best and most economical way of spending such money, Then I find that 30 per cent. of this money has been spent on the improvement of furniture, books, apparatus, buildings, playgrounds, and the sanitary arrangement of the schools. So that on the whole sum that we have received under the Special Aid Grant something like 92 per cent. has. been expended on these most excellent improvements. That I cannot but hope the noble Duke will consider gives us some claim for any additional help which he feels able to bestow upon us. But, my Lords, having said so much, I am bound to say that, looking to the facts of the case, I should not envy the noble Duke if he were to take away from the urban districts—from my brother of Manchester and others—the money which has been allocated to them. It is a task which I hope he may be able to accomplish, but from which I should shrink. I am bound also to confess, having some knowledge of town schools as well as rural schools, that many of our urban schools are no Jess necessitous than those in the country. For myself, if I may be permitted to add a word or two, I must acknowledge that I look to other sources of help rather than to an additional share of the Special Aid Grant. In this connection I think it right that, as representing the schools in my district, I should express my gratitude to the noble Duke for having given us the prospect of additional help through the proposed block grant. It must not be forgotten that the working of that proposed method of the block grant, so far as I have been able to investigate, and as I understand it, is likely to bring very substantial additional assistance to our country schools. I have taken occasion to look into two or three of our typical schools and see what will be the probable effect of the new block grant, and I find that, taking one of our weak schools—and I am sorry to say that we have a great many of them, just as they have in Lincolnshire—I find it is a reasonable expectation that a school which has been receiving a grant of between £29 and £30 per annum will receive £33, so that that school will receive an advantage of something like 12 per cent. But turning to another school, of which we have a much larger proportion, that is the fair average country school—somewhat small —I find that such a school which has received £59 or £60 in the way of grants will probably receive over £70. For that addition we are very grateful. There is another class of school—there are not so many of them as we should all like to see —and that is the really good school. Now, the really good school in my district will hardly profit at all by the block grant system. A school which is receiving, perhaps, £240 or £245 per annum will be likely to lose about £5 per annum, and that, if I may venture to say so, is one of the defects of the proposed change to the block grant, that it does not give so much assistance and encouragement as I think they deserve to the best class of schools. One cannot help thinking that in every educational reform it is desirable to encourage the highest and best schools, and this change, unless it can be in some way amended, will, I fear, rather tend to lower the standard of education in some respects than to raise it. I find that the block grant has been received by the teaching profession with acclamation, and I am not surprised, because teachers are human like other people. The best teachers welcome it because it will give them more liberty to teach in the best way, and the other teachers welcome it because it gives them more freedom from minute regulation. I am afraid that under that system some slackness may come in, and individual children may be neglected, and the education may not advance in consequence as the noble Duke would desire. Therefore I hope some special care may be taken as to the instructions issued to the inspectors in order that this system may not do some harm as against the direct financial good that it will do. But, my Lords, there is still another point that I desire to urge upon the noble Duke in connection with this matter, and that is that he may give us in our best country schools very material assistance if he will make the new higher education minute apply to our good country schools. If it is simply to apply to a separate school, such as a higher grade school in a town where it is not always very welcome, then it will be almost entirely inoperative in a diocese like mine and will do practically no good, but if it could be extended so that in any good, efficient elementary country school the managers might be at liberty to add a higher elementary top, that would be a great boon to us in the country and a great assistance to our rural education. My Lords, there is just one other remark I may venture to make, and that is that while we are grateful for the additional assistance given us under the block grant, while we shall be grateful if we can have more of the Special Aid Grant, I have the profound conviction that we shall never be able to put our rural schools on a satisfactory basis, or to give the children of our rural population the sort of education that we ought to give them until Her Majesty's Government can devise some means of putting our parish schools under public management. I cannot but hope that this may be done, that the noble Duke may before long see his way to do it by introducing some Bill which will enable the managers of Voluntary schools to approach, let us say, the parish council, with a view to a parish education committee, all religious education to be reasonably safeguarded. On that parish education committee, of course, the parish council should have the majority of managers, the other managers being representatives of the trustees of the school and the parents of the children. In that case the parish would have power to levy a rate, and so to give that adequate financial support to our rural schools of which they are in such sore need in many districts.

THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE

My Lords, I think it is scarcely necessary or desirable that I should attempt to follow the right rev. Prelate into a discussion of the effect of the provisions as to the block grant in the new Code, or as to the future development of higher elementary schools. The suggestions which the right rev. Prelate made are no doubt important and well deserve full consideration, but I do not think probably it would be convenient to your Lordships that I should follow him into that part of the subject at present. My Lords, I am somewhat at a loss to understand what object my noble friend who has brought forward this resolution had in moving for a Return, and in giving us the calculations which he has founded upon it. I could have told my noble friend without any Return and without any calculations that when the Special Aid Grant is divided between urban and rural schools in the respective proportions of 5s. 9d. and 3s. 3d. the districts which contain a largo number of urban schools would gain a great deal more than districts which contain a large number of rural schools. My noble friend's contention is that which I believe he has always consistently maintained. He objects to the discrimination. But it was not necessary to produce a very elaborate array of figures in order to show that the discrimination which was provided for in the Act, and which has been put into effect by the Board of Education would have the effect which it has had. That effect could have been calculated with considerable accuracy beforehand. The noble Lord said that the experiment had failed. If by failure he means that in consequence of the discrimination various districts have received various amounts, failure was inevitable; but I do not know in what way failure is proved, because, in our opinion, the discrimination has had mainly the effect which it was intended to have, and has given the greater share of the grant to what we believe to be the most necessitous cases. The reasons which induced Parliament and the Department to make this discrimination were shortly these: In the first place the rural districts generally had gained and urban districts had lost through the operation of the Fee Grant, inasmuch as in urban districts fees for 1891 were in excess of 10s., and in rural districts they were considerably under 10s. In the next place the local interest of the well-to-do classes in the maintenance of Voluntary schools is generally greater in the rural than in the urban districts; the power to raise voluntary contributions being greater, the need for further assistance is less. In the next place special provision is made for the most necessitous schools in rural districts under Articles 104 and 105 of the Code. I may say a word upon that subject by-and-by. In the next place the cost of living and therefore the amount paid for salaries is higher in the urban than in the rural dis- tricts. It may also be added that in rural districts the proportion of schools which possess liberal endowments, and are therefore not necessitous, is greater than in urban districts. Presumably in urban districts new endowments have not kept pace with the growth of population. The experience of the past three years has on the whole justified the conclusions which we drew from those facts. The rates of Aid Grant for town and country schools were fixed so as to secure as nearly as possible that the actual allotment of aid grant to the several associations should range from 4s. to 5s. 6d. per head. Now, my Lords, I refer to Articles 104 and 105 of the Code, which are articles which provide for schools in districts of very small population. The small schools in the Norwich Association (which is one of those which apparently receive a very low rate from the Special Aid Grant) received £3,930 under these articles, or 1s. 5d. per head on the attendance of all schools in the association. In the Sudbury Association they received £1,285, or nearly 2s. per head. In the Lincolnshire Association (the case of which my noble friend has brought forward) they received £4,105, or 1s. 10¼d. per head. In contrast with these figures, the schools of the London Diocesan Association received £35, or an infinitesimal fraction of a penny per head, and those of the Manchester Association received £395, or a trifle over a halfpenny per head. I think I have only to add that the Right Rev. Prelate who has just spoken was also perfectly right in saying that the new provision for a Block Grant would be a considerable assistance to schools in the rural districts. Therefore, whatever case my noble friend may have had previously to the introduction of that change, his case is somewhat weaker than it was. My Lords, I quite admit that a larger amount of assistance would be very acceptable, and probably would be admirably expended, if it were in our power to give it to rural schools, which in many districts are no doubt extremely necessitous, but, as the right rev. Prelate said just now, we could only do this at the expense of other schools which we believe to be still more necessitous, and therefore, for the present at all events, and until we see reason from further experience, I cannot hold out any hope that we shall be likely to alter the rates which the present Code has fixed.

LORD HENEAGE

I beg leave to; withdraw the motion.

Motion, by leave of the House, withdrawn.