HL Deb 28 April 1902 vol 107 cc15-9
LORD REAY

My Lords, I beg to ask the Lord President of the Council (1) "whether, having regard to the fact that the funds in the hands of Technical Education Committees, arising from Imperial or local sources or from fees, and available for the purposes of secondary-education, are limited in amount, and are already, to a large extent, appropriated to the support of existing Educational Institutions, he is of opinion that such Technical Education Committees are in a position to meet the increased expenditure in regard to evening schools which the Board of Education permits them to incur under Clause VII. of the Regulations for Evening Schools; (2) whether School Boards have not, under the Elementary Education Acts, a statutory right to provide and maintain a public elementary school for children at any hour which the School Board may, in its discretion, fix; (3) whether School Boards have not, under the Education Code (1890) Act, the right, if they see fit, to open a public elementary school for children in the evening, in which the principal part of the instruction there need not be elementary; (4) whether School Boards have not, under Section 8 of the Elementary Education Act, 1891, a statutory right to open an evening school without requiring any fee; (5) as it is one of the conditions laid down in Section 7 of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, for the conduct of a public elementary school, that it "shall be conducted in accordance with the conditions required to be fulfilled by an elementary school in order to obtain a Parliamentary grant," and as such conditions must, under Section 97 of the same Act, be those contained in the Minutes of the Education Department for the time being, whether the Board of Education will issue a Minute stating the conditions under which public elementary evening schools may be conducted by School Boards and the terms on which such schools may obtain a share of the Parliamentary grant.

The questions which I have ventured to put to the noble Duke relate only to elementary education, as defined by the Elementary Education Acts, and interpreted by the recent judgment given in evening schools by School Boards. With regard to my first question; the figure to which I wish to call your Lordships' attention is that of the contribution to evening schools from the rates for the year 1899–1900, viz., £150,000. The Whitehall grant for that year was nearly £110,000. I need not take that into' account, as the Parliamentary grant under the new Regulations will, I presume, not materially differ from it. But the question arises whether, if you remove these schools from an authority which has unlimited power of levying rates, the authority to which you transfer the schools has adequate rating power or other resources at its disposal, or whether you intend to make up the difference out of fees.

With regard to the question as to what rates are available, the Only rate, so far as I can see, that is available is the penny rate of the Technical Instruction Act, with the additional penny rate in certain areas, and that will only be available where Clause 7 of the new Regulations is put in operation. Clause 7 is permissive. The local authorities may, or they may not, accept responsibility for instruction in evening schools. There is another source—namely, the £900,000 of the "whisky" money which is at present devoted to technical instruction by County Councils; but that sum, or the greater part of it, is already appropriated, and we may assume that a County Council which undertook these duties under Clause 7 would find it very difficult to divert any portion of that money for the purpose of maintaining 'evening schools. As to fees, of 332,042 scholars on the registers of Board Schools in 1899–1900, 198,108 paid no fees, 29,291 paid less than Id., 81,827 paid less than 3d., 17,869 paid less than 6d., and only 4,947 paid 6d. and over. It is quite clear that, if you largely increase the fees, the scholars for whom the schools were intended will be largely reduced. I cannot conceive that it can be the object of the Board of Education to deprive the class of scholars who now frequent these schools from receiving further instruction as a necessary sequel to the education they have received in the day schools, and thereby reduce the beneficial results of day school instruction.

Questions 2 and 3 need very little comment. I have not been able to find in any of the Elementary Education Acts any clause which limits the right of School Boards only to give education in the day time, and clearly the object of the Education Code Act of 1890 was to give School Boards the power of giving in evening schools education of which the principal part need not be elementary-In the recent decision of the Judges there is nothing which curtails the right of School Boards to give elementary instrucmation in evening schools. Clause IV. of the new Regulations states that— The Board will not in general recognise schools in which no fees are charged, but they will be prepared, in certain cases, to approve the remission of fees to individual students. I cannot reconcile this with Section 8 of the Elementary Education Act of 1891, which states that— Nothing in Section 17 of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, shall prevent a School Board from admitting scholars to any school provided by the Board without requiring any fee. If there could be any doubt about the interpretation of that section it would, I think, be dispelled by a reference to the debate in this House on the Report stage of that Bill. On the 23rd of July, 1891, the then Bishop of London proposed an Amendment that, after the words "any school" the words, "not being an evening school," should be inserted. This was the answer of Lord Cranbrook to that Amendment— I am sorry I cannot accept this Amendment-It seems to me the evening schools are out of our purview, and the managers deal with those schools as they think proper. The voluntary schools have full power, if they think proper, to make their evening schools free, and there is nothing to interfere with them. Take the case of Birmingham. Birmingham will gain very largely by the fee grants, having had low school fees. Therefore, if they think proper to employ some of the funds they will have in their hands for that purpose, they will be at liberty to do so. Therefore, it is quite clear that in the year 1891 the Government contemplated that School Boards should have the power of establishing evening schools, and the right of not requiring any fee. Therefore, I would ask the noble Duke what are the reasons for withdrawing those powers, and for laying down that School Boards can only give education in day schools. If there is no Minute issued by the Board of Education, as there has been hitherto, stating the conditions under which public elementary evening schools may be conducted by School Boards, they cannot exercise their statutory right, and by the omission of an administrative Order the law is rendered inoperative. In the Bill which has been introduced, the guilline is applied to School Boards and their evening schools, but meanwhile they might have been allowed to remain in animated suspense.

THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (The Duke of DEVONSHIRE)

In reply to the first question of the noble Lord, he is quite accurate in assuming, as I understand him to assume, that it is intended that all local expenditure—by which I mean expenditure on evening schools other than that which is provided by Government grants—shall in future be provided by local authorities under the Technical Instruction Acts. The noble Lord, I understand, asks whether the funds at the disposal of the local authorities will be sufficient for that purpose. In reply to that question I have to state that the existing local authorities under the Technical Instruction Acts have by no means exhausted the funds at their disposal which are applicable to the purposes of education. It is probable, however, that the responsibility for the whole of the evening school work, as contemplated by the regulations of the Board of Education for last year and this year, may involve them in an expenditure which their present resources are unable to meet. The Bill now before Parliament provides additional, and, we believe, ample, resources for all parts of the country except London. The London County Council have, however, only just begun to draw upon the rate leviable under the Technical Instruction Acts. If the resources of the London County Council appear to be inadequate to carry on the evening school work, some means will be found for enabling it to be carried on until London has been dealt with by the special legislation which has been promised in another place.

I am afraid I must decline to follow the noble Lord into the remainder of the Questions that he has put upon the Paper, and I must point out to him that it is not part of my duty to lay down what are the statutory rights of School Boards under the Elementary Education Acts. The duty of the Board of Education is, subject to those Acts and the Regulations approved by Parliament, to administer the Parliamentary grants to elementary and other schools. In consequence of the decision in the Cockerton case, the Board of Education were advised last year that they could no longer legally continue to make grants for evening schools provided or maintained by School Boards for persons other than children or for instruction other than elementary; but I have no reason to doubt that evening schools giving elementary instruction to children such as appear to be indicated in the question might, so far as any statutory requirements are concerned, be provided by School Boards and receive grants from the Board of Education. Accordingly, the Minute of July 3rd, 1901, provided, in Clause 21, for grants being paid to such schools; but so little advantage was taken of the provision that the Board of Education were convinced that public elementary schools of this type were unnecessary, and discontinued the provision in this year's evening schools Regulations. The present policy of the Board of Education is that evening schools, the great majority of which are intended for persons older than children, shall be provided and maintained by the local authorities for secondary education and receive grants under the Regulations of the Board relating to secondary education.

House adjourned at twenty minutes before Six o'clock, till Tomorrow, half-past Ten o'clock.