VISCOUNT GALWAYMy Lords, I rise to ask the Lord President of the Council if he will consider the advisability of revising the regulations as to candidates for pupil-teachers, and the employment of probationers in schools, so as to secure a sufficient supply of teachers on a principle fairer to the rural district, and less costly to the ratepayers. This is a matter that presses very hardly indeed on rural districts, and I hope my request may meet with some sympathy from the noble Marquess the Lord President of the Council, especially as in this case I am not demanding additional money from the Treasury. Before the present Education Act came into force it was the custom in rural districts when a child reached the age of thirteen to put him to teach the younger children, and 890 thereby an opportunity was afforded of seeing whether he had any natural talents for teaching, and, if he had, he in due time became a pupil-teacher and was recognised as a member of the teaching staff and paid. At one fell swoop, under the Act of 1902, the whole of this was put an end to, probationers being no longer allowed. In that way a very large source of supply for teachers was cut off, and I think this will be very seriously felt in a few years.
I also ask the noble Marquess to consider the advisability of revising the regulations on the ground of the hardship inflicted on the ratepayer. Now these probationers are cut off the position is this, that local authorities are obliged, out of the present limited supply, to secure teachers at a much higher cost. Under the old system a pupil-teacher would work, up to the age of nineteen, for about £52 a year, whereas under the present system he costs nearly £80, and the large sum which will have to be paid during the five or six years by the local authority for the more expensive teacher falls on the ratepayer. If this principle is persisted in it will make it impossible almost for the children of parents residing in rural districts to become teachers. In the towns it is quite easy for children to attend half-time and continuation classes from thirteen to sixteen, and in that way qualify for pupil-teachers; but it is impossible to expect that parents in rural districts can send their children to pupil-teacher centres away from home. I may be told that the travelling expenses will be paid, but they will be paid by the ratepayers.
We are told that it is very desirable that the population should not be induced to leave the country districts and concentrate in the towns, but what will be the effect if in a few years your teachers are all pe sons who have been recruited from the towns? How is it possible that children can be taught to take an interest in the country if you utterly close the teaching profession to people, born and bred in the country? If you allow the employment of probationers in schools you will have teachers who will be able to instruct young children much more in the pleasures of country life than if they were all brought from 891 the towns. It is in the interests of rural districts that some concession should be made in this matter. The present arrangement presses very hardly on the ratepayer and will press still harder in the future. On these grounds I hope the noble Marquess will see his way to allow the present rules to be revised.
*LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEYMy Lords, it will be in the recollection of your Lordships that we had a discussion last year upon this question, raised by the noble Lord the Chairman of the education committee of the East Riding, Lord Herries. While I cannot quite agree with the drift of the speech of the noble Lord who has brought the question before your Lordships to night, I feel that there is a great deal of substance in the complaint that it is most difficult at the present moment to adjust the new regulations of the Education Board with regard to pupil-teachers to the conditions of rural life, and I cannot say that I think the way the Board of Education are working these regulations tends to facilitate the transition. But I do not think that any remedy is to be found by falling back upon children of thirteen as part of the staff of a school, to be counted on that staff for the purpose of teaching other children.
I agree with the noble Lord that it is extremely important, if possible, that we should recruit the teachers who are to take charge of rural schools from the rural population. The conditions of service of teachers are likely to be more attractive in towns than in the country. The schools are larger, there are greater opportunities of promotion, there are higher ultimate salaries to be won, and therefore the most ambitious of the young people who enter the teaching profession have a tendency to gravitate to the towns. At the same time, we cannot too much insist that the most valuable qualities in a teacher are more needed in rural schools than in town schools. A rural school is about the most difficult school you can have to teach. It has a very small staff, and probably in the smaller schools they are lucky if they have one fully qualified teacher and one assistant teacher. The difficulties in such cases can be surmounted if you get 892 exceptionally good teachers. I remember the evidence of Mr. Matthew Arnold, when he was sent to examine the state of schools on the Continent. Describing a school—a small school—near Zurich, he said he found one master in charge of the whole school, but the great skill of that master enabled him to conduct the school in a brilliant manner. I am not going to say that if you can get good people you cannot grapple with the difficulties, but the difficulties are great, and you cannot expect the county councils to fix a scale of salaries for rural schools with an average attendance of sixty, seventy, and eighty which will compete with the salaries offered in town schools attended by 300 children. Therefore it is most important that you should try to recruit those who, having been brought up in the country, and having friends in the country, would be naturally wishful to go back to their homes.
I also agree that the difficulties of preparing pupil-teachers in the country are immense. You cannot work a centre there. Take the poor county of Anglesey, with which I am connected, which has a large number of rural schools. A young person from sixteen to eighteen cannot be going half a day to his school and half a day to a centre; he cannot even be going alternate weeks. I defy any person in charge of a school to make any one of these young persons count effectively on the staff when they cannot be trusted continuously with the charge of a class. In the old days they worried through into class management because they were given a class all the week, but to give a young person twenty-five children every morning or every afternoon, or every alternate week, would be disastrous to the class, and the pupil-teacher would not get a sense of responsibility.
The Board of Education have suggested that in the two years of pupil-teachership you may evade the obligations of their Minute by making the pupil-teacher a half-timer every alternate six months. That would be very inconvenient, but it would practically be making him a full - timer in the school for a year. I agree with the noble Lord, that the system which has been 893 introduced is extremely expensive. It is quite true that the Government have slightly increased the grants, but they have not increased them anything like so much as is set forth. They will now give in respect of a young person up to the age of sixteen, if he or she goes to a properly recognised secondary school, £4 a year for two years, and then for the two years from sixteen to eighteen they will give £7 a year, making a total of £22; but if the young person is sent to the secondary school earlier they will not give you anything except for the two years. The whole tendency of the pressure which has been brought to transfer pupils by scholarships from elementary to secondary schools is that the time for leaving the elementary and going to the secondary school should be between the ages of eleven and twelve—put it at twelve. The rules of the Board of Education for secondary schools make twelve the minimum age at which they begin to pay, and I quite agree that in the case of rural schools it is better that the child should move at the age of twelve. But you are demanding that the local authority shall take these children from the elementary schools and pass them on for four years to the secondary school. A child in a secondary school costs quite £12 a year to instruct, and you are going to give the local authorities, as an encouragement, £4 a year for two years. Not only that, but if the child lives at any distance the travelling expenses have to be paid besides, and some small bursary allowed. Therefore the whole of this is inordinately expensive.
I have a little grievance of my own to which I should like to call the attention of the noble Marquess the President of the Board of Education. The education committee of my own county prepared a scheme by which we were to have these scholarships and send our children to become pupil teachers, but when we proposed to utilise the intermediate schools of the county, which the House will recollect are schools under Government patronage and support, and supposed to be quite efficient, we received a letter from the Board of Education, stating that before they accepted our proposals as to scholarships they must know how far we were willing to subsidise 894 the secondary schools so as to make them as fully efficient as the Board of Education might require. The Board of Education are heaping up weights upon us which are becoming too heavy to be borne.
Throughout England the county councils, as a rule, have thrown themselves into the administration of the Education Act with great earnestness and self-sacrifice. So far the ratepayers have not rebelled, although the education rate has gone up immensely. But if the Board of Education continue to increase the difficulties of the county councils, instead of trying to make things easy for them, there will be a mutiny of county councils. I am not referring to Welsh county councils, who have to be coerced by a special Act of Parliament, but to good Conservative county councils, and a mutiny or these authorities would be difficult, indeed, to suppress. The Board of Education have shown a tendency, ever since the Education Act of 1902 came into force, to pile up quite recklessly all kinds of demands in regard to those things, the cost of which falls on the ratepayers. I very much doubt whether Eton, Harrow, or any of our great public schools come up to the recent requirements of school planning of the Board of Education in regard to secondary schools. I do not wish to check the zeal of the noble Marquess for educational efficiency, but I would like him to go one step at a time. The method by which the grants are given, and many other matters which I will not refer to to-day, require serious consideration, and I hope shortly to have the opportunity of placing them more informally before the noble Marquess.
*THE LORD BISHOP OF BRISTOLMy Lords, I regret that no one is present on this bench who has at least some I slight influence with the House. I represent portions of two agricultural counties, and this question looms very large in our mind. Yesterday I was discussing it with the chairman of the county council of one of those counties, and he told me that in his judgment the rate was rising to an absolutely impossible point. I asked him if he could put his finger on one particular item and he put his finger on this question of pupil-teachers. This question is a most important one, and I 895 find myself entirely in accord with the noble Lord who introduced it.
*LORD HARRISMy Lords, the noble Lord opposite, Lord Stanley of Alderley, has put the case so clearly that it seems almost superfluous to add anything to what he has said. But, just as he had a private grievance, so have I, and I propose to ventilate it. The noble Marquess will remember that when the Education Act was going through the House in 1902 I took the opportunity of cross-questioning him, and the noble Duke, who was then Lord President of the Council (the Duke of Devonshire), stated what the intentions of the Government were with regard to compelling county councils to put on a rate for secondary education. Both the noble Duke and the noble Marquess gave me most positive assurance that that certainly was not their intention. I must admit that so far they have held true to their word; but in another way the Board of Education are doing everything they can to tempt county councils to put on a rate for higher education. They are doing so in this way. There are certain grants for scholarships given by the Board of Education, and the liberality of this grant is limited by the stipulation that it shall only be given where a rate is imposed. In my county we were careful in the use of the whiskey money and laid by a nest egg. We have got that nest egg now for use for its original purpose—the relief of the rates; but unless we impose a rate now, although we do not want to, we lose the Government grant for the sescholarships; and at a meeting the other day we decided that on the whole it was more politic to secure the grant than avoid putting on the rate. I admit that the Board of Education cannot be said to be compelling us to put on a rate, but the difference between that temptation and compulsion is a little difficult to draw.
I endorse what has been said by the noble Viscount and by the noble Lord opposite, and would appeal to the noble Marquess the President of the Board of Education to impress upon the Treasury that this matter of the education of pupil-teachers is becoming a real and very serious grievance in the counties. I did not realise when this Act was passed the 896 immense burden that was going to be laid upon the ratepayers for the purpose of training schoolmasters. That is what it has come to. The burdens are of all kinds. My noble friend the noble Viscount referred to the difficulties of rural districts in sending children to centres in the populous areas. We have had experience of that, and we have had to make arrangements, not merely for travelling expenses, but for boarding expenses as well, in order that these children may be kept in fairly good health while they are under tuition. All that expense has been thrown on the ratepayers for what, as I submitted in 1902, and submit again, is a national object. The most important duty that can be conceived is the training of the masters and mistresses who are to have the education of the children of this country under their charge, and surely it is not just that the great part of the cost should be laid upon a class of property which the Commission appointed by the present Government has declared to be already overburdened. I appeal to my noble friend to endeavour to induce the Cabinet to look into this question very carefully, for I honestly believe with the noble Lord opposite that unless some far greater assistance is given to the county councils than is given now a very justifiable grievance will exist and a very serious manifestation of the feeling that will be roused by that grievance may become evident.
*THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (The Marquess of LONDONDERRY)My Lords, I do not for one moment complain of the tone of the speeches which we have heard from noble Lords on this question, nor do I in the least object to its being raised. On the contrary, I approach the question sympathetically, because undoubtedly there is a feeling in the country, and especially in rural districts, that the rates at present are advancing by leaps and bounds on account of education, and this must necessarily bear very heavily on the land, which, as the noble Lord has said, is already very heavily burdened. How far the rates should be allowed to rise depends a great deal on the local authority. Undoubtedly, when powers were given by 897 the Act of 1902 to the local authorities it was in the firm belief that they would watch over the interests of the ratepayers, and not add to their burdens. Undoubtedly the Duke of Devonshire and myself did say that the Bill of 1902 would not cause the rate to be raised; the only rate we caused to be raised was for elementary education, and the question of raising the rate for secondary education rests with the local education authorities. But my noble friend went further, and imagined that because we offered scholarships it would be necessary to raise the rate. It is impossible to please all parties, but I have no hesitation in saying that we are going to drop the system of scholarships in future.
§ *THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRYThe scholarships are going to be dropped. Those who uphold the system of probationers have the right to a certain amount of our sympathy. Undoubtedly probationers in the past were an extremely useful class, and I agree that when that system was done away with to a certain extent there must be a grievance. But let us look at the other side of the question. My noble friend Lord Stanley of Alderley agrees that at the present day, when education has taken such a prominent place, we cannot go back to a system which existed many years ago and worked admirably.
LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEYI said you could not go back, but I never said the system worked admirably.
§ *THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRYIt has been considered absolutely necessary to raise a higher class of pupil-teachers. The old practice of having the pupil-teachers taught in the school is not suitable to the present system, and the object of the Department has been to give a higher grant to pupil-teacher centres; and in Section 28 of the last Regulations for pupil-teachers an effort has been made to give advantages to the rural teachers, whose case is more difficult than that of the town teachers. The Department fully realises the difference between the two, and the 898 undesirability of drawing the country children to the towns. As reading and education increases the attraction of the towns increases, but everything is being done to cope with the difficulty. Last year I was asked to give some grant for facilitating the transport of pupil-teachers to the centres. At the time I could give no definite assurance either that further aid would be available, or that if it were it would be applied in any particular way; but I have since inquired into the circumstances, and I found that they warranted me in approaching the Treasury.
To explain the further assistance that I am now in a position to announce I must go back to the first set of new regulations, which applied to the year 1903–4. We there provided that the grant for a pupil-teacher taught in a centre should be £3, that the grant for a pupil-teacher not taught in a centre should be £2, and that the grant for children who were preparing to become pupil-teachers and taught in proper preparatory classes should be also £2. These, as I say, were the grants for the year 1903–4. Now I come to the grants for the year 1904–5. Those grants were as follows:—£7 for a pupil-teacher taught in a centre, £4 for a child preparing to become a pupil-teacher and taught in a preparatory class, and £2 10s. for the pupil-teacher who is not taught in a centre. It was with reference to these grants and the question of providing more aid for the case of pupil-teachers not taught in a centre, that is to say, roughly, for country pupil-teachers, that my statement was made last July in reply to a Question by Lord Herries.
The result of the further information that we have been able to obtain, and of the representations that have been made to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is that I am able to announce a considerable increase in the grants, which will be especially beneficial in the case of pupil-teachers who are not taught in the centres. The augmentations of grant that I have to announce relate to the current year for pupil-teacher instruction which ends on July 31st next, and also to part of the last year of pupil-teacher instruction which ended on July 31st last. For the seven months, January 899 1st to July 31st, 1904, we shall pay a further grant at the rate of £3 a year for a pupil-teacher taught in a centre, in addition to the grant of £3 already paid, and a further grant at the rate of £2 a year for the pupil-teacher not taught in a centre, in addition to the grant of '2 already paid. These additions, your Lordships will understand, benefit both urban and rural authorities, and with the further change I have still to announce, they will bring the grants for those months up to the level of the grants for the current year, with a small exception in the case of centres.
Now I come to the additional grants for the current year. There is no additional grant either for the child taught in a preparatory class or for the child taught in the pupil-teacher centre, but there is an additional grant for the pupil-teacher who is not taught in the centre, that is to say, generally, for the rural pupil teacher. The increase I am able to announce in this case brings up the grant for this year to the sum of £4 per head as compared with £2 10s. in the regulations, and will specially benefit the rural areas. The change in the grant which I have just announced is for the present provisional only and will apply to the current year ending July 31st, 1904, and possibly for another year. I can, however, assure the noble Lord that in any permanent scheme which may be framed for pupil-teachers special consideration will be given to the difficulties to be expected in rural areas, and though I cannot pledge myself at the present moment to any details, the assistance given towards the education of pupil-teachers in rural districts will not be less on the average than the amount which is available under the provisional arrangements I have just described.
It is most important that those who teach in our schools should know how to teach, and I have given special consideration to this question of the instruction of pupil-teachers. In view of the large sums which public education costs the country, it is most desirable that the instruction given at such great expense should be sound. I realise that there is a great deal more to be done, but the Department 900 over which I have the honour to preside has at any rate done something to meet the necessities of the case.
*LOKD STANLEY OF ALDERLEYWill the Minute which the noble Marquess has just announced be included in the Code and laid on the Table?
§ *THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRYA Minute will be presented.