Lords Sitting of 27 October 1932

Preamble
The House met at a quarter past four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

REGULATIONS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS.
LORD SANDERSON LORD SANDERSON rose to call attention to the Circular No. 1421 issued by the President of the Board of Education; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, on September 15 last a Circular was issued by the Board of Education—a Circular known as No. 1421. If your Lordships will allow me I would just remind you of what I think are the main points of that Circular—at any rate they are the points which I wish to discuss to-day. Firstly, the Circular lays down that all secondary grant-aided schools are to charge fees. Secondly, school fees are to be increased in the secondary schools. Thirdly, a means test is to be imposed lower than any existing means test, and people with incomes above that limit are to pay fees. Fourthly, special places are to be substituted for what is known as free places. I think those are the most important points of the Circular.
What does this mean? We have in the course of the last thirty years, since the first beginnings were made of anything like public secondary education, made a considerable advance in the direction of free secondary education. I do not say that we have nearly reached that goal, but we have made a considerable advance. By the Education Act of 1918 it was laid down that children were not to be debarred from the benefits of any kind of education from which they were likely to profit by reason of inability to pay fees. I think I have quoted the Act fairly correctly. At any rate that is the drift of the clause, I am sure. From this Circular it appears that the Board of Education is going back upon that policy, which was laid down in the Act of 1918, and I and my noble friends behind me look upon this as a very serious retrograde step. We fear that if the Circular is allowed to go through a very serious blow will be struck at secondary education.
We have now seventy-four absolutely free schools in the country, and any one who has seen the boys and girls at work in some of those free schools, the type of boys and girls who are there, and the splendid spirit which prevails among them—as I have seen in some of the Bradford schools—will, I think, rejoice that those schools are free. But these schools will no longer be free. They will all have to charge fees. In the 1,367 grant-aided schools in the country nearly 47 per cent. of the places are, I believe, now free. Nearly all those schools—above 1,100 of them, I believe—will have to raise their fees, many of them as much as 50 per cent., because it is suggested by the Board that fifteen guineas would not be an unreasonable fee, and it is also said that a fee of less than nine guineas will not ordinarily be accepted.
With regard to the means test, it is laid down that people with higher incomes than from £3 to £4 a week should have to pay fees. "From £3 to £4" is rather a vague expression, and I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Irwin, if he will tell me when he replies what that exactly means. Does it mean £3 1s.? Does it mean £3 19 s.? Or does it mean. £3 10 s.? I should also like the noble Lord to tell your Lordships what is meant by the parents' income. Does it mean the income of the father of the family or is the family income to be included? Are pensions to be included? Is the means test going to be administered on the same lines as the unemployment means test? I know it has been said in the Press—I think the Circular says it and I think the noble Lord has said it somewhere lately—that it is not proposed to make the means test too rigid and that the local authorities will have a good deal of discretion in the matter. But what does "too rigid" mean exactly? What we want to know is: Does this Circular mean what it says or does it mean something else?
This means test will, undoubtedly, hit very hard a class which has already been very hard hit by recent economies. It will hit a class very many of whom have within the last year been brought under the Income Tax. It will hit a class whose children's allowances have been recently cut down,

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and whose own salaries have been cut down. It will hit the better-paid artisan, the small professional man, teachers, clerks, shop-keepers, and the lower grades of the Civil Service. These people have already been hard hit by recent economies. There can be do doubt about that. Take a man with an income of £4 a week. If he wants to send two children to school, and has to pay a fee of nine guineas each, that is equivalent to imposing an additional Income Tax upon that man of nearly 2s. in the pound. If he has to pay a fee of fifteen guineas it will be equivalent to an additional Income Tax of 3s. in the pound.
That, I know, is taking on extreme case. I know that there are many people who will come under this with larger incomes than that. But, to take a man with an income of £400 or £500 a year, an additional expense of fifteen guineas a year, or even nine guineas a year, is a, considerable burden upon him. Supposing he has got two children and has to pay eighteen guineas or thirty guineas—though of course he might have three children—you are going to impose a very heavy burden on such a man. The result will be that he will not send his children to school. He will not be able to afford it. Perhaps, in many cases, a man will have to decide between paying the interest on a mortgage on his house and sending his children to school. He may have to decide between the premium on an insurance policy and sending his children to school, and in many cases, I am certain, the schooling will have to go, and that will be a very serious thing indeed.
No doubt there are people who are getting this free education, or education at very low fees, who could afford to pay, or to pay more. I quite admit that, but those people must be very few indeed, considering that the vast majority of children in the secondary schools come from the elementary schools and that their parents are presumably poor people. Surely, it is a rather clumsy and a very cruel thing to punish a large class of people in order to get at a very few. The result will be that there will be fewer pupils in the schools. If there are fewer pupils, you will have to lower the standard of admission, which, I think, would be educationally disastrous. I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Irwin, would wish that at all. If there are fewer chil-
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dren in the schools there will be fewer teachers wanted, and there will be more unemployment among the teachers.
Also, a lot of the capital expended on the schools will be wasted. As regards that, the Circular suggests that the idea is that the number of special places should be similar to the number of free places at the present time. That represents a difficult problem. It is rather a conundrum to me, and I hope the noble Lord can clear up this point. Suppose you have a school with thirty special places and there are 100 candidates to compete for them. The first thirty get the special places, and then it is found that the parents of ten of those thirty children can afford to pay the fees. Well, five of the parents say they cannot; and the children will not go to school. Then I suppose you go down the list and fill up those places from the ten next children on the list. The same thing may happen. Five of them, let us say, can afford to pay the fees and the fathers of three say they will not. The children will not go to school. And so on. In that case are you not going to fill up your special places with the less able children? As you go down the list you get the less able children filling up the places. This is going to be the result. You are going to lower the standard of admission, which is bad, and you are going to substitute the principle of ability to pay for the principle of ability to benefit.
There is one other point I want to ask the noble Lord about. Why special places? What is the meaning of that word "special" as opposed to "free"? Can it be the idea is that it may guard against a return to a free school? A free school with nothing but special places would not mean anything at all. Special places would be meaningless. You cannot have special places in a totally free school. There are, I think, two theories of education. One, which I may call the traditional theory, is not so much alive as it was at one time, but I am sorry to say it is by no means dead. It is the theory which regards secondary education for children of working class people in the nature of a privilege or luxury for which they ought to pay if they want it, and is the sort of thing which working people do not much need. It is right to give clever boys of the working class a chance of getting on, say

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the advocates of that theory, but as a rule working people do not need secondary education; it is much better for their boys to go to work and their girls to go into domestic service; what do they want with all this education?
I am putting it in a very bald way. Very few people nowadays, I hope, would have the nerve to put it quite as baldly as that, but the spirit that lies behind that old theory is still there, and I think the Circular is to some extent based on that old theory. The Circular says that they are hoping to meet two criticisms—namely, that people are not paying in proportion to their ability to pay, and that they are not paying in proportion to the cost of the schools. I am not quoting verbally, but that is roughly what they mean. That, I think, is a serious step back to the old theory.
The other story is a theory which is held by the Labour Party, and I think it is held by a good many other people in other Parties. I am sure it is held by everyone who has the cause of education really at heart—namely, that, secondary education ought to be free for all who are capable of benefiting by it, and it should be provided at the national expense. There is really no distinction between primary and secondary education. That is quite a false distinction. It is a very arbitrary line that is drawn between primary and secondary education, and it is ridiculous that a man should have to begin to pay for education just because his child has reached a certain age. He is to have it educated free up to a certain time, but if he wants any more he has to pay. There is no logic in that, and we think that the Circular is a serious step back in the advance in education which we have been making. Surely, you can have no finer asset in a nation than an educated people. What finer asset can you have than, not an educated class but an educated people? I do not mean people necessarily stuffed with book knowledge; I mean men and women who have learned to think and use their minds, people who have learned to form reasoned judgments on things, people, to use two rather old fashioned expressions but expressions which very much meet the case, with wisdom and understanding.
The meagre education we dole out now to our children does not equip the majority of them to be really useful
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citizens. There is not enough of it. So many of them are so ignorant. Owing to the ignorance of the children when they grow up—ignorance through no fault of their own—many of them are, owing to this ignorance, a real danger to the society in which they live, partly owing to their complete apathy towards their own interests and the interests of the community in which they live, and partly to the ease with which they are led astray by any half-baked ideas and by the propaganda of any unscrupulous charlatan. The effect of this Circular, I believe, will be to increase the number of uneducated young men and women in the coming generation. It must do so, and that is a very serious thing. You will have more boys and girls going out to work at the age of fourteen, crowding into industry, displacing adult men and women, or else loafing about at home, deteriorating morally, mentally and physically, and merely qualifying for the dole.
It is difficult to imagine a piece of more reckless extravagance than to cut down expenditure on education at this time. I am surprised by a Government which never ceases to preach the gospel of economy embarking on such a course. The noble Lord, Lord Irwin, was President of the Board ten years ago, and I know from personal experience that he had then the cause of education very much at heart. I know that from a personal experience of my own, and perhaps he will not mind my reminding him of a little incident which I am sure he will long ago have forgotten. It was not much to him, but it was very important to me. I was at that time principal of a college for working men and women in Oxford, and I had succeeded in obtaining a per capita grant for the college. I must say I had some difficulty in securing it but I did succeed in obtaining that grant from the noble Lord's predecessor, Mr. Fisher. The noble Lord—Mr. Wood as he was then—when he came to the Board, to my great joy, without any application from myself as principal, raised the grant, and I should like to take this opportunity of thanking him for that act.
I think the noble Lord has paid the Government a very great compliment in joining it, and I am certain he has the cause of education just as much at heart as he had ten years ago. I am also sure

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that his instincts are as generous as ever, but may I express the hope that they are not becoming a little warped by the parsimonious habits of his associates? The Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Education said in the House of Commons about a week ago, in answer to a question, that they hoped the amount to be saved as a result of this Circular would ultimately be about £400,000 a year. Surely it cannot be that the noble Lord is going to be a party to a scheme which would check the advance of education and inflict real hardship on the children merely to save a paltry sum of £400,000 a year. I am sure that a more sinister motive will be suspected. This will be regarded as a piece of class injustice, a class challenge. I know that it is being so regarded in the country at the present time by thoughtful men and women. It is being bitterly resented. I know these people. I know the thoughtful men and women amongst working people. I have lived amongst them for years and I know how they think and how they feel. There is always this question of the inequality of educational opportunity before them.
They always have it in mind. Why is it, they ask, that one man's son should go to a preparatory school, should go to a public school, and should go to a University merely because his father can afford to send him there, while another man's son has to go into industry at the age of fourteen because his father cannot afford to pay for any more education for him? Why should it be merely a question of the income of parents? They always have that in mind, and rightly so. Is it wise to widen that breach and to increase the inequalities in educational opportunity still more at this time? I understand that the Circular is a matter for the Board of Education alone. It is regarded as a matter of administration and it will not come before Parliament as a measure to be passed. Therefore, all we can do is to appeal to the Board, and I do appeal to the noble Lord the President of the Board to withdraw this Circular or, at any rate, to modify it substantially in the interests of the children and of the nation.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, the President of the Board of Education will reply to the very pertinent criticisms which have been
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expressed by the noble Lord who has just sat down and it is no part of my responsibility to anticipate what he will say. With regard to this Circular I would only say this that the vital principle at all costs to be sustained is that no boy or girl in the country shall be debarred from the benefits of secondary school education if he or she is likely to profit by it, by reason of the poverty of the parents or their inability to pay fees. I feel sure that everyone will agree that that principle is vital not only in justice to the boys and girls, their own personalities and powers, but also to the interests of the State. If this Circular seriously qualified that principle I should most strenuously oppose it. But I take note of the very clear statement in the Circular itself. Paragraph 2 reads:
"In formulating a scheme designed to meet these criticisms the Board have been principally concerned to maintain the facilities which local education authorities and governors at present offer for poor parents to obtain for their children the benefits of secondary education, and for this purpose will continue to have regard to varying local conditions."
If that vital principle is safeguarded, I can see no reason why parents who are able to give some contribution to the education of their own children should not do so.
I know that many enthusiastic people, with whom in general I have great sympathy, and whose views have been expressed by the noble Lord who has just spoken, cherish the ideal of universally free secondary schools. I do not the least share the theory of education which was sarcastically described by the noble Lord—on the contrary, I repudiate it—but I doubt very much whether such a system is either educationally sound or in the real interests of many of the boys and girls themselves. I think that what is got too cheaply is apt to be valued very slightly, and I am sure there may be under such a system a great number of boys and girls entered in secondary schools who would be very much better placed either in a totally different kind of school or even, in many cases, in the work with which they are likely afterwards to be engaged. That work in itself ought to be in many cases education. I would say even that those public schools to which most of us in this House are so much indebted are not always the best place for all the boys sent to them.

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Many of them, I think, would be much better in a different class of school or even beginning earlier the employment of their lives.
There is no general system of free secondary education which is violated so far as I can judge by this Circular. As the noble Lord has said, there are 1,367 secondary schools under local education authorities in the country and only 74 are actually free. It is true that half the pupils there have free places and I most earnestly hope that that balance will in the main be maintained in spite of this Circular. If, therefore, it is not unreasonable that parents when they can should give some contribution to the education of their children, then it does not seem to be unreasonable at this particular time that something should be done to lessen the gap between the £35 which is the cost of a pupil at a secondary school and the fees which are at present usually paid. It is necessary to note that the scale of fees and the limits of exemption are not mandatory. The Circular carefully lays down in paragraph 4 that
"The Board recognise that it would not be reasonable to expect that the conditions for the special remission of fees should be uniform for the whole country.…"
And, in the next paragraph, the Circular says
"The Board do not desire to lay down any uniform standard."
If the Circular is administered with reasonable flexibility I am sure that local education authorities—who, as I know, are so proud of and keen about their secondary schools—will show that the apprehensions which the noble Lord has expressed are unnecessary.
At the same time I must put in a plea for those for whom the noble Lord has just pleaded, those who may be described—to use the phrase for convenience sake—as belonging to the lower middle class, especially those who come within the zone of direct taxation. For it is just there that there is often most keenness for the education of their children, and I venture to hope that the limit of exemption may be raised to £5 a week, as Sir Michael Sadler has suggested, for families with one child, with an addition of £1 for each additional child. I think that at the present time particularly that class on behalf of whom the noble Lord
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has spoken is peculiarly deserving of consideration.
But I have not risen either to defend or to criticise this Circular, but to ask your Lordships' House and the Board of Education and the country to consider a way of spending money which may thus be set free without diverting it from educational purposes generally; for I think we should all agree that education is the very last sphere in which any parsimony should be adopted. I want to call your Lordships' attention, not for the first time, to the great multitude of unemployed young persons between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. The number in the last two years has varied from 100,000 to 140,000. It has been calculated that, if they were to stand side by side, they would reach from Paddington to Reading. I would ask your Lordships to consider their position, not in terms of statistics, but of individual lives. Pass, my Lords, in imagination, along that sadly extended line and consider what is happening to each of these single lives. They are wasting the most precious years, the years in which both body and mind are most definitely moulded. Sometimes they may get some casual or occasional work, but it is most uncertain. For the most part they spend the day aimlessly. Nothing is more dreadful, especially in the industrial districts in the North, than to know of multitudes of these boys and girls who have never had any regular work since they left school. It is inevitable that mind and body and character should be steadily deteriorating.
What wonder if there is an increase of juvenile crime? What wonder if numbers of them prove to be unfit for work, even when they can obtain it? It seems to me to be most necessary that special attention should be given to this problem. There is going on in our midst a really appalling waste of lives and of that form of national wealth which is more important than any other, the human resources which are at the disposal of the State. I know that voluntary effort is doing very much in this direction in the way of clubs and institutes and, often, opportunities of learning manual work and physical training. I know also of the admirable work that is being done in this matter by the State through the Ministry of

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Labour in the centres which they have established precisely for this class of unemployed lad and girl, and that in many places it is made a condition of their receiving unemployed benefit that they should spend part of the day in one of these centres. I admire the public spirit which leads so many of our fellow citizens to assist in the management of these centres; but I should plead for something much more full and detailed and where there can be a much longer discipline of mind and body and character than there can possibly be in these centres.
Why should there not be, as a substitute for them, carrying on the same work, special schools like the continuation schools which were contemplated in the Act of 1918, where all these lads and girls who are unemployed can be compelled to attend until 18 or until they have obtained employment, and where, therefore, their attendance must be entirely free? The character of these schools would be adapted to the circumstances of those pupils. They would give chief attention to physical training, to manual work, and to learning useful crafts. I do not think there would be much difficulty about buildings. Some might be obtained, it may be through the closing, here and there, of redundant schools. In any case, temporary buildings would suffice during what, I hope, is only an emergency.
As for the supply of teachers, the noble Lord the President of the Board is well aware that he saw fit to make a great cut in the number of places in our training colleges, lest there should prove to be a redundancy of teachers. But here there would be a scope for the very best kind of teacher. I know that many training colleges have already begun to train their teachers for work of this kind, in manual work and crafts and the like, and I also know there are many teachers who would infinitely prefer working in schools of this kind than in schools of a more exclusively literary character. It seems to me that there might be a real eagerness on the part of teachers to be permitted to take part in this national work.
The problem of the unemployed dismays and distresses us continually, not only because of the numbers involved but be-
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cause of the extraordinary complexity of knowing in what way best to deal with the problem. Here, at any rate, is a way in which the State can deal with it wisely, directly, and economically; for expenditure in this matter would be the truest economy. It would prevent a wastage of lives and of human capacity for useful work and for honourable citizenship. I beg the Board of Education to give this aspect of the problem its earnest and favourable consideration.
LORD GORELL: My Lords, I think it must be a matter of satisfaction to us all that the noble Lord who moved this Motion did so laying particular stress throughout his speech upon the educational grounds. To me that was a matter of great satisfaction, because so often one has heard problems of this kind argued with particular reference to political grounds; and politics, as I think all of us who have watched educational affairs for a number of years will agree, have been the bane of their progress. I wish to discuss this Circular purely on educational grounds and, as far as one can in your Lordships' House, not upon political grounds at all.
It is certainly true, apart from the feelings among the working classes, to which the noble Lord drew attention, that throughout the country, in almost every educational association and among all those who are concerned with our educational affairs, the issue of this Circular has been greeted with dismay. No doubt many of your Lordships have already seen numbers of the resolutions which have been passed by different associations. I happen to have the privilege of being constantly in touch with every class of teacher, and that statement, I think, is indisputable. I think your Lordships must feel that in this particular matter at any rate the teachers are not thinking about themselves. Everybody, at various times of their lives, when they are considering matters affecting their pay, naturally have to look upon the problem from a personal aspect. In this particular matter that is not so, and the consideration which has been given up and down the country to this Circular has been given to it by the teachers solely upon educational grounds, from their concern for what it may result in to the children.

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The noble Lord in his speech referred to the fact that the Board considered this a matter of administration. I do feel it necessary to ask the attention of your Lordships to the fact that, if that practice is continued, we shall have, as we have now, a Circular issued which is regarded as a purely administrative thing, and yet in fact is going to concern many hundreds of thousands of children and is really the announcement of policy by the Government. It does not seem to me that now, when every class of person, no matter what his political feelings or opinions may be, is very much concerned with our educational system, this is the way to make an announcement of Government policy. It dribbles out. The Circular is issued privately, not even with the signature of a Minister of the Crown, and long before its exact terms, are made known to the public there is around it an atmosphere of controversy. I cannot help thinking that in future it will be very much better in our public life if, when a matter of this kind affecting so many homes and so many children has been decided upon, it should be made a matter of public pronouncement so that everybody can see exactly what is involved.
His Grace the Archbishop referred to a vital principle. There are two principles and they seem to me to be a little bit at war. There is the principle that all should pay according to what they can reasonably afford, a principle with which I think not many would be in disagreement. There is also the principle firmly laid down by Parliament in the Education Act, 1918, which has been acted upon ever since, that no one should be debarred from profiting from any form of education through inability to pay. Here, presented to us in this Circular, we have a choice between those two principles, and it is a little difficult to see how they are to be reconciled. The most rev. Primate referred to the fact that there were 74 schools which were free out of 1,367, but there are only 72 in the whole country which are charging fees up to fifteen guineas. Every one of the others, apart from those 72, is going to be affected by this Circular, and although it is true that the Circular makes reference to exceptions, we know well how these things work out in practice and that when the Board definitely lay down
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under paragraph 5 that they will ordinarily hesitate in future to approve a fee of less than nine guineas, that fee at any rate will be taken generally throughout the country as the minimum. The 74 schools at present free will find themselves raised from nothing up to nine guineas, and in fact, if this Circular is going to be acted upon, if it is taken to mean what it appears to mean, there is going to be a very great rise in cost to the parents throughout the country. No one, I imagine, challenges the national need for stringency, but that at the same time affects individuals, and in laying stress on the need for national stringency I do not think enough stress has been laid upon the need for individual stringency.
The noble Lord who raised this Motion referred to the fact, so well known that it need not be enlarged upon, of the difficulties which thousands and thousands of families throughout the country are feeling at the present time. No doubt there are numbers who will find it excessively difficult, no matter what their will, to find this extra fee. If one looks at the present record, the position is very serious in the light of this Circular because it is the non-paying scholars who are the cream. Forty-eight per cent, of the free placers gained the school certificate as against 20 per cent. of the fee-payers and in the scholarships for Oxford and Cambridge the proportion was still higher—namely, 72 per cent. or 180 out of 248 scholarships. I think the Board's own figures will show also that scholars in the free places stay longer than those who pay fees, because naturally the parent who pays, as the child grows older, feels that here there is something he can cut off and he does cut it off. If this Circular is to be applied as it seems to be intended, there can be, I should think, no doubt whatever that the numbers will go down and unless that result takes place those who are less qualified will take the place of those who are more able to profit by secondary education now. There is an illogicality in the whole system. We talk of free places and of those who pay fees, but in so talking we ignore the fact that even those who pay fifteen guineas are not paying anything like the cost of the schooling. Without including overhead charges the cost per pupil is £27 17 s., and with overhead charges the cost is £35. There-

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fore in a sense every pupil is receiving a subsidy and it is the duty of the State to see that those who get this are those most able to profit by it.
There is another thing, not in the Circular itself but in the Statutory Rules, which I view with considerable concern. In 14 (c), where the number of the special places is going to be fixed according to the number of those in previous years, if, as seems inevitable with the raising of the fees, the number of special places becomes less, then it becomes by arithmetical process less and less every year instead of more. I think it is already a reproach to our system that the numbers in secondary schools are so small—namely, 411,000 as against 4,936,000 in our elementary schools. What we want to see is not fewer children but more. I cannot help feeling that if a change is going to be made, it is time to review our system very widely. I should like to see, taking into consideration that every child in a secondary school is having a large State subsidy paid towards its education, the principle adopted that only those go on to secondary schools who have the ability to benefit by so doing, whereas we know that when a parent is willing to pay fees only the ordinary entrance examination is demanded. Further, I would like to see the entrance competitive and free to everybody. Then, after selections have been made, this consideration of their circumstances might justly come in, but not as at present.
I regret some things in this Circular also because it seems to me to make more definite than before what every educational student desires to end, the division between primary and secondary education. It is drawing that distinction more markedly even than now. Every student has been trying to get the ladder as a process. The whole basis of what is generally called the Hadow Report was based upon that principle, and the Circular, if applied as we read it, would seem to be in contradistinction to that principle. I feel sometimes that it is not much use making a contribution to an educational debate in your Lordships' House because it is little reported and less regarded, and the numbers present here this afternoon are to some extent an indication of that. But I would press upon the Government that this Circular
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is being regarded with very grave concern. There seems to be in the public mind and in the mind of all engaged in education the conviction that its only result will be either to limit the number of those going into our secondary schools or to deteriorate their quality. There is also the very grave doubt as to whether even the sum of the £400,000 mentioned by the Parliamentary Secretary is not illusory. We are in grave danger of losing the substance for the shadow. I very much hope that the noble Lord the President of the Board of Education in his reply will be able to give us what we have not had yet, the definite pronouncement of the Government as to what their intentions with regard to this Circular are, and will be able to remove some of the despondency with which the present situation is regarded.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: My Lords, we may be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sanderson, for raising this subject in debate, not only because it has given an opportunity to the most rev. Primate to make a most important pronouncement, with which I am sure we are all in sympathy, but also because it gives us an opportunity of congratulating His Majesty's Government upon a very valuable Report. The noble Lord, Lord Irwin, has applied to secondary education a principle of the very greatest importance. That principle bears no relationship to what the noble Lord has described as the goal of free secondary education. We must remind the noble Lord, with very great respect, that that is not our goal, that in this particular field we are playing towards rival goals, and on this side of the House we must respectfully refuse to be put down as reactionaries, or as persons who care nothing for education, merely because we do not agree with the full Socialist creed of the noble Lord. In this situation it is the very greatest encouragement to us to find our position supported by the most rev. Primate.
Secondary education on the modern scale is of such recent and rapid growth that it is not surprising that in some respects its condition is in need of reorganisation. It will be remembered by noble Lords that prior to the year 1902 it, was not legal for local education authorities to grant any money whatever to secondary schools, and secondary educa-

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tion before that time, although some excellent work was done in that field, was necessarily restricted to a very small scale. Since the year 1902 the growth has been extremely rapid. The noble Lord, Lord Gorell, expressed, I understand, some dissatisfaction with the number of children at present in secondary schools. I venture to think that we may take a more optimistic view of that figure when we consider that the number of children in 1902 was only 31,700, and that that number has increased to-day to 411,000. That is the figure for 1931, and the number of children in secondary schools is still increasing with very great rapidity. Not only is the number of Children increasing; we have also to take into account a very remarkable, very commendable, increase in efficiency. The length of school life is increasing. I believe that increase is perfectly steady and regular. The spirit of the pupils, as those of your Lordships who have visited our secondary schools are well aware, is extremely satisfactory, and the teaching often equals, and sometimes, I venture to think, surpasses that given in the great public schools.
When a department of our national life develops so rapidly it is particularly vital that its tendencies should be watched and principles from time to time laid down for our guidance. On various occasions it has been found necessary to reorganise certain aspects of the secondary school. There was a reorganisation of the free place system in 1907, there was a great reorganisation of the examination system and the curriculum in 1917, and, of course, there was the placing of the teachers' salaries upon a proper basis in 1920. But the question of the fees to be charged still remains to be put upon a proper basis, and at the present time very great anomalies prevail. I understand that as between adjacent counties the fees charged in secondary schools are often extremely divergent; that in one county there will be very cheap secondary education, and in the next county, where there is no particular difference in local conditions, secondary education will be comparatively expensive. This position naturally arises from the fact that the fixation of school fees is purely a matter for negotiation between the local education authority and the school, and I am told that it has been the practice of the Board of Education almost automatically
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to sanction any arrangements thus arrived at. To-day the Board of Education is attempting to set up some standard to which, slowly and gradually, the fees will be made to conform.
In considering the question of fees we have to think on these lines: how can the cost of secondary education be most justly, and also most economically, divided between the State and the rates and the parents? To put it another way, how can we assure that the well-to-do parent pays according to his means, while the poor child gets the chance that his brains and his character deserve? That is the problem which confronts us. At present that problem is most inadequately solved. The child who can do well in an examination gets a free education, however well-to-do his parents may be. The child, in fact, need not be an elementary school child. I understand there is an increasing tendency to allow the children in private schools to compete in these examinations for free places, and it is extraordinarily difficult to see on what grounds this can logically be defended. The benefits of education should clearly go to the clever child, but there is no principle that I am aware of that forbids a clever child to pay while money is accepted from the child who has, perhaps, less brains. The new principle is that free education goes only to those who need it, or those who really cannot afford to pay anything towards its cost, and others pay in accordance with their means, while no one at all is asked to pay the full cost of education. Under this system the children of the very poor will be in no way worse off than they are at present.
I understand that the fees are to be standardised in this sense, that all fees below nine guineas are slowly but steadily to be brought up to nine guineas, and that fees between nine guineas and fifteen guineas shall, in appropriate places, where the local conditions admit, be brought up to the full sum of fifteen guineas. I cannot help feeling that it is proper to compare those fees with the actual expenditure on education. Very few parents, and very few members of the public, realise that the fee charged for secondary education represents only a fraction of its cost, and the cost is, on the average, as Lord Gorell has told us, upwards of very

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nearly £35 a year, so that even when a parent pays the full sum of fifteen guineas that parent is still receiving a bonus of £19 odd from the State.
There is another consideration which we ought not to forget, because it is a very relevant one. There is a substantial remission of Income Tax granted to a man who keeps his child at school. I am far from saying that the remission is as great as I should like to see it, and I hope that when our national circumstances permit it will be made greater, but it is by no means to be despised. A man with £250 a year, for example, receives in remission of Income Tax £6 5s.; a man with £450 receives £10 12 s., and a man with £500 or more than that receives £12 11 s. It is rather interesting to reflect that the man who receives a remission of £12 11 s. and pays a fee of fifteen guineas actually only pays a little over £2 10 s. for the privilege of keeping his child at school. Of course, it would be possible to administer the Regulations in a manner which would do very considerable harm, but I cannot imagine that with the noble Lord, Lord Irwin, at the Board of Education we need feel any anxiety on this score.
The Opposition maintain that this Circular is going to cause a considerable number of children to be withdrawn from the secondary schools. In making that contention I do not think noble Lords do justice to the self-sacrificing spirit of the parent. Is it really to be supposed that parents who are adjudged by a perfectly competent authority as capable of paying something towards the cost of a child's education are going to withdraw a child from school on the grounds that they will not pay that fairly small sum? It is not as though anybody was going to be assessed at any excessive rate. Everyone will be assessed with reason and moderation, and the exaction of this small fee will not, I believe, be looked upon by the average parent in this country as a very great grievance.
Parents after all are extremely self-sacrificing, and they are extremely enthusiastic for education. The position might, have been very different some years ago. In those days education was looked upon by the bulk of the public as a matter of very dubious advantage; but
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it is entirely different to-day. To-day the public expect almost too much of education. There is really immense enthusiasm for it, and I am confident that education will in no way suffer. I welcome the Circular not only as an economy, although it is an important economy, but as a reform that is valuable for its own sake. I believe it will do much to re-establish a proper sense of parental responsibility, and I trust the misunderstanding that has undoubtedly occurred will, as soon as possible, be cleared up. I venture to appeal to the President of the Board of Education to do his very utmost, by every form of publicity that lies at his disposal, to dispose of those misunderstandings in order that the nation may realise the wisdom of the policy in which he is guiding us.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (LORD IRWIN): My Lords, we have had the opportunity of listening to four speeches that have, I think, travelled fairly comprehensively over the ground with which this Circular is concerned, and have dealt with it from a considerable variety of angles. His Majesty's Government, I think, ought to be grateful to the noble Lord who introduced the subject in the House this afternoon, because it gives their spokesman an opportunity of dealing with a matter which is becoming one of great public interest; and one that has, I know very well, given rise to much misunderstanding, no doubt due to the technical character of the business, and the difficulty of making the full meaning of a Circular clear within the limits of the verbosity permissible to an official publication. Some public misunderstanding has occurred which I am very glad to have the opportunity of correcting. I would also, if I may, express my personal thanks to the noble Lord who moved the Motion for his courteous reference to myself, and for his kindly recollection of the incident that brought us together some ten years ago, which thanks, he will permit me to say, are not less because they are ten years old. I would venture upon a hope and a prophecy that if, as I trust, we may both meet in ten years time, he will again express his thanks for the piece of administration on which we do not entirely see eye to eye to-day.

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Before I come to the Circular itself, if he will allow me and if the noble Lord, Lord Gorell, will also permit me, I would wish to deal in a few sentences with the suggestions made on a slightly different subject by the most rev. Primate, who, on the whole, did not challenge the principle of the Circular, always provided that it did not impair what he held, and if I may respectfully say so, rightly held, to be the vital principle to which we must adhere in our educational administration—namely, that poor children should not be debarred from educational opportunities by inability to pay fees. But he directed our thoughts to another matter on which I would say a word or two. He made a very strong appeal both to our heads and to our hearts in regard to the large numbers of young men, adolescents, leaving schools, obtaining no employment and suffering inevitable deterioration under the influence of the passage of time in those conditions.
He strongly urged that any saving that might accrue from the policy of this Circular should be devoted to bettering the provision made for a class to which all our sympathy naturally extends. I need hardly say that the suggestion that he made will receive the full attention of His Majesty's Government. As he knows, I think, it is not the Board of Education that is statutorily responsible to Parliament for administration in that field. That belongs to the Ministry of Labour. But so far as concerns the provision of educational facilities the Board of Education have for some time past been in close contact with the Ministry of Labour. They have co-operated so far as they can; they are co-operating and they will continue to co-operate in any way that lies open to them. It is perhaps unnecessary for me on this occasion to go into details, but the Ministry of Labour are doing, as he said, a good deal through evening classes, instruction centres and the like to make a contribution towards that side of the problem. I shall convey what the most rev. Primate has said to the Minister of Labour, and I ask him to take it from me that he may rest assured that whatever may be in the power of His Majesty's Government to do in this field will be done.
I was a little bit surprised at a reproach that fell from the noble Lord, Lord Gorell. If I understood him cor-
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rectly, he said that the Circular had been quasi-privately issued. It is not for me to say whether the procedure laid down by Parliament for the issue of regulations and the confirmation of regulations is good or not—no doubt an interesting debate might arise on that at the proper time—but for any one to suggest that the Circular was quasi-privately issued and had not been brought, as the noble Lord suggested, to the full notice of a would-be inquiring public—
LORD GORELL: Perhaps the noble Lord will permit me to explain. I did not mean to suggest that the Circular had been issued privately at all, but that as it was really an announcement of the policy of the Government it would have been better if, instead of being issued as a Circular, it had been done by a public announcement by the Minister himself. That is what I intended to say.
LORD IRWIN: Even if the announcement had been made by the Prime Minister at the Guildhall my letter bag could hardly have been swollen to greater proportions than it has been, largely, as I shall show your Lordships, by misunderstanding of what the Circular actually sets out to do. As my noble friend behind me, who has just concluded a most interesting contribution to our debate, reminded us, increased secondary education has been a development of the last twenty-five or thirty years and it is perfectly natural, in a subject on which a great deal of administrative liberty has been given to local authorities, that results should show a very wide variety of form. I am the last person to desire uniformity, and I think many of your Lordships do not like uniformity. I believe indeed that to the British character, moulded and fashioned by a great variety of influence and tradition, uniformity is almost repugnant. I go a very long way with any of my friends who would wish to safeguard liberty of local administration from anything that might fall within the generic term of bureaucratic interference by Whitehall. But when times are as difficult as they are, and when it is necessary for expenditure in every direction to be jealously scrutinised, it does become essential to review our practice.
While I make no complaint at all of the manner in which the noble Lord introduced this subject to our discussion

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this afternoon, he will permit me to observe that the Party which is fortunate enough to claim him m a member has never been renowned for economy in general, and therefore no one of your Lordships who sit on this side of the House will be surprised at the inability of economy to claim the support of the noble Lord when economy in particular is before him. Before I address myself to the particular points to which he referred, I want your Lordships to get the perspective of the problem as I see it; to bear in mind and put together those facts which have indeed been referred to but which I wish to present as a whole. In October last there were in England and Wales 78 free schools out of a total of 1,378. In those 78 schools there were rather over 31,500 pupils as compared with rather more than 438,500 in the 1,378 schools. Only 78 out of 1,378 schools are free and the balance of schools, as my noble friend reminded us, charge fees, ranging often, with no apparent cause or explanation of wide difference between areas adjacent and bearing close resemblance to one another, from under six guineas to over fifteen guineas, with a variable proportion of free places tenable as a. result of competition and often quite unaffected by any regard to the circumstances of the parents of the children who obtain them.
When you put these facts beside the other facts that have been mentioned of the average gross cost of secondary education—I think the noble Lord put it at £28 without overhead charges, but I think we may take it at £35 including loan charges—there emerge three particular elements to which I would invite the attention of the noble Lord before drawing a conclusion in relation to what he said. The first of these three elements is that there is a substantial gap between payments made by parents and the average cost to public funds. That is common ground. The second is that we have a system under which comparatively well-to-do parents receive free secondary education for their children, who obtain free places without making any contribution that it may be in their power to afford. The third is that there exists a very surprising differentiation of fees and practice between adjacent and quite comparable districts. May I give your Lordships some examples? Dorset and Som-
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erset charge a fee of £12. Wiltshire, adjacaent and not dissimilar, charges only six guineas. Liverpool and Leeds charge fees, but Manchester and Sheffield charge none. The natural result which follows from the argument that has been made here this afternoon is that, owing to the gap between the actual cost of secondary education and the fees that parents pay, every child may be regarded as a subsidised child. It follows, inasmuch as that money is made up in part out of taxes, that the areas that administer most economically and charge the higher fees are also contributing to and subsidising the areas that make the smallest charge and consequently have the largest gap to bridge.
If your Lordships will allow me to make a slight digression, which is not irrelevant to what the noble Lord said in introducing the Motion, it, seems to me that there are two principles upon which a reformer of our secondary education system might think it proper scientifically to proceed. He might say, as the noble Lord said, that his ideal was that secondary education should be made entirely free for all pupils, quite irrespective of parents' means, and parents would be invited to make no contribution; or he might say—which is, I think, the system favoured by the noble Lord, Lord Gorell—"Let us build up a system under which we will charge full fees, reduced fees or no fees, according to the circumstances of the parents of all the children in the school, and not confine this remission or graduation of fees only to the parents of children who secure a fixed and limited proportion of special places;" that is to say, admit all your children by a competitive examination and, when they are there, decide what their parents are to pay towards the cost of their education.
I think either of those systems would be a logical system, but either, I also think, at the present time at least, confronts its advocates with objections of considerable financial difficulty. I want to remind the noble Lord that we have never yet had a system of free secondary education. I think if we ever came to the point when free secondary education was to be seriously discussed many eminent educationists would be found ranked beside the most rev. Primate in his doubt as to whether, even educa-

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tionally, it would be a wise and beneficent reform. While I do not feel called upon at this stage to discuss the academic merits of something which is quite evidently, at this juncture at all events, financially impossible, I am quite unwilling to stand in a white sheet opposite the noble Lord as one who might be held to be any less anxious to promote a full and generous system of secondary education than he would himself. I would remind him of an essential difference that, at the present time at all events, does in fact prevail between elementary and secondary education. I take note of, and I go a long way to share, the view of the noble Lord, Lord Gorell, who suggested that the tendency of educational thought was to diminish the distinction between elementary and secondary education; but still the fact does remain to-day that elementary education is compulsory and secondary education is optional, and so long as that distinction remains it does suggest a difference of treatment. In any case, whatever our views are about free secondary education, let us not at all events overlook the necessity under which we all are at the present time of facing hard facts and of assisting to balance Budgets, and of cutting our coat according to the available cloth.
The second system to which I refer, the logical system favoured by the noble Lord, is, I think, perfectly sound and is one which we may well keep before us as an educational ideal. I would go further than this, and I would say that wherever any authority desires to adopt this system to-day and can satisfy the Board that its adoption would be attended by satisfactory financial results, the Board would take no objection to it. But what I am not prepared in present circumstances to do is to make that system mandatory, for the reason that, quite apart from administrative difficulties, I think there can be no doubt that in many cases it would inevitably impose a considerably increased charge upon public funds. Therefore, in face, on the one side, of the impossibility of free education and of the facts to which I referred just now, we are driven back upon what I freely admit to your Lordships is something of a compromise. We propose to remedy the existing anomalies to which I have tried to call attention by asking local authorities, who possess the detailed
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local knowledge, to fix such a general level of fees as, after consultation with them, we may consider reasonable, and, in the second place, by the substitution of special places for free places, and by providing that in those special places the general fee chargeable in the school shall be graduated, reduced or wiped out altogether, according to the means of the parent whose child has secured one of the special places.
The noble Lord asked me what was the meaning of the words "special place." I can only tell him that when the term "free place" appeared inapplicable, it was necessary to find some other term which would convey a distinctive quality to the place in view, and ingenuity could suggest nothing better than the term "special." I think that he and others who are interested in this matter are really suffering under some genuine misunderstanding of what the Board have in mind. There is first of all the fear that some 31,500 pupils in the seventy-eight free secondary schools will have, in future, to pay a fee of nine guineas. A few days ago it was my good fortune to receive a deputation of the joint committee of four secondary associations representing masters and mistresses in secondary schools. They had previously circulated a letter; they had given wide circulation, I believe, to a letter—I do not know whether or not it reached your Lordships' hands; it certainly reached the hands of most members in the other place—in which this sentence occurred:
"There are now seventy-four free secondary schools with about 29,000 pupils; fees will have to be charged in these schools, and the Board of Education state that 'they will ordinarily hesitate in future to approve a fee of less than nine guineas'."
I rather think the noble Lord fell into what he will allow me to say was a similar error.
What is and what must be the implication of language as used in that letter by the secondary associations? The only inference can be that in these schools, hitherto free, where these 29,000 pupils have up to the present time enjoyed free secondary education, all those 29,000 pupils in future will have to pay nine guineas. No wonder people are alarmed, frightened and resentful. Yet, under the proposals contained in this Circular, there is nothing to prevent any one of those 29,000 pupils, or the whole 29,000

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of them, continuing to enjoy free secondary education unless, in fact, their parents are able to contribute something towards the cost. I think that one is entitled to resent very strongly a suggestion of that kind, so misleading to the public judgment.
The noble Lord who introduced the Motion quoted the case of Bradford. I think he quoted the case of Bradford as an example of free secondary schooling. Though it is obviously not possible in what I am going to say to found too wide an argument upon a particular case, on this point with which I am concerned the Board was not quite without experience. It so happens that the noble Lord is wrongly advised in taking Bradford, because Bradford—which figured very prominently, as he will remember, in the recent Labour Conference at Leicester, being held up as an example of an enlightened and progressive administration struggling against the danger of a reactionary Board of Education—does provide an admirable example of how fees can be, and have been, introduced in secondary schools without inflicting hardship upon parents; for Bradford last June, long before we thought of this Circular, had introduced a system of fees, on exactly the same principle as we apply in this Circular, into their secondary school system.
It may interest your Lordships if I state in a word or two exactly what they have done. They decided to replace the system of free secondary education by a system under which, where the income of a parent with one child was less than £190 per annum, no fee should be paid; where the income was between £190 and £270 a fee of £3 3s. was looked for; where the income was between £270 and £350 the fee was to be £6 6s.; and only where the income was over £350 was the full £9 9s. to be charged. According to the arguments which the noble Lord has laid before us this afternoon—he fears that any extension of this policy would result in a diminution of the secondary school population, in schools being closed, in unemployment being increased, in teachers being out of work, and in buildings being wasted, and so on—Bradford ought to have begun to show a diminution in her school population, and yet, although that change was made in June and the new entries took place somewhere in September, the numbers in Bradford
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schools to-day are higher than they have been for many years past.
Then the noble Lord who introduced the Motion expressed fears, which I have met also in other quarters, that the figures in the Circular relating to fees and income limits will be the subject of uniform enforcement. He asked in that connection what exactly was the meaning of the £3 to £4. Was it, he asked, £3 1s. or £3 19 s. The answer to the noble Lord is, if I may say so, with great respect. that he has misunderstood—no doubt not through his own fault—the intention of the Circular. The intention of quoting figures was to give local authorities a general lead, and a general lead only, for them to consider the problem and exercise their own judgment, in the light of their greater local knowledge, upon it. Therefore it will be the duty, as it will be the intention, of the Board of Education to pay the fullest regard to the local circumstances of each area, and to the views of the local education authorities when they submit them, for they are and must be, necessarily, in very much closer touch with the needs of the district than anyone else. I think I am entitled to ask the noble Lord, and those with him who entertain that kind of fear, to believe that when the Board say, as they do in the Circular:
"they have been primarily concerned to maintain the facilities which local education authorities and governors at present offer for poor parents to obtain for their children the benefits of secondary education, and for this purpose will continue to have regard to varying local conditions,"
the Board mean it; and that when the Board say they "will have regard to the particular circumstances of the area in question and the rate of fee to be charged," they are saying no more and no less than the plain meaning of the words would imply.
The noble Lord also expressed anxiety lest the policy of the Circular should result in depleting the schools, but may I remind him of this, of which I am sure, with his knowledge, he will readily admit the force. Surely local education authorities will not readily propose any fees which in their judgment are going to have the effect of depleting the schools, for this reason, if for no other, that if they do they stand immediately to be heavy financial losers. Therefore, inasmuch as the local authorities will be financial

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losers, and the Board also will be financial losers, I think the noble Lord may rest assured that both the local authorities and the Board will scrutinise proposals, not only with a view to eliminating unnecessary waste of public money but also with a view to holding the balance fair on the other side, and ensuring that facilities for secondary education are not damaged. I should fully sympathise, and I am sure all your Lordships would sympathise, with the fear, if it was thought there was any substance in it, that the schools would be less accessible to the poor.
I think Lord Gorell spoke about the free places as being the cream of the school, but here again I think there is genuine misunderstanding, of what is likely or certain to happen. Where free places are to-day awarded without any regard to means at all it is surely quite clear that the award of the same percentage of special places does not lessen the accessibility to poor people—it has exactly the same effect under the system of the Circular—but where free places are to-day awarded on some means basis, it may be argued, as I think it was by the noble Lord who moved the Motion, that the winning of these special places by the children of well-to-do parents might have the effect of reducing the number of places available for poor children, and the Board would be willing to sanction a higher percentage of special places in cases where it is represented to them that otherwise, through the filling of special places by children whose parents can afford to pay fees, the chances of poor children will be prejudiced.
Lastly, of a somewhat different order is the apprehension, which I think found place in the speeches of the most rev. Primate and of the noble Lord who moved, that though adequate provision is made for the very poor and for the well-to-do, the middle stratum, with incomes just above the limit for exemption from fees, whose civic value in the school as a connecting link between the two extremes is strongly felt by teachers and those in close touch with school life, will be deprived of secondary education. There again it has never been suggested that our income figures in this Circular are of a final or arbitrary kind, and any such result as that feared can readily be obviated by the local authority recommend-
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ing, and the Board sanctioning, only small fees for the children of parents whose incomes are just above the proposed limit. I fully accept the responsibility of the Board to keep a very careful watch over that point. I apologise for dealing with these technical matters, but there is so much apprehension outside that I think I ought to deal with them.
There is also a fear that special places may not be awarded in excess of 50 per cent. That percentage for free places was originally introduced by Sir Charles Trevelyan, but it has never been an absolute maximum, and will not be an absolute maximum in the case of special places. And I desire to make it perfectly plain that the Board will be prepared to sanction awards in excess of 50 per cent. and up to 100 per cent. in cases where this course is desired and where the financial results can be shown to be satisfactory.
I have said nothing as to the bearing of the Circular upon public expenditure. I think the noble Lord, Lord Sanderson, referred to an answer of my hon. friend in another place to the effect that the saving was to be in the neighbourhood of £400,000 a year when the scheme was in full operation, and the noble Lord affected to treat £400,000 as a matter of very small importance. Well, I think that it is an appreciable saving, and it is one that no one who is alive to the importance of reducing the burden on the unhappy ratepayer and taxpayer is likely to underrate.
In conclusion, I have only two observations which I would like to leave in your Lordships' minds. The first is that as we have not got to-day, and as we cannot get presumably for some time to come, however much some may want it, free secondary education, it is perfectly legitimate for noble Lords opposite to criticise the tentative income limits, the tentative fee levels, proposed in the Circular, but it is hardly possible, I should have thought, to criticise the general principles on which the Circular proceeds, because noble Lords opposite can only criticise it on the basis of free secondary education, which they, not less than anyone else, must admit to be at present impracticable. The second observation I will make is this, that, while our present system makes provision for free places, it does so on no scientific

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basis of ascertained need. We are proposing in this Circular to substitute for what I may call a system of indiscriminate largess a system that will relate our assistance to the actual ascertained necessities of the parents, and may, and I hope will, prove a basis for a very much more wisely planned general system of secondary education than we enjoy to-day.
Therefore, although I hope I have done something to remove the doubts of the noble Lord who moved this Motion, and have, I hope, made plain to him that the most rev. Primate was right when he said that much, indeed most, would depend upon how this Circular was administered, he will not expect me to withdraw the Circular, but I need hardly say that in considering the representations made to the Board I shall have full regard also to those that he has made here this afternoon. I am satisfied, however, that the system that is proposed under this Circular will spread the public money that is available to-day to greater advantage, and will do that without inflicting any damage upon the cause of education, which I, not less than the noble Lord, am concerned to protect.
LORD SANDERSON: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for his most courteous and very full and interesting reply, and also for the whole manner of his reply, although I cannot be so grateful to him for the matter of it as I was ten years ago. But in another ten years who knows what may happen, and long before that I may have to thank him for helping to take the final steps for establishing free secondary education in this country. Then he will have my heartiest thanks. I thank him very much for explaining some of the points that were not clear to me, but I
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am afraid he has not done very much towards removing my fears regarding this Circular. He says, I understand, that the means test is not going to be too rigidly applied. That is all to the good. He also says that the figures £3 to £4 were merely given to the local authorities as a kind of guide. All I can say is that it is a very low figure, and the lead thus given will be followed by many local authorities, and that that will hit the unfortunate people to whom I referred very hard.
I should like to say that we on this side of the House do not regard free secondary education in this country as at all impracticable. Of course, we realise we shall not get it under the present Government, but there is no reason why it should not be brought about. The French are already setting to work upon it, and surely we can do as well as the French in that direction, if we want to. It is not going to be a great expense. A year or two ago I believe it was said by a President of the Board of Education that education could be made free for an expenditure of about £2,800,000 a year. I do not know that that can be accepted altogether as it stands, because as you made. education free more children would come in, and probably the cost might increase somewhat. The noble Lord criticised me as being unfavourable to economy, but I believe the expenditure of £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 a year on education and on making secondary education free would be a much greater economy than the £400,000 that you are going to get out of this Circular. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at ten minutes past six o'clock.