§
Page 80, line 25, at end, insert:
("(4) Where before the date of the commencement of Part II of this Act a syllabus of religious instruction had been adopted by a former authority for use in any school which after that date is a county school or a voluntary school or for any class or description of pupils, that syllabus shall be deemed to be the agreed syllabus for that school, or for that class or that description of pupils as the case may be, until a syllabus in substitution therefor is prepared in accordance with the provisions of the Seventh Schedule to this Act and adopted or deemed to be adopted there-under or until the expiration of twelve months after the said date whichever first occurs.")
§ The Commons propose to amend the above Amendment as follows:
§ Line 10, leave out ("twelve months,") and insert ("two years.")
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEMy Lords, this is the last Amendment. It relates to an improvement that we owe to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester. It provided that an existing agreed syllabus should be treated at the commencement of the operation of this Act as an agreed syllabus for the space of one year, although it is not an agreed syllabus according to the definition of the Bill. An agreed syllabus under the Education Act of 1921 was an informally agreed syllabus agreed by conferences. An agreed syllabus under this Bill will be a syllabus that is agreed under a procedure laid down in an Act of Parliament. Therefore, unless the right reverend Prelate's Amendment had been accepted, an agreed syllabus would have had to have been framed according to the procedure of this Act by the 1st April next year, which would clearly have resulted in much hurried and scamped work, and, possibly, in some cases, in unsatisfactory syllabuses. Under the Bishop of Chichester's 15 Amendment the existing so-called agreed syllabus can be used for a year until the new conference constituted by this Bill has had time to construct a new agreed syllabus. That Amendment has been accepted in another place, ,but it was pointed out that, valuable as the Bishop of Chichester's Amendment was, it, possibly, did not go far enough, and that one year was too short a period for dealing with such a complicated document as an agreed syllabus. Therefore, the Commons Amendment to the Lords Amendment is that one year should be altered to two years. That, I hope your Lordships will agree, is a further improvement to the Bill and therefore I beg to move that the Commons Amendment to the Lords Amendment be agreed to.
§ Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the new Amendment.—(The Earl of Selborne.)
§ On Question, Motion agreed to.