§ Mr. STEWARTasked the President of the Board of Education if he is aware that the Board's architect published a book in 1902 entitled "Modern School Buildings," and that in 1906 a second edition of this book was placed upon the market which architects purchase in order to be able to prepare their plans in the form necessary to meet the author's recommendations, in whose power it lies to reject plans for school buildings unless they comply with his requirements; whether the Building Regulations [Cd. 7,516] laid upon the Table of the House at the commencement of hostilities in 1914 state, under the head Need for new Regulations (page 3), that the principal modifications in the present issue relate to designas affected by ventilation, etc., the details affecting ventilation and heating being set out in chapter 6, page 16; that the recommendations contained in Mr. Clay's book have now been embodied in the new building Regulations, thereby going further than in- 1806W fluencing architects, by overriding and preventing local authorities from exercising their jurisdiction in applying devices they consider prove more beneficial than those advocated in the architect to the Board's book or building regulations; and whether, in view of the fact that the scheme of ventilation for schools laid down in Mr. Clay's book is thought by many experts to be out of date, he will arrange that a further inquiry be made into the principles of school ventilation before compelling local authorities to adopt an old system which in many cases they disapprove of?
§ Mr. FISHERMr. Clay became an officer of the Board in 1904, and the Board have no reason whatever to believe that the publication of the second edition of his book has in any way caused embarrassment to architects or local education authorities who consult it. It is stated in the preface to the Board's Building Regulations of 1914 that they are not a code of precise and definite rules with which compliance is required; that their main object is to facilitate co-operation between the Board of Education and the Local Government Board on the one hand and local education authorities and school architects on the other; and that favourable consideration will be given to experiments which school authorities may desire to adopt. Those regulations were the outcome of numerous discussions; they were submitted in draft to a number of bodies and individuals specially qualified to advise the Board; they represent, so far as the Board could ascertain, the latest views and embody the best recent experience. The Board are not aware that there is any substantial disagreement among architects as to the principles of the Board's recommendations respecting ventilation, or that there is any such dissatisfaction among local education authorities as would point to the necessity of an inquiry.