§ Sir WALTER MENZIESasked the Lord Advocate what were the amounts of the payments by Lanarkshire to the various outside education committees for secondary education, giving the payments to each different county in detail, and the number of children thus paid for?
§ Sir WALTER MENZIESasked the Lord Advocate why Aberdeen county should be allowed to spend 87 per cent. of its allocation of the district education funds under Section 16 (2) of the Act on secondary education and other subsidiary objects, while only spending 13 per cent. on the relief of rates on elementary education, whereas the burgh of Glasgow, with a Grant almost similar in amount on the actual average attendance in State-aided schools, spends only 6 per cent. of it on secondary education, and 94 per cent. on the relief of rates; under what section of the 1908 Act is such a disproportionate expenditure allowed, and what are the details of this in these two cases?
§ Mr. UREThe allocation of the District Fund under Section 16 (2) of the Act is primarily a matter for the Secondary Education Committee of the district. The necessities of the various districts as regards the provision of secondary education, bursaries, etc., vary greatly, and if the Committee are of opinion that it is expedient to spend a greater proportion of their funds upon secondary education, etc., and less upon the relief of rates, that is a matter of local concern with which the school boards, who are strongly represented on the Secondary Education Committees, may be left to deal. As a matter of fact, notwithstanding the immensely greater proportion of the fund spent in relief of rates in Glasgow, there is reason to believe that the resulting school rate in Glasgow will be higher than the average rate in Aberdeenshire. Details of the expenditure of each district fund under the various heads are given in the recently-published Report of the Department for 1909–10 (Cd. 5252).