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Such were the four Recommendations of this Commission made so long ago as 1867: they cover in effect the whole field of what was then under consideration; at that date there were no Higher Grade Schools and no Technical Institutes to raise the thorny problem of delimitation. It was indeed a golden opportunity for legislation, but the issues involved were not understood either by those in authority or by the public at large, and the main outcome of this Commission on the passing of the Endowed Schools Acts was to place the Charity Commission in the position of a Central Authority for a large number of Secondary Schools, though Secondary Education as apart from Endowed Schools was naturally beyond the purview of such an Authority.

The projected Provincial Authorities lacking touch with all administrative and rating authorities alike remained in nubibus, while the work of examination, having been already taken up by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge as well as by the College of Preceptors, was left in their hands.

Following upon this Commission came the Endowed Schools Acts (1869 to 1874) under which certain Commissioners were appointed with powers to deal with Endowed Secondary Schools. To their credit be it spoken, that within the six years of their existence they, obtained parliamentary sanction for no fewer than 235 new schemes and left behind them 200 draft schemes in an advanced stage. Such unprecedented activity met with its natural reward; the Commissioners resigned office in 1874 and the Charity Commission resumed sway and conducted operations with its characteristic caution and avoidance of official friction.

The action of the Charity Commission subsequent to 1874 has no doubt been largely influenced by their interpretation of the object in the preamble of the Endowed Schools Act of 1869, viz. that of "bringing a liberal education within the reach. of children of all classes." They interpreted this to mean that in general the tuition fee was to be fixed as low as possible, and

accordingly, without investigation as to the cost per pupil of efficiency in the several types of school considered, the fees. were allowed to be fixed by Governing Bodies far below the minimum cost of efficiency: in determining the scales of fees permitted the Commission took no account of a possible shrinkage of endowment, or even of the inevitable rise in the cost of efficiency under the new conditions prescribed by the Commissioners themselves; in fact, while responding to the public need for a wider diffusion of liberal education, they failed to enlist public support for the work they had undertaken. And why did they fail? Because, failing to perceive that financial considerations profoundly affect the questions of schoolefficiency, they omitted to collect, to collate and to report upon the facts which it was their duty to investigate. The consequence of this omission has been that no general standards of educational efficiency have been evolved, and that a large proportion of the schemes have been issued under serious misapprehensions and hence have never been fully operative. Instead of insisting that such schemes could not in many cases from the aspect of efficiency be fully operative without further financial aid, and that the public should not look to the Commission for grants for aid, the Charity Commissioners were content to perform their legal duty of launching the schemes without concerning themselves in their future fate.

Such a policy could not of course prove final. Secondary Schools in their financial distress looked around for aid from other sources.

Such aid was immediately available on conditions. Among the subjects of instruction lately admitted into Schemes was that of natural science, and the Department for Science and Art was at hand ready and willing to extend its operations by subsidising the teaching of this subject as well to pupils of school age attending Secondary Schools as to those of maturer years.

In 1852 a Department of Science and Art had been established under the Board of Trade, but when in 1856 it

was transferred to the Privy Council, like the Education Department, it was placed nominally under the Lord President of the Privy Council but virtually under the newly created officer of State, the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education. This arrangement, with its possibility of divided counsels at head-quarters, has now been swept away by the Board of Education Act.

The Science and Art Department received an Imperial Grant which amounted in 1899 to as much as £600,000, and which it disbursed to Governing Bodies, to teachers and to students. The conditions on which it distributed the money have undoubtedly had a considerable effect in encouraging, especially in the case of adults, the teaching of subjects in the Science and Art Directory, but, in respect of Schools, the examination tests which it imposed were not on the whole such as tended to establish right methods of teaching or intelligent learning. These tests, so far as Schools are concerned, have been, and are still being, modified in the right direction; but, beyond this, a sound, if partial, system of educational Inspection is growing up in place of examination. Under this system not only such results of teaching as may be ascertained by written papers, but also practical work and the methods of teaching employed come under the personal review of the Departmental Inspector.

Since 1890, also, both teaching and learning in science subjects in Schools have been much improved by the establishment, under the term School of Science, of special departments within Schools with a prescribed curriculum for three years (or four) in certain subjects.

This step undoubtedly marks a real advance in administration. State control is likely to be more efficient when it recognises the limitations which school conditions necessarily impose upon the mutual relations of one subject to another in school courses of assigned length. But inasmuch as the conditions imposed affect, not the School as a whole, but merely a

part of it, and affect that part only in certain subjects, these regulations of Department must be regarded as an interim arrangement calling for early modification.

The influence exercised by the Department upon Secondary Schools has grown great from small beginnings. Broadly speaking, it has caused the substitution in most of the less wealthy endowed schools of grant-earning subjects for literary and linguistic studies, and has tempted Governing Bodies of Schools to surrender their own independent judgment as to the selection of the courses of study appropriate to their Schools, and to adopt instead the only course which would procure them a money grant.

This tendency was greatly increased by the working of the Technical Instruction Act (1889) followed by the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act (1890).

The first of these two Acts was passed to remedy our national deficiencies in the application of science and scientific method to our industries: it was the direct outcome of the Recommendations of the Royal Commission on Technical Instruction which sat from 1881-4. That Commission pointed out the need of good secondary schools of a modern type and declared that legislation was necessary to enable localities to found and support technical and secondary schools: they further expressed their conviction that a good secondary education is the best possible preliminary to all good technical instruction.

The second Act made available a very large annual sum of money, now £800,000 a year, for the promotion of Technical Education, and entrusted this sum to those Local Authorities -Counties and County Boroughs-which had recently been established (1888) and whose administrative powers extended over the whole area of the country.

It will be remembered that when in 1867 the Taunton Commission recommended the establishment of Local educaion Authorities there was not, except in boroughs, any adminis

trative area available; and, even in 1870, when the nation became awake to the urgent need for organising Elementary Education a new area-the School Board area-had first to be devised, and secondly to be left, as a matter of local option, with the consequence that, after thirty years from the passing of the Act, only two-thirds of the country and about half the population are now under the School Board system.

The definition of "technical instruction" which occurs in the Act of 1889 can only by courtesy be regarded as a definition at all: it is both prolix and obscure, and even self-contradictory'. Hence, even from the first, it has virtually been disregarded, and the Science and Art Department has been entrusted with the responsibility of interpreting it by Minute. The Department disregarding logic, but keeping essentials in view, has proceeded to sanction one by one every subject taught in schools except Classics, as coming under the head of "technical instruction." Thus, Local Authorities have been empowered bit by bit to aid secondary schools, and the majority of County Councils and County Boroughs have in a greater or less degree used their powers in this direction, but the indefinite character of the statute itself and the indirect method (viz. by Minute) adopted for supplying its deficiency have seriously impaired the effectiveness of the powers conferred by confusing the minds of local administrators.

The aid thus rendered to secondary schools has taken the shape of capital and of annual grants, the former for equipment, the latter for maintenance. In the County of London, for example, for the year ending March 25, 1900, the equipment grants made under this head were £1900, and the maintenance grants £22,870 [of which £7143 was paid in scholars' fees]. Further, it is to be remarked, that the London allocation was consequent on a preliminary survey of secondary schools within the County area, and is not based upon a mechanical scale, but has been adapted to the special needs of the

1 See note p. 170.

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