individual schools with a view to ensuring the efficiency of each. Thus the varying sums allotted bear witness to an effort to supplement deficiencies of income arising from small endowments or low fees.

On the whole, and with few exceptions, the conditions imposed by County Councils on grants to schools under the Acts have been reasonably framed, but it is no less true that in the distribution of these grants too little attention has hitherto been paid to the question of efficiency and its normal and ascertainable cost per pupil.

The third member of the Central Authority for Educationthe former Education Department-officially touched Secondary Education in three points only.

1. The Vice-President of the Committee of Council was at once virtually head of the Education Department and of the Science and Art Department.

2. The Education Department had the last word in respect of all School Schemes framed by the Charity Commission and could, if it chose, remit them for further consideration.

3. Lastly, in the necessary authorisation and inspection which the Education Department had to provide not only in Training Colleges, but within Elementary Schools, for Pupil Teachers, many most important questions of Secondary Education were raised in connection with the general course of education to be thus established.

Thus though there were three Central Authorities with powers bearing upon Secondary Education, viz. the Charity Commission, the Science and Art Department, and the Education Department, there was no Body which regarded education as a whole, and Secondary Education as a matter of national concern. Just sufficient touch between the three Bodies was maintained to prevent official friction, but, as they were united in no common educational aim, there resulted in each Office a district administrative tradition. The Educa

tion Department came to focus its attention on one-the elementary type of education-and rarely, if ever, considered the bearing of its actions on other types. The Science and Art Department was naturally limited to the scope implied by its name, and whilst encouraging Science and Art teaching in general, sought to establish a uniform test for all types of education. Lastly, the Charity Commission, originating as it Idid with a portion of the Court of Chancery, has regarded educational charities rather from the point of view of the interpretation of the trust than that of the interests of the persons for whom the trust was held.

One effect of the office tradition of the Charity Commission, which subordinates the financial to the legal aspect of the case has already been touched upon [p. 68]. Another and even more serious effect is to throw the office out of touch with the Schools whose Endowment it guards. This loss of touch with the changing requirements of education, which seems inseparable from the legal point of view as carried to its logical conclusion, is best exemplified in an extreme case by the famous judgment of Lord Eldon in the case of Leeds Grammar School. In this case the locality sought to improve the curriculum of Leeds Grammar School, then a purely classical School, by including arithmetic, writing and other subjects, but the learned Chancellor whilst admitting that from an educational point of view the proposal was not unreasonable, declined to sanction the changes on the ground that the applicants had not produced sufficient evidence to show that the estate of the Trust would thereby be benefited'.

Again, the Science and Art Department till 1890 consistently pursued the idea of payment by subjects, quite regardless of those right combinations and proportions of subjects which

The exact words are worth preserving: "A provision for teaching educational subjects in a separate branch of the school might be very useful to the rising generation of Leeds, but could not possibly be represented as useful to that charity" [The Attorney General v. Whiteley, 11. Vesey, 241].

alone can constitute education-not to speak of a liberal education. From an educational point of view it is of course useless to attempt classification by subject. Arithmetic, for instance, belongs exclusively neither to elementary, nor to secondary, nor again to technological instruction, for it enters into the curriculum of each of these types.

Lastly, the Education Department, under the influence of a somewhat narrow tradition, limited its powers as regards Secondary Education to considering how far the Charity Commission Schemes which were submitted to it bore upon the Elementary School system which it had to administer.

THE BRYCE COMMISSION. We now come to the most recent of the Commissions dealing with Secondary Education. The Bryce Commission, which sat for 17 months (March 1894-August 1895), if not the greatest of the Royal Commissions on the subject, was in several respects. the most important. In the first place, it set up a new precedent as to the constitution of a Royal Commission, inasmuch as of its 17 members 3 were women. In the next place, its singular unanimity in a matter relating to so many interests as Secondary Education does, was paralleled by the cordiality with which the Recommendations were welcomed throughout the country. Doubtless some of this unanimity was directed rather to the general principles than to the details, but the broad fact of its general acceptability remains, and many of its Recommendations have found, and more will find, their way into the statute book.

The main Recommendations of this Commission were:

1. To create an Education Office under a responsible Minister of Education, with a permanent Secretary, and an advisory Educational Council to consist of 12 members, of whom one-third should be appointed by the Crown, one-third by the Universities, and one-third by co-optation.

Into the Office on the one hand were to be absorbed the Charity Commission, so far as educational endowments are

concerned, the Science and Art Department and the existing Education Department. And besides the Office the Commission advised Her Majesty to appoint a permanent Body of educational advisers, an Educational Council, whose functions were indicated as follows [Vol. 1, p. 258]:

:

"Most of the work to be assigned to the new Central Office would naturally be despatched by the Minister and his departmental staff in the usual way. There will be some matters however in which the counsel of persons specially conversant with education and holding an independent position, may be so helpful, and there will be some duties in their nature so distinctly judicial rather than executive, as to make it desirable to secure for the Minister the advice of persons not under his official direction. There will, moreover, be some work to be done in a Central Educational Department, so purely professional, as to belong rather to an independent body than to a Department of State. For these purposes we propose that there be created an Educational Council which may advise the Ministers in the first mentioned class of matters and in appeals, while such a professional function as the registration of teachers might be entirely committed to it. We do not advocate such a council on the ground that it will relieve a Minister of responsibility, for we conceive that the responsibility both for general policy and for the control of administrative details ought to be his and his alone; but we believe that the unwillingness which exists in some quarters to entrust to the Executive any powers at all in this branch of education would be sensibly diminished were his position at once strengthened and guarded by the addition of a number of independent advisers."

2. To establish Local Authorities of definite and uniform constitution in each County and County Borough (i.e. in Boroughs of more than 50,000 inhabitants).

These Local Authorities should supervise all local Secondary Schools and be bound to provide sufficient means of secondary education, whilst the Central Office should see that this duty is fulfilled. Non-local Schools were to be exempt from the Local Authority [Vol. 1, pp. 265, 272, 5].

3. Finance. In addition to the grants already available the Local Authorities were empowered to raise a local rate not exceeding 2d. in the £.

4. Inspection was to be separated from examination, and was to be mainly administrative, i.e. to deal with the efficient working of the School as a piece of administrative machinery rather than as a place of education, and as such inspection was to be conducted by the Local Authority, the examination of pupils was to remain in the hands of University and other examining bodies as before.

These Recommendations have suffered the fate of the Recommendations of every other Royal Commission on Education-they have not been adopted in their entirety; on the other hand they were timely, they have served to focus public opinion, and in consequence have profoundly affected the important statute with which the century closes--the Board of Education Act, which came into legislative force in April 1900.

To come into legislative force is not quite the same thing as to come into active operation; that is left for the Twentieth Century.

I have called this Act an important Act, perhaps I should. rather call it an Act of great potentialities. It appoints a Minister of Education and gives him a wide scope with much elasticity and freedom of action: it frees him from the detailed control of Parliament and hands over a great task with but few definite instructions. It is true that it leaves all the questions under discussion open questions, and in consequence it has been called vague, indefinite, and a mere skeleton of an Act; but in the existing state of public opinion this was inevitable, and was on the whole the wisest thing to do.

Let us note what the Act does :

1. It creates a Board of Education bringing together-not at once, but gradually-all the three central Authorities for Education. This central consolidation is bound to produce far-reaching results.

2. The Board of Education is placed, as the Bryce Commission recommended, under a responsible Minister, who (whatever his exact title may be) will be the Minister for