Non-Board Schools are therefore an absolute necessity if the rights of parents are to be adequately preserved; and practical politicians are to a large extent agreed upon that issue. They recognise that the continued vitality of the system in spite of many and increasing difficulties points to the fact that it supplies an extensive and widely felt want. To these considerations must also be added the enormous financial cost to the community of any successful attempt to suppress it. If, however, it be admitted that it is practically impossible to suppress these schools, and, further, that if it were possible it would, in the highest interests of the State, be eminently undesirable, it is not unreasonable to ask that the impediments which hinder their free development and full efficiency should be removed. The necessity for reform is evident in the interests of education, of the parent, and of the whole community.

In the settlement of this question one aim must occupy a foremost place. It is that the same possibilities in the matter of efficiency should be open equally to both sets of schools. How can that end be achieved? Much can be done by the sympathetic administration of the existing law. Something will afterwards remain to be done by an amendment of the law.

The administration of the law as it exists depends upon the attitude of the Education Department. By its officials that Department can make, and does make, its influence felt in every part of the country. Through the Education Code it determines from time to time the conditions under which the internal management of schools must be carried on. And just as an administration hostile to Non-Board Schools can send dismay through the ranks, so also can a friendly administration infuse hope and inspire confidence.

At the present time there is an opportunity for consolidating the system of Non-Board Schools, of which advantage ought promptly to be taken. The weakness of Non-Board Schools as a system is most evident in School Board districts. There the two systems live side by side. Take, for example, the case of London. It contains over 400 Board Schools. The affairs of these schools are under the supreme control of the School Board. That body is the sole channel of communication between the Education Department and the schools. It deals with the relation of one school to another, and harmonises the various sections of the work, in the general interests of the whole. Each school gains the advantage which springs from unity of action. On the other hand the School Board delegates to bodies of local managers the practical decision of innumerable details, such as the nomination of teachers, &c., which affect the internal working of each school. But these local managers have no financial responsibility. All the expenses are met from the one School Fund, although the accounts of each school are kept separately. This method of organi

sation combines all the advantages to be derived from unity of control and from diversity of administration as adapted to the needs of various localities.

With this effective organisation contrast the working of the NonBoard Schools. They number over 500. Of these 350 are Church of England Schools. They are each under the management of a distinct set of managers. But the managers of one school know nothing of the working of another school. They are separate and disjointed items of what ought to be an united system. They possess all the advantages of local management and enthusiasm. But where that spirit is absent they suffer grievously from the disadvantages of local isolation. They lack that harmonious unity which would add an additional element to the influence they possess if they were severally associated under their natural Boards. Why should not the 350 Church Schools be placed under a Church Board? They would then, as an united body, be enabled to deal, as the School Board does, with the Education Department in the interests of all the schools. They would retain, as the School Board does, the advantages of local management; and they would have placed at the disposal of each school the best skilled advice as to its management which it may now lack. Although the accounts of each school would be separately kept, they would all gain the advantage of having a common School Fund. At present the separate banking account of each school leads to the necessity, at certain periods of the year, for bankers' overdrafts, and their consequent cost, which the existence of a common School Fund would entirely obviate. On all grounds, therefore, whether of effective internal organisation, or of external influence, or of educational efficiency the reform is urgently needed. The parent would gain through the increased efficiency of the schools; the citizen would gain through the better relations which would subsist between each section of schools, and the State through the Education Department would gain in having to correspond with a central Board instead of separate bodies of managers. And what applies to Church Schools applies with equal force to the Wesleyan, the Roman Catholic, and the Jewish Schools.

How is this reform to be effected? It might be effected by the initiative and spontaneous action of the separate groups of managers concerned. But whilst everybody is waiting for someone else to move, the State through the Education Department could at once give that slight impetus which would set the whole machinery in motion. Let the Education Department offer a special grant of, say, £20 a year1 to all Non-Board Schools within School Board areas on condition that they enter into association with other schools of their own natural order and class and amalgamate for collective purposes under united (1) Or the grant might be proportioned to the size of the School.

Boards. Such Boards, in the first instance, might even be elected by the local managers of the Associated Schools; and the Education Department might fix, as they do in the case of School Boards, the number of members for such Boards, and suggest a mode of election for tentative purposes for organisations which would soon grow in stability and popularity.

There is no reform which could produce such far-reaching results, and which could be carried out at so slight a cost to the Exchequer as this. If the offer were made to every Non-Board School in the country, and were accepted, the annual cost would reach about £290,000 a year. But as the necessity for re-organisation is greatest within School Board districts, and would at first be applicable only to these districts, the annual cost would be considerably below £200,000 a year.1 It is precisely in these districts that the inequity of the existing conditions is most evident, and where that injustice is most keenly resented. The suggested remedy would not be a complete solution of the problem, but it would provide that machinery of organisation, the absence of which retards the application of a complete and sufficient remedy, and which must inevitably precede its application.

The policy of increased Government grants to all classes of schools alike provides no substantial remedy whatever. So far as Board Schools are concerned, an increased Government grant would simply be the means of hiding from the localities concerned the effects of the profuse expenditure of their representatives. So far as the NonBoard Schools are concerned, their condition would remain as before. The same Education Department from which an increased grant proceeded, might either suddenly withdraw it, or might impose such conditions of award as would lead to greater financial pressure than before. Temporary panaceas, unless they are accompanied with effective remedies, are worse than useless. They give the disease time to spread until it carries rottenness and decay through the system. The immediate distress does not exist because the public funds raised for the purposes of public elementary education are limited in amount. It arises from the fact that they are inequitably divided amongst the various classes of schools engaged in the same work. An increased Government grant would not remove that inequity; it would simply intensify it. Any action which would enable School Boards to spend money more freely than they do now, would be contrary to the economic interests of the State and the community. If any action whatever is necessary in this connection, it ought to be sought in the direction of placing impediments in, rather than of removing obstacles from the way of lavish expenditure.

(1) It must be remembered that the office expenses, &c., alone of School Boards in these districts amount to £405,000. Vide note page 75.

The aim of the statesman in improving the organisation of Public Elementary Schools should be not to substantially increase the charges upon the National Exchequer, but to provide such a machinery as would afterwards operate in the direction of equalising expenditure in all classes of schools, of abolishing favouritism, and of placing before cach class equal opportunities of usefulness. This policy cannot be carried to a successful issue unless the conditions of the problem are accurately stated and understood. The immediate pressure of the existing inequitable arrangements is, as has been stated above, most keenly felt in School Board districts. But these districts vary much amongst themselves. The proposed re-organisation of Non-Board Schools would only affect about one-sixth of the present School Board districts. In districts with a population of less than five thousand persons there would not be more than two, or at most three, schools, and probably not two of these schools would fall into the same category. Yet it is precisely in these districts that better organisation, in the interests of both Board and Non-Board Schools, is generally admitted to be necessary. Some of the worst-managed schools in the country are under the control of small School Boards. These schools are as isolated from other similar schools as are the individual NonBoard Schools in large School Board areas; and they suffer from this isolation to a much larger extent than the urban institutions. Such a re-arrangement of rural School Board districts, within the limits of a county or district area, as would give to the various categories of schools situated therein, similar opportunities of central control and of local administration as are certainly possible and essential in more populated districts would be an undoubted boon to all rural schools alike.

Broadly speaking, therefore, Public Elementary Schools fall into three sections. The first section contains the Non-Board Schools, where School Boards do not exist. Here better organisation is necessary in order that the strong may support the weak; that the best trained intelligence may be concentrated upon the task of making all the schools as efficient as possible; and in order to give them the advantages of such extraneous aid as co-operation within a larger area would afford. The second section contains the schools within the small areas of rural School Boards. Here better organisation is necessary in the interests of both Board and Non-Board Schools alike. The third section contains the schools within more populous School Board areas. Here better organisation is vital to the existence and to the efficiency of Non-Board Schools. It is the condition precedent to that further legislative reform, the object of which must be to remove the incidence of unequal conditions, and to give to all classes of schools the full freedom of natural expansion.

The extent and purpose of that reform, so far as it affects their

financial condition, may be indicated by the following questions. Why should every child in a Board School have spent upon him every year out of public money 19s. 6d. more than is spent upon a child in a NonBoard School? Is it because the State certifies through H. M. Inspectors that the instruction in Board excels that in Non-Board Schools?

By no means. As nearly as may be, judging from the amount of Government grant awarded, the two sets of schools are of almost equal merit. The reason is that Board Schools occupy in our educational system a position of special favouritism not originally intended for them. They have grown from "Supplementers" into "Supplanters" because they have a monopoly of local rates. The advantage which the community are supposed to obtain in return for the monopoly is that the schools are locally controlled by representative School Boards. But everyone knows that in the internal arrangement of these schools the authority of the Education Department, which is by no means the product of local election, is to all intents and purposes supreme. What, in fact, the local community obtains is a School Board composed of members representing various interests, of whom some may be, and occasionally are, elected by the exertions, and in the interests, and as the representatives of the teachers and others in the service and pay of the Board. Some School Boards when elected deem it to be their duty to enter into active and competitive hostility against the Non-Board Schools within their area to so great an extent, that the Education Department, in the interests of harmony and of the State, has to exercise its veto, where a vetoing power exists, to prevent injustice from being perpetrated. Facts such as these account to a large extent for the 19s. 6d. per child, equivalent to a total annual expenditure of £1,800,000, which is referred to above. The separate items of this expenditure have no relation to educational efficiency: they are largely made up of exceptional costs due to the existence of animosity, extravagance, and the introduction of the methods of Tammany Hall.

1

Again, why should a Non-Board School be rated to the support of a Board School? Observe that this is a question altogether different from the question whether both classes of schools should be exempt from the payment of all local rates. Neither question materially affects the Board School. Whatever charges are levied from it are defrayed from the School Fund, and any deficiency in that fund has to be supplied by the ratepayer. No doubt the operation is to increase the total charge upon the ratepayer, although it is the simple one of paying money out of one pocket into another; yet it does not diminish the financial resources of the Board School. But it

(1) See ante, page 75. That is £1,800,000 out of a total expenditure upon school maintenance of £4,820,000.