£28,000,000

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1522, 19 August 1912, Page 10

£28,000,000

EDUCATION BILL FOR ENGLAND AND WALES, SOME WEAK SPOTS. Mr. rcase, the President of the Board of Education, told the House of Commons that ho wnntcil 14J millions of money to pay tho nation's Education Bill. The "Chronicle" says that when the contribution of tho ratepayers, is added tho total amount of public money spent on education in England and Wales is about twice that sum. Five Million Children. Mr. Tease said that there were now 20,757 elementary schools, with alxmt 51 millions of children; 082 secondary schools, with 170,000 pupils; and more than 800,000 students in various technical schools. There had been last year a lccord attendance of children—nearly 00 per cent, of the. whole register. 11 r. Pease pointed out that the greatest blot on our educational system was tho general failure to continue education after the ordinary low school age. While 503,000 children attended between 12 and 13, and 384,000 between 13 and 14, only 30,000 attended between 14 and 15. Enormous sums, Mr. lease added, were being wasted because we had no proper system of continuing the education of our young people. "Mr. Pease said, in moving tho education vote, that 'if ever money was profitably invested, it was in education.' This is true, rays the "Chronicle," "and short-sighted people still need to be rcmrndod of it; yet it is also true that there are few fields where it is easier to spend money unprofitably, or where more mistakes havo been made, in tho past. Today, after over forty years of State-en-forced elementary education, we have unlearned a great many of our errors; though m education it is often easier to unlearn an error thoji to discard it especially where it is fastened on us bv embodiment in bricks and mortar. Laymen, especially business men, havo still 1 many faults to find with the product of the elementary schools; and among those who think about it at all there are widespread doubts about the value which the nation even now gets for its money. The Critical Years, "Who or what is to blame? Not, wo think, the teaching staff,' whose standard of efficiency has been enormously raised mid is now extremely high, at least in the provided schools and under local authorities which appreciate the true economy of paying good salaries. Rather, the evil is to be sought in the survivals in the curriculum, and in the failure of the schools tp hold in tho critical years after fourteen the boys and girls upon whom up to that time so much care has been lavished. The curriculum is still not perfect; in very few rural schools is it anything like rural enough; in few town schools even yet does it wholly escape the criticism of being 'a plan for training everybody to lie clerks.' Buildings and accommodation change slowly, it was little more than a year ago that the London County Council had still over one thousand classes with over sixty children in each. But the worst hindrance is that of age. One need not dwell on special and obvious evils like tho half-time system, whoso abolition is now certain. It is the ordinary age-limits which are wrong. The bright boy who reaches the Seventh Standard early and leaves school at thirteen is; perhaps, the worst case of all. But the average boy who leaves at fourteen' leaves early enough to, render of no avail, to a largo extent, and in a large proportion of cases, his previous costly education.

Continuation Schools. "Mr. l'easo.is personally quite alive, as the Prime Minister, too, has in several speeches shown himself, to the importance of this problem of adolescence. What the Board of Education can do administratively to stimulate continuation schools and evening classes is being done. But no great advance will be made until the school age is definitely raised, and until, beyond that, employers are obliged to give their, juvenile employees time oft to attend classes. To preach evening classes as the salvation of a young person who does nine or ten hours of hard noneducativo industrial work during the day is evidently , a gospel of limited application. These larger matters, however, are bound to wait until tho promised reform in local taxation and m the relations of local and national finance have been carried out. Even as things stand, tho finance of education is very unsatisfactorily arranged. It is extremely unfair to certain districts, especially London; and, moreover, the way in which Government giants go almost wholly in aid ,of old-established services, while new pioneering services are left to tho rates, is tho opposite of good policy.

Spending More Money, "The very valuablo side of 6chool-life which has been developed since 1906 and 1907 in.connection with the feeding, medical inspection, and medical treatment of elementary school children has, for instance, been hampered throughout by the fact that every step which a progressive local authority thoro takes must be taken at the solo cost of tho ratepayers. No doubt, on the whole, the tendency of all educational reform must be to spend more money. But the serious thing about educational expenditure is not its bulk— which is still small compared to what we spend in other directions—but the problem of getting value for it. If by moderately increasing expenditure we can enormously increase tho return from it, we shall be practising tho wisest economy. We believe that it can and should bo done in a reasonably near future."

Pedlars and Teachers, Sir Henry Hibbert, chairman of the Lancashire Education Authority, says:— "They wcro sometimes told they were going to educate people.above the'ir station; that (here would be no mill hands, no domestic servants, no hewers of woodoi drawers of water, if they went on as they . were doing—in fact, that they were going to spoil the people His answer to that was that England had nothing to fear from an educated people, but she had everything to losh from a people who were only partly educated.'' _ "There is « passage somewhere in *Luciap,'" writes tho "Times," "in which he writes of rich men suffering a great reversal of fortune and actually 'compelled by poverty to -soil kippers or to teach school!' Poverty is still the lot of many who teach school, but they have at least the satisfaction of knowing that the altruistic side of their labours is recognised in tho public mind, and that a broad distinction is now drawn between the services rendered to the State by the pedlar of fish and by the dealer in more intellectual wares." "For the moment," says the "Times," "at all events, there is actually no Government Hill which attempts to deal with 'the religious question.' The respite on this latter subject, though temporary, if common report is to bo believed, is having so salutary an effect on the disputants that it is not impossible that the difficulty may be settled by consent." Mr. Pease says that in the last year there has been an increase in council schools of 193, and a decrease in voluntary schools of 115, and of the latter 59 have bowl transferred to the control of the councils.