The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 1944. REORGANIZING BRITISH EDUCATION

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 196, 17 May 1944, Page 6

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 1944. REORGANIZING BRITISH EDUCATION

Strictly speaking there has been, hitherto, no organized national system of education for England and Wales such as exists in New Zealand. Scotland, on the other hand, has its own Central Education Department, with an Advisory Council representative of education authorities and universities, the teaching profession, business, labour, and other interests, whose recommendations must be taken into consideration. Administration is delegated to local authorities, which by an Act of 1929 transferred the responsibilities of the school boards to county and city civic corporations. The new Education Bill for England and Wales, sponsored in the House of Commons by the President of the Board of Education, Mr. Butler, is a long step in advance of any previous education legislation attempted in the systematizing of education, in that the State assumes more direct and more widespread authority over all schools, whatever their status and religious denomination.

The Bill has passed its second reading after exhaustive discussion over a period of 19 Parliamentary days. This thorough threshing out of proposals, objections, amendments, and compromises gives promise of practicability for the scheme when put into operation. Whether in the process the measure has suffered material modifications of its original proposals it is yet impossible to say. The statement in the cabled report of the success of the second reading that the Minister received the congratulations of the House “on the ability and tact with which he piloted a very contentious measure” would suggest that he may have found it necessary to make some sacrifices to save its major provisions. Of these provisions, the most important, administratively, is the changed role of the Minister himself. Hitherto concerned, as President of the Board of Education, with “the superintendence of matters relating to education in England and Wales,” his office as Minister of Education will be “to promote the education of the people of England and Wales and the progressive development of institutions devoted to that purpose, and to ensure the effective execution by local authorities under his control and direction, of the national policy for providing a varied and comprehensive educational service in every area.” . - In many respects the reforms outlined in the Bill as framed parallel those already effected in New Zealand and other British overseas Dominions. There is the reconstitution of the general system of education into primary, secondary, and further stages, on which basis our own system is organized. On one vital point, however, the Bill is emphatic where our own system is completely silent, namely, the proposed amendment to the existing law “to emphasize the position of religious instruction as an essential element of. education." 'That a member of the British Government in this materialistic age in which scepticism or indifference to the things of the spirit is unwholesomely prevalent, sliould have taken courage to assert the importance of religious instruction in the education of , the young, is more than significant: it is wisdom, prescience, both timely and welcome. In proposing that the Government should assume greater and more intensive responsibility for the education of the young, Mr. Butler raised apprehensions lest the State might go too far in the sphere of paternalism, that people might find their own responsibilities as parents submerged by a policy of regimentation in which their children would become units of a social system. These apprehensions must have been widely expressed, for it is noted that Mr. Butler during the committee stage of the Bill accepted an amendment designed to secure the status of parental authority and initiative, in the following proviso: . The Local Education Authority shall in particular have regard ... to the expediency of securing that so far as is compatible with the need for providing efficient instruction and ’ training, and the avoidance of unreasonable expense to the authority, provision is made for enabling pupils to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents.” This proviso is actually more farreaching than it would seem. It reserves to the parents —the people —a bulwark for the defence of public education against the activities of impractical reformers, cranks, and others. It also, though less explicitly, emphasizes the importance of parental responsibility, and the danger of weakening its prestige by excessive officiousness on the part of the State.