1. This chapter is concerned with the "great staple" of the public system of education, the full-time schooling of children in Elemen-

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tary, Secondary and Junior Technical Schools, covering in all approximately 5½ million pupils.

The purpose of the education so given may be broadly defined as:

(a) to provide a school environment and training that will enable every child to develop his capacities to the best advantage as an individual;
(b) to prepare him to take his place in the life of the community as a useful citizen. In this connection the importance of equipping him to earn a livelihood must always be kept in mind;
(c) generally so to assist the development of body, mind, and spirit as to enable him to lead a healthy and happy life.

"Equality of opportunity" does not mean that all children should receive the same form of education. At the primary stage i.e., to the age of 11, education should be the same for all, but thereafter at the secondary stage there must be ample variety of educational opportunity to meet the very varying requirements and capacities of the children. Indeed, in the educational sphere, much more than in the dietetic, one child's meat may be another child's poison. The provision for all children at the secondary stage of the same type of education would not connote equality of opportunity but rather the reverse, as it would involve large numbers of children receiving an education that could not possibly fulfil the purposes indicated in the opening paragraph. Equality of opportunity means, therefore, acceptance of the principle that the accidents of parental circumstances or place of residence shall not preclude any child from receiving the education from which he is best capable of profiting.

It will be clear from what has been said that by "secondary education for all" is meant not the provision of the same type of education for all at the secondary stage, but that all types of full-time education at this stage should be regarded as on a parity and should receive equal treatment in such matters as accommodation, staffing, size of classes, etc.

3. Compulsory education in this country begins at the age of 5, though a certain number of children enter Nursery Schools or Nursery Classes at an earlier age on a voluntary basis. The infant

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stage normally lasts for about three years from 5 to between 7 and 8, when the child passes into the Junior School, where he stays until about 11. At that age occurs the main break in the child's educational life; all children eligible by age and standard can sit for the Special Place Examination, on the results of which selection is made for Secondary and, in some cases, Elementary Central Schools. Children so selected enter the Secondary School on payment of a fee graduated from the full approved fee to nothing, according to a local income scale, and, if the parents' income so justifies, they receive in addition a maintenance allowance. At the Secondary School they prepare for the School Certificate at about 16, and are bound under agreement not to leave school before that age. A proportion, about one-tenth, remain at the Secondary School after 16 in order to pursue advanced courses directed to entry to Universities, Training Colleges, etc. Notwithstanding what has been said, it should be noted that in practice some 25 per cent of the pupils, including a substantial proportion of those entering from Elementary Schools, leave before the age of 16 and that some 40 per cent do not even take the School Certificate Examination, the passing of which is regarded as within the capacity of pupils of normal intelligence. It is not suggested that such children do not derive benefit from their education, but it may well be that some other form of education after 11 would prove more suitable to their aptitude and capacity.

The remainder of the children not selected for Secondary Schools, apart from those who still continue in unreorganised all-age Elementary Schools, pass into the Senior Elementary School or department. There, unless they are selected at 13 for Junior Technical, Junior Commercial, or Junior Art Schools (which provide a two or three-year course) or for late transfer to a Secondary School, they remain until at least the age at which the compulsory period of education ends. For the time being that age is 14, the provisions of the Education Act, 1936, which raised the age to 15, having been suspended by the Education (Emergency) Act, 1939. A considerable number, however, stay on voluntarily to 15 or even 16.

The number of children of 11 and upwards in Elementary Schools is now more than 1½ million, of whom 828,000 are in Senior Schools reorganised on the Hadow Plan. 440,000 children of this age are in grant-aided Secondary Schools, of whom three-quarters have entered from Elementary Schools and nearly one-half enjoy total exemption from fees. The number of children in Junior Technical and similar schools is about 27,000. It will be seen that of the two million children receiving education after the primary stage, some

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three-quarters are in schools which, for purposes of statute and regulation, are classified as elementary and one-quarter are in schools which are recognised as being in the sphere of higher education.

4. It has long been a cardinal weakness of the system outlined above that the statutory and administrative distinction between elementary and higher education corresponds with no educational distinction, and this lack of correspondence becomes progressively greater with each raising of the school leaving age. The content of the education given in Elementary Schools could reasonably be said to be elementary at a time when it was recognised that an intelligent child of 10 had derived from it all that it had to offer, but to apply the term elementary to the education given in a school, all the pupils of which remain in attendance until 15, is a misuse of language. It is suggested, therefore, that the time has come when statutory and administrative distinctions which do not rest on educational distinctions should disappear, and that post-war educational development should not be confused and retarded by conceptions and definitions which may have been appropriate enough 70 years ago.

Moreover, quite apart from any question of administrative inconvenience, the present distinction between elementary and higher education perpetuates a caste system which should find no place in a national scheme of education. Equality between the three types of post-primary education (the Senior School, the Secondary School, and the Junior Technical School) can never be secured either in fact or in the public mind until the same administrative machinery is made applicable to all alike. At the present time, disparity is emphasised in a number of ways - differences in standards of accommodation and amenities generally, in the size of classes, in the salaries of teachers, in the units of local administrative control, and not least in the matter of charging fees. In the Senior School, fees are prohibited by statute, whereas in Secondary and Junior Technical Schools fees are charged according to the means of the parents.

In the result, Secondary Schools now enjoy a measure of esteem in the minds of parents which has a damaging effect on the life and work of the Junior Schools. The Special Place Examination has become a matter of keen competition, on the results of which it is felt that a child's whole future may depend, and preparation for this examination tends to distort the training of the Junior School

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and often imposes a strain on children at a time of their lives when their mental and physical growth should be left free and unfettered.

5. The basic aim of measures of reform should, it is suggested, be to secure a greater unification of the educational system. The educational life of the child would, of course, have its breaks and stages, but each stage is a preparation for the next which together should form a coherent whole.

The two major educational developments which may be expected after the war are already embodied in statute, viz., the raising of the age for compulsory school attendance to 15 in the Act of 1936, and the keeping of young people after that age who leave school under some measure of educational supervision until the age of 18 in the Day Continuation Schools of the Fisher Act. The former Act will require modifying by the omission of the exemption clauses, and the precise content of Day Continuation Schools will need to be determined in the light of post-war conditions. On this basis, a plan for education might be sketched in three stages, as follows:

I. Primary Education

(a) Nursery Schools, age 2-5, or Nursery Classes, age 3-5.
(b) Infant Schools, age 5-7+.
(c) Junior Schools, age 7+ to 11+.

II. Secondary Education

(a) Secondary Schools, with a leaving age of 15+ (Modern Schools).
(b) Secondary Schools, with a leaving age of 16-18 (Grammar Schools).
(c) Secondary Schools, with a leaving age of 15+ or 16, with a Technical or Commercial bias (Technical Schools).

*III. Further Education

(a) Part-time Day Continuation Schools up to 18.
(b) Full-time education in Technical and Commercial Colleges.
(c) Part-time Technical and Commercial education, whether in the day or evening.
(d) Adult education.

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Colleges, which in one sense are a form of further education, are dealt with in Chapter 7 from the angle of recruitment and supply for the teaching profession.]

6. If the general principles already enunciated and the educational lay-out indicated above, are accepted, certain consequences follow, some of a general and some of a particular character, and some involving legislative and others administrative changes.

(a) Distinction between Elementary and Higher Education

As has been indicated in paragraph 4, the present distinction which places some three-quarters of the children over 11 in the sphere of "elementary" education has no educational justification. What is now termed elementary education and which, it has been suggested, should be termed primary education, should in future cease at 11+. Modern Schools would accordingly take their place as Secondary Schools and, as such, fall within the sphere of higher education, and would be subject to the conditions applicable to schools of higher education. Some of the legal and administrative consequences of such a change, particularly as regards provision for religious instruction, are considered in Chapter 9.

(b) Units of Local Administration

Both the essential unity of education, to which reference has been made, and the limitation now proposed of elementary or primary education to the stage ending at 11, alike point to the need for the abolition of separate Authorities for elementary education. This matter is dealt with in Chapter 8.

(c) Duty of Authorities to provide Secondary Education

The duty now resting upon Local Education Authorities under Section 17 (1) of the Education Act, 1921, to provide for the elementary education of children in their areas for whom sufficient and suitable provision is not otherwise made will need to be extended so as to embrace secondary education.

(d) A single body of regulations for Secondary Schools

Modern Schools should be aligned with Grammar and Technical Schools under a single code of regulations providing for equality of treatment in such matters as accommodation, size of classes, etc.

(e) Abolition of Fees in Secondary Schools

There would seem to be an unanswerable case for making Secondary Schools of all three types free up to the age of 16 or the end of the school year in which that age is reached. If the State is to compel children to undergo full-time education up to the age of 15, it must also shoulder the responsibility for providing them with

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appropriate education. If, therefore, the appropriate education is of a kind which necessitates staying at school until 16 to complete the course, or a defined stage of what might be extended into a longer course, then it must be prepared to see the child through up to that point, i.e., up to 16 or 16+. But it would surely be uneconomical to abide strictly by the logic of this argument. It is precisely at the age of 16 that the economic pressure to withdraw a boy or girl from school becomes most insistent, and unless that pressure can be countered by continuing free education, a number of those pupils whose extended education might be of the greatest benefit not only to themselves but to the State, are likely to be withdrawn. It is suggested, therefore, that free secondary education should continue throughout Secondary School life. This will necessitate the abolition of fees in all Secondary Schools provided or maintained by, or which receive their grants from, Local Education Authorities. The Grammar Schools in receipt of direct grant from the Board present a special problem. To deprive them of their fee income would mean their disappearance, and it is suggested, therefore, that the present arrangement should continue whereby in recognition of State aid they offer an appropriate percentage of free or special places.

(f) Transfer from the Primary to the Secondary School

It is inherent in these proposals that the age of transfer should remain as at present 11. In order to relieve Junior Schools of the incubus of the Special Place Examination it is proposed that children should be selected for transfer at this age to the different types of Secondary School on the basis of their school record, supplemented by suitable intelligence tests. It would, however, run counter to educational opinion to regard 11 as the appropriate age at which a final and irrevocable choice should be made of the particular type of secondary education which any given child should pursue. Indeed, there is a substantial volume of opinion that the right course to adopt would be to transfer all children at 11 to Modern Schools, the age for transfer to Grammar and Technical Schools being fixed at 13. Such an organisation will, if thought desirable, become possible as new school accommodation comes into being. In the meantime arrangements will need to be made for a genuine review at 13 and transfer as between all three types of Secondary School in whichever direction may be found appropriate.

In order to facilitate this interchange at 13, it is contemplated that the content of the education given in the first two years 11-13, though differentiated in detail, should in general be the same in all types of Secondary School.

7. It is realised that no scheme of this kind could be put into

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effect immediately on the passing of the requisite legislation. A very large building programme, much of which would in any case have had to be faced in order to complete Hadow reorganisation, will need to be carried out before all the children over 11 could be accommodated in Secondary Schools. Rather less than one-half of the children over 11 now in Elementary Schools are not in separate Senior Schools or departments but are in all-age schools. Until appropriate secondary accommodation has been provided, these children must of necessity remain in such schools which, for statutory and administrative purposes, must continue to be regarded as in the elementary sphere.

8. The proposals put forward in this Chapter involve some fundamental changes. It has, however, to be remembered that vested ideas, perhaps more than vested interests, are liable to stand in the way of educational replanning. The truth of the matter is that successive changes in the law of school attendance, by taking the line of least resistance and amending existing statutory provisions to the minimum extent strictly necessary for the purpose, have inevitably led to a blurring, if not indeed a distortion, of the meaning of elementary education. There is thus today a conflict between the statutory and administrative conception and the educational conception of the term. In such a conflict it is submitted that educational considerations must prevail and that the statutory and administrative machinery should be remodelled to meet educational needs.

g. The Education Act, 1918, commonly known as the "Fisher Act", made provision for a comprehensive system of Day Continuation Schools for all young persons, subject to certain exceptions, between 14 and 18, the lower age being established by the Act as the school leaving age. The relevant sections of this Act, with some minor modifications, have been incorporated in Sections 75 to 79 of the Education Act, 1921.

10. The following provisions of the Fisher Act may be specially mentioned:

(a) The prescribed hours of attendance were 320 in the year, or, if a Local Education Authority so desired, 280 hours during the first seven years for which the Act operated in the area. The hours might be distributed over the year as best suited local circumstances, but it was assumed that, normally,

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attendance would be for 8 (or 7) hours per week, either one full day or two half-days, for 40 weeks in the year.
(b) For the first seven years the obligation to attend the schools ceased at 16.

12. The main cause of the failure of the scheme was the severe financial crisis of 1920-21, but there were other adverse factors. It is now easy to see that it was a mistake to start the schools in a particular place without regard to what was happening in neighbouring and industrially related areas. This meant that boys and girls in London, for example, were not available for full-time employment whereas those in Middlesex or Surrey, were. Thus a sense of grievance was created not only among London employers but also among the young people who saw that they were at a disadvantage in finding jobs as compared with those coming from outside the London County Council boundaries. There was, again, too much of improvisation about the arrangements, particularly in the matter of buildings, largely because of a natural desire to get the scheme going before public sympathy had waned.

13. It is unnecessary to argue at length the case for Day Continuation Schools. At the present time the great mass of pupils leaving the Elementary Schools do not pursue their education in any form. As a result, much of the work of full-time schooling runs to waste. A certain proportion who possess the necessary energy and foresight do carry on their education in Evening Institutes and Technical Schools, but the total enrolment of evening pupils between 15 and 18 is under 400,000, and something like two-thirds of the young people in that age range cease to be under any educational influence after they leave the Elementary Schools so far as the public system of education is concerned.

14. A number of these may, of course, be associated with one or other of the various voluntary organisations which endeavour to provide for the social and recreative interests of adolescents in their leisure hours. But it is well known that, admirable as the work of

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these organisations is, they do not in fact touch half of the total age group. When every allowance has been made for home influence and for the work of the voluntary bodies, it is true to say that hundreds of thousands of girls and boys are left without the supervision and help that they need in the formation of character and the training of mind and body during these critical years.

15. The view that a responsibility must continue to rest on the State for the welfare of these young people in the broadest sense of the term "continued education" will not be disputed. The supervision of their health, the encouragement, and the provision of opportunity, to develop their interests and capacities are alike essential to securing that the nation's youth shall be alive and alert. From the point of view of the country's industry and commerce the training which would be afforded by attendance at Day Continuation Schools in conjunction with employment is long overdue.

16. Though the Fisher Act will naturally be the background of the new scheme, conditions have changed in the last 20 years and it would be unwise to follow its provisions slavishly or to interpret them in precisely the same way as in the past. In particular the new Continuation School system will follow on a school leaving age of 15 instead of 14, and this fact coupled with the educational developments since 1918 must influence the organisation and content of continued education.

17. So far as the structure of the system is concerned the following should, it is suggested, be the main features:

(a) The scheme should apply with a strictly limited number of exceptions to all boys and girls between the ages of 15, when obligatory full-time schooling will cease, and 18. Partial exemption at least will probably have to be granted to those who are over 15 when the Act comes into force, the majority of whom will have entered employment, but if possible the machinery of the Act should be used to secure the attendance of these young people for some form of physical training. Those who are receiving approved full-time education will, of course, be exempted, but no other major category of exemptions should be admitted.

(b) As in the case of the Fisher Act, special arrangements should be made for young people serving at sea, but it will be easier now than it was 20 years ago to secure the co-operation of the shipping industry in evolving a satisfactory scheme. The operation of the Act in sparsely populated rural areas will

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present difficulty and will have to be adjusted to the seasonal conditions of agriculture with consequent concentration of the periods of attendance. Advantage should be taken of the increased number of school camps which may be looked for after the war; in the late autumn and winter months, these could be used as centres for periods of full-time attendance of a month or more. The details of a scheme for rural areas must be investigated jointly by the Board and the Ministry of Agriculture.

(c) The hours of attendance should be calculated on the basis of one full day or, preferably, two half days in the week. It is possible that the Fisher Act put the figure too high for general consumption at 8 hours a week and it is provisionally suggested that the basis should be 2 half days of 3½ hours per week, or 280 hours in the year. This would facilitate the staffing arrangements.

(d) In order to guard against the difficulty experienced under the Fisher Act, the Appointed Day for the operation of the Act should be the same for all areas constituting single industrial and commercial regions; e.g., London and the Home Counties, the West Midlands, Merseyside, South Lancashire, the West Riding, Tyneside and South Wales. Great progress has been made in the formation of Regional Councils and other methods of co-operation between Authorities in the sphere of technical education, and it is reasonable to expect that the machinery so created will make collaboration for this purpose much easier and more effective than it was in 1920.

18. A serious handicap to the earlier Day Continuation Schools was the frequent use of shoddy and inconvenient buildings. Suitable housing and amenities, including proper provision for physical training and games, are essential to the internal efficiency of the schools and their public repute. Further, they must be so equipped as to afford all the necessary facilities for technical and commercial work. While new buildings will in some cases be unnecessary, a heavy building programme is inevitable.

19. The details of the curriculum will need careful working out, but one or two fundamental considerations may be mentioned. It will have to be remembered that the pupils have gone out into the world of employment and are rapidly widening their practical knowledge and experience, with a corresponding development of

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their points of view, their interests and their pursuits. These facts will have to be reflected not merely in the subjects of instruction, but, even more, in their treatment, and the wider the experience and the less academic the outlook of the teacher the better. Continuation Schools will not be vocational schools in any narrow sense, but to many of the pupils who are in employment instruction bearing on their work will make a direct appeal. Again, special arrangements will have to be made for advanced technical and commercial students, and for those who before the arrival of Continuation Schools would have been released by their employers for day-time attendance.

20. The Day Continuation School should be something more than an institution that simply provides one day's education a week; it must be a real entity with its own corporate life, recognised as in some sense a Community Centre for Youth or a Young People's College. It should have all the facilities necessary to enable all kinds of activities, recreative and cultural, including school societies and clubs, to be developed in and around it outside the actual hours of instruction. Workshops and other rooms should be kept open in the evenings for the benefit of pupils following technical or commercial courses and also for the prosecution of hobby activities in the form of various handicrafts. All this will mean that the school buildings will be fully occupied throughout the week, both in the daytime and in the evenings.

21. The development within the sphere of the public system of education of facilities to meet the social and recreative needs of young persons, now commonly referred to as the "Service of Youth", has its origin in Section 17 of the Fisher Act of 1918 (Section 86 of the Education Act, 1921), which gave Local Education Authorities powers to supply or maintain, or aid the supply or maintenance of, facilities for social and physical training whether in the day or evening. This gave recognition to the need for reinforcing the work of the schools and for preventing waste of educational effort by providing ample opportunities for the happy and healthy use of leisure.

22. At the time this was a new departure extending the influence of the Education Authorities beyond the walls of the schools and outside school hours into the leisure hours of their pupils and young persons. While restricted originally to children and persons attending schools or educational institutions, the power was extended by

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Section 6 of the Physical Training and Recreation Act, 1937, to cover persons irrespective of age and irrespective of attendance at any educational institution.

23. A wide field of social welfare, within which Education Authorities can operate, has thus been opened up. As so often in this country, voluntary effort had for many years already pointed the way, and the value of the work among both adolescents and adults carried on by the great national organisations - such as the Boys' and Girls' Clubs, the Scouts and Guides, the Y.M.C.A. and other bodies and, not least, by the Churches - cannot be over-rated.

24. But voluntary effort alone could not provide - and cannot be expected to provide - a national service; on the other hand, the powers to make such provision given to Local Education Authorities have hitherto been exercised somewhat sporadically, and facilities of the kind contemplated have tended, perhaps, to be regarded rather as an "extra" than as an essential element in an ordered system of educational provision for the adolescent.

25. A new stage was marked by the announcement in November, 1939 of the policy for a "Service of Youth", accompanied by the setting-up within the Board of a special branch to foster and develop it. In this way recognition was given to the training and welfare, outside their working hours, of young people who have ceased full-time education, as an integral part of the national system of education. Clearly in this field, as elsewhere in education, what is essential is co-operation between voluntary effort on the one side and the statutory authorities on the other, and steps have been taken to secure this by the setting up of Local Youth Committees which are Committees of the Local Authorities for higher education including representatives of the local voluntary organisations and the other interests concerned. At the centre, similar contact is established between the Board and the voluntary organisations through the National Youth Committee.

26. The services for leisure hours which it is thus hoped to promote will not, however, stand by themselves. They will be supplementary, or rather complementary, to the Day Continuation Schools in which young workers will continue to receive a measure of education, including physical training, within their normal working hours. For the first time, a complete system covering the educational and physical and social welfare of adolescents can be brought into operation. Properly organised and directed, the Day Continuation School will develop a social life of its own and become a Youth Centre, which should be closely linked up with all the units - whether statutory or voluntary - of the Youth Service in the area which it serves.

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Its establishment will carry with it the extension of medical supervision for all young people up to the age of 18, with proper facilities for physical recreation under competent supervision, and will thus obviate once and for all the deterioration experienced in the past of the habits of healthy living formed in the schools.

27. The period up to 18 years of age will be regarded as still essentially an educational period. The young "earner" will still be the young "learner". If this principle is accepted, it may well be that other services should be more closely co-ordinated with the education of the adolescent. Thus, education is in part preparation for employment and should carry some responsibility for placing in employment. At present the responsibility for Choice of Employment work is undertaken by only about half of the Local Education Authorities, and it may well be that a coherent system of adolescent training requires that Choice of Employment should be administered locally by those responsible for the administration of education. It may further be a matter for consideration whether other aspects of juvenile welfare should not be more closely associated with the general provision for adolescent education; for example, the Approved Schools and the Probation Service - the latter in particular - should clearly be closely linked with the Service of Youth.

28. The central problem in the development of education for the adolescent, whether in the Day Continuation School or in the voluntary work outside school hours, will be the provision of the best kind of teacher or leader. Both the compulsory and the voluntary sides should work as complementary parts of one whole, and should share common ideals and purposes. In some degree the men and women concerned to carry on this work will have to share much in their training. They should feel themselves to be part of a single whole, however diverse the parts may be. As the schools serve as practising grounds for the Training Departments and Training Colleges, the clubs and other youth organisations will no doubt serve as training grounds for those who require the newer training for adolescent education, and it will be essential to secure that the voluntary organisations continue to be assisted to maintain their activities as part of the national system.

29. A planned system of education on these lines, providing for education in the strict sense of the term, for the maintenance of physical fitness and the meeting of recreational interests, founded upon the work of the full-time schools and based both on the resources of the Local Authorities and on the nation's rich variety of voluntary effort, should go far to eliminate the waste of adolescent life that has unfortunately too often prevailed in the past. It should

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produce a generation of future citizens well equipped to undertake the tasks before them.

30. The present Chapter is concerned with education after full-time schooling is finished. The field covered is wide and heterogeneous, including all ages from the school leaving-age upwards and every variety of subject. The instruction is largely vocational, but there is also a substantial body of continued liberal education for both young people and adults. The common features are that nowhere is the student under compulsion to attend and that, apart from a limited amount of full-time work, the instruction is part-time, usually given in the evening after the day's work is done.

It is not proposed to review this wide field in detail, but only to draw attention to certain features which will demand consideration in any scheme of educational reconstruction or development.

31. Evening Classes or Evening Institutes had their origin in an appreciation of the necessity to provide some means of continuing general education for young people - little more than children - who had finished their schooling at an early age, or for older persons who desired to make good the deficiencies of a limited elementary education and to learn something bearing on their occupation. So far as younger students are concerned, the evening class was definitely a continuation class, to continue an education still "elementary" and far from sufficient.

32. With a minimum leaving age of 14 and the growing effectiveness of instruction in the Elementary Schools the continuation of "elementary" education has become less important. There has been a further development of courses designed to prepare students to enter on more advanced part-time vocational study at about 16 years of age in the Technical and Commercial Colleges and Schools of Local Education Authorities, but the gap created by the decreasing need for the teaching of the rudiments of knowledge has not, in general, been satisfactorily filled. Tradition dies hard and the objectives of Evening Institutes have often become confused, with the result that the system has failed in two directions. There is a heavy wastage and it is clear that a satisfactory bridge to the Technical and Commercial Colleges has not been provided, while many

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students who enter looking for something other than purely vocational study drift away bored and unsatisfied.

33. With a minimum leaving-age of 15 and statutory Continuation Schools the whole problem takes on a new aspect. It might be suggested that for a large majority of young people there will no longer be either need or incentive to attend Evening Classes - there will in effect be a transfer of education from evening to daytime hours. This, however, in itself at once creates a new problem - that of increased leisure. Ineffective as much of the work of the Evening Institutes may be, they have at least provided some occupation in the evenings for numbers of young persons who would otherwise be at a loose end. Something will still be required to meet this problem of the "unoccupied hours".

34. At the same time, there will be a number of young persons anxious to proceed to more advanced studies as a means of improving their qualifications for employment, and they will want evening instruction for a year or so in preparation for the senior courses in the Technical and Commercial Colleges. The genuine and ambitious student offers no difficulty. The problem arises over the great majority who have neither desire nor occasion to pursue courses leading to advanced study.

But here again the situation will be radically affected by the establishment of Continuation Schools which, as described in Chapter 2, will have a dual part to play in the evenings. On the one hand they will be the centre of "out of school" activities of all kinds in the shape of their pupils' clubs and societies; on the other they will make provision for those of their pupils who want industrial or commercial courses and who are not attending a college.

35. Clearly the demand may easily exceed the accommodation of the individual Continuation School, whose clientele will be five times its capacity. The Evening Institutes will still be needed for adolescents as well as for older persons; but the Continuation School, for the area it serves, might well form the central point from which, in co-operation with the Institutes and the neighbouring voluntary organisations, a complete network of provision for young people might be developed. The Local Youth Committees already in existence, which represent Local Education Authorities and voluntary organisations, provide the machinery through which cooperation can be secured.

36. There is urgent need, in the interests of the industrial and commercial prosperity of the country, to secure an improved system

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of technical and commercial training. Four questions are of outstanding importance - the training of apprentices and other young workers; relations with industry and commerce; the provision of buildings and equipment; and the development of regional organisation.

(a) The training of young workers

37. Apart from the pre-entry training now provided in Junior Technical and Commercial Schools and such training as is given in the course of employment, the technical and commercial training of young workers has hitherto depended in the main on the system of Evening Classes, and therefore on the enterprise and tenacity of the individual student. This has produced many young men and women of high intelligence and sturdy character, but the system - if it can be called a system - is haphazard and ill-adapted to the requirements of today.

38. The advent of Continuation Schools will of course go a considerable way to better the position. They will provide a measure of vocational training related to their employment or occupation for all young persons, and this may suffice for a large majority. In the case of those who should be encouraged to go further and proceed to more advanced forms of training, some relief will be given from the burden of study after the day's work; although some evening work will still be required.

39. The senior and advanced courses, designed to equip those who should fill responsible posts in industry and commerce, extend from 16 to 19 or 21 years of age. After the age of 18, therefore, when the student would finish with the Continuation School, there would be no statutory provision for daytime study; and he would be thrown back entirely on evening attendance, with a necessarily smaller allowance of time just when he has reached the most advanced stages of his studies.

40. It is true that a number of progressive firms release their apprentices and learners during working hours for attendance at Technical Schools, the number so released in 1938 being 41,000, of whom 13,000 came from the engineering industry. This, however, only touches the fringe of the problem of an ordered system of industrial and commercial training. It is a question whether a training policy, at any rate for selected industries, can be worked out in consultation with those industries and whether such a policy would be voluntarily adopted, or would have to be imposed as part of a national industrial policy.

(b) Relations with Industry and Commerce

41. In any case, much closer relations should be established

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between educational and industrial and commercial interests. In many areas there is a measure of local co-operation, e.g., local employers and representatives of Trade Unions serve on advisory committees associated with local Technical institutions. But, in general, the Technical Schools have not been integrated as they should be with our industrial and commercial life. Again, at the centre, while the Board are in close contact with the professional institutions, such as the Civil and Mechanical Engineers, they have not established any such close association with industry or commerce in their productive and trading capacities. Something in the way of a national advisory council - or possibly separate councils for industry and commerce - seems to be required. Fully representative bodies would be quite unwieldy and it might be best to appoint special advisory committees for each of the most important industries and branches of commerce and a small council of persons of acknowledged standing in industry and commerce, representing both employers and employed, who would collaborate with the Board in discussing broad issues of policy.

(c) Buildings and Equipment

42. The standard of Technical College buildings in this country is, in far too many instances, deplorably low, and only a few compare with the institutions found in Germany and elsewhere abroad. Moreover, equipment must be brought and kept up to date. In the absence of any statutory obligation on Local Education Authorities to make such provision, progress is distressingly slow. Before the war a survey was made and a programme of new building was being planned, to complete which, at pre-war prices, would involve a capital outlay of not less than £12 to £15 million.

The extension and improvement of buildings for technical and commercial education will be an essential feature not only of educational but indeed of economic reconstruction. How far the provision of technical education, particularly in its higher ranges, can properly continue to be left to depend on local initiative, and what should be the arrangements for its organisation and administration, are matters which will need careful consideration in the light of industrial conditions and requirements after the war.

(d) Regional Organisation

43. Industrial organisation takes no cognisance of the organisation of local government, and, with Technical Schools provided by Local Education Authorities, it is not easy to adjust provision to the real needs of a wider industrial region. There is always a danger of overlap or mal-distribution. The need for co-operation and associa-

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tion has for some time been recognised by Local Education Authorities and a number of co-ordinating or advisory councils are already in being, e.g., the Yorkshire Council for Further Education, the South Wales Advisory Council and the West Midland Regional Advisory Council.

44. It is possible that changes in the layout of local government may affect this problem; otherwise, it will be essential to develop regional association between Authorities on the lines indicated in order to secure that technical education is properly related to the needs of industry.

45. It is unnecessary to deal separately with provision for art education. Mutatis mutandis the considerations indicated above apply to the provision for art education. The two mean points which require to be pursued are the provision of better accommodation and the development of art instruction for industrial purposes in closer association both with industry and technical education. The brevity of this reference to art education must not be taken as representing the weight that should be attached to the importance of its further development. Quite apart from any questions of cultural values, there is no doubt that much remains to be done to secure that the Art Schools shall make their due contribution to production in the sphere of design.

46. The following paragraphs deal with the service recognised under the Board's Adult Education Regulations, namely, courses "designed for the liberal education of adults", that is, persons of at least 18 years of age. These courses are of several types, including University Tutorial Classes, University Extension Courses and Lectures, and other courses organised under the aegis of voluntary bodies such as the Workers' Educational Association. It must, however, be remembered that this does not represent the whole range of educational facilities for adults. In addition, provision is made by Local Education Authorities largely, of course, in the form of vocational education, but also, in some areas, of a kind comparable in character and content to that conducted under the Adult Education Regulations. Considerable provision is also made of classes in practical subjects, including handicrafts and the practice of music and art.

47. The Adult Education movement has a long history. It has steadily developed and in the ten years 1928-38 the number of classes and students recognised under the Adult Educational Regu-

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lations approximately doubled. There is, however, no cause for complacency, as the universities and voluntary bodies would be the first to agree. Provision is too much a matter of bits and pieces. In many areas it is insufficient to meet the potential demand, while even where a number of classes are in existence their range is often restricted, with the result that the freedom of choice of the students is also restricted. What is needed is the development of the service on systematic lines throughout the country, not merely to fill the obvious gaps, but also to secure that classes may be differentiated properly, both in grade and in subject.

48. There are two main factors in the problem. In the first place, correlation of the activities of universities and voluntary bodies and Local Education Authorities is often imperfect; so much so that in the greater part of the country adult education could hardly be called an organised service at all. Where a measure of co-ordination of effort has been secured by one means or another its results are clearly apparent in the larger volume and greater variety of the work. In the second place, while there are some notable exceptions of Local Education Authorities who have been active in establishing adult education classes comparable with those provided by the universities and the voluntary bodies, the large majority, while giving some assistance to the voluntary organisations, have done little or nothing in the way of direct provision themselves.

49. The only satisfactory solution will, it is suggested, be found in the mapping of England and Wales into regions, for each of which a Regional Council would be responsible. These Councils should be composed of representatives of all the bodies who are, or should be, effectively concerned with the provision of adult education in the region, i.e., the Universities, University Colleges, the Workers' Educational Association and other voluntary bodies, and the Local Education Authorities for higher education. These Councils would be responsible for ascertaining and stimulating local demand and for drawing up and carrying out programmes for courses and classes to meet it; and the Board's grant would be paid to them.

50. Reconstruction of the service along these lines would call for a very real measure of readjustment and some limitation of the independence now enjoyed by the universities and the several voluntary organisations. If, however, the patchwork character of the present arrangements is admitted, and if account is taken of the promising student-material which is at present not reached at all, the case for such readjustment is a very strong one. When the Militia Act was passed and consideration was given to means

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of providing a measure of education for young men during their period of militia training, and later when war broke out and provision was required for education for men in the Armed Forces, it was found both necessary and possible to form regional committees for education in the Forces much on the lines above indicated, which offer a precedent for closer co-operation in the field of civilian education also. It is not suggested that the regional scheme now associated with education for the Army should necessarily be followed in detail when applied to civilian conditions. The regional layout might be different, and in any case would have to be the subject of full consultation with all the interests concerned.

51. One further point should be added. The closer association of Local Education Authorities with the universities and voluntary bodies in this field may assist to promote the development of adult education along institutional lines. In many quarters there is a feeling that there is room for the development in the larger centres of population of institutions provided as such for the liberal education of adults; an example may be found in the City Literary Institute in London. While there is no doubt whatever of the value of the personal contacts and social interest which centre on the existing individual classes, there are also values in a corporate institution which brings together people of rather diverse interests, and these values might be secured by the development of institutions of the type in question.

52. The path of the poor scholar to the university has been made broader and less difficult during the past twenty years. The State, Local Education Authorities, Universities and Colleges, City Companies, many charities and trusts and a large number of schools contribute towards a bewildering multiplicity of scholarships and maintenance allowances which enable young people to obtain a university education.

53. Pupils from Secondary Schools who have the necessary academic qualifications arid who are willing to commit themselves, at about 17 or 18 years of age, to the teaching profession are assisted by grants made under the Board's Regulations for the

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Training of Teachers to take a four year course at the university. The first three years consist of a course for a degree, usually in arts or pure science, and the fourth is a course of professional training. (See Chapter 7.)

54. The award of other university scholarships by the State, that is "State Scholarships", dates from 1920. Their object is to strengthen the connection between Secondary Schools and the universities and to diffuse more widely the benefits of university education. In the first instance provision was made for the award of 200 scholarships annually to pupils from grant-earning Secondary Schools. The number now offered annually for award is 360 and they are open to pupils in all Secondary Schools, grant-aided or otherwise. They are tenable for three or four years; and there are, therefore, in normal times, about 1,100 State Scholars in the universities. State Scholarships are not tenable at universities abroad.

55. State Scholarships are awarded on the recommendation of the several Examining Boards which conduct the Higher School Certificate Examination, and the allocation as between boys and girls is related to the number of pupils of each sex entering for that examination. The maximum value of a State Scholarship is £100 per annum in respect of maintenance plus the payment of approved fees. The actual award in each case, however, is determined, subject to the maximum, in relation to the financial circumstances of the scholar and his parents. At each university a "standard local maximum" is fixed for grants for maintenance: that is to say a sum is agreed upon by the Board and the university authorities which represents what a State Scholar should receive from all sources to meet the ordinary expenses of university life.

56. The "standard local maximum" at Oxford and Cambridge is £175 per annum. At other universities it is lower, but in every case, save one, it is higher than the maximum of £100 payable as a State Scholarship. In practice, however, many State Scholars hold other awards, and the parents of many are also able to make a contribution. The awards are reviewed annually, and if necessary reassessed, in the light of any change in the scholar's financial position. Small additions to the "standard local maximum" are allowed in special cases.

57. The number and value of Senior or Major Scholarships awarded by Local Education Authorities to enable local pupils to proceed to a university, and the basis upon which they are assessed, vary considerably in different areas. The maximum

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value of these awards may exceptionally reach £250 per annum; an average figure would be about £80 or £100. There are probably 5,000 students at the universities holding senior awards made by Local Education Authorities, but many of the students concerned hold State and other scholarships as well; it is thus not possible to say how many beneficiaries are solely dependent upon their Local Education Authorities. The expenditure of Local Education Authorities on senior awards in 1936-39 was some £300,000 compared with the expenditure of the Board on State Scholarships of about £130,000. A pupil's chances of securing the aid necessary to take him through a university course vary very widely according to the area in which he happens to reside, and this in spite of the general effect of State and other scholarships in levelling local inequalities.

58. Still more haphazard in their incidence are the scholarships and exhibitions given by universities, colleges, schools and outside bodies. No information is readily available as to the number or total value of these awards, but the proportion of students receiving some form or other of financial assistance is known. Out of 10,778 students in residence in Oxford and Cambridge in 1937-38, 4,819, or 44.7 per cent were receiving financial assistance. The proportion of assisted students in London was 26.4 per cent; in the English universities as a whole 38.5 per cent and in Wales 58.8 per cent. Out of a total student population in England and Wales of 39,000, nearly 16,000 students were in receipt of financial aid.

59. Local Education Authorities also make awards to enable students to attend Technical Colleges. The only Scholarships other than State Scholarships awarded by the Board consist of a small number of Royal Scholarships in Science tenable at the Imperial College of Science and Technology (University of London), scholarships in Art tenable at the Royal College of Art and a limited number of studentships for teachers .

60. It is clear that a considerable measure of public and private assistance is extended to young people who wish to attend a university and who are able, in competition with other pupils, to win a scholarship or exhibition. But there are objections to the present system.

(a) Even though it may not be desirable that every pupil who desires to pursue a university course should be encouraged to do so, it is nevertheless probable that the amount of public

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aid available for the purpose throughout the country as a whole is not adequate to meet legitimate demands.

(b) It is not right from the point of view of public policy that a promising pupil living in one area should have less chance of securing the benefits of a university education than a pupil of no great promise living in another area.

(c) It is illogical to have as a maximum State Scholarship maintenance figure a sum less than the cost of living at a university. It should not be assumed that every candidate worthy of a State Scholarship will necessarily obtain an additional scholarship, or that the parent of every scholar is able to make some contribution to university expenses.

(d) The fact that as many as three bodies, the Board, a Local Education Authority and a college, may each make an award to the same scholar, results in excessive administrative work when making original assessments and when adjusting the awards, if necessary, year by year. Naturally, neither Local Education Authorities nor colleges are willing that the whole of the saving should accrue to the Board. The Board have adopted a system of co-ordinating awards, but the work involved is disproportionate to the purpose it achieves.

(e) It is educationally disastrous that boys and girls should have to go scholarship hunting; first the Higher School Certificate Examination in July for a local award, a State Scholarship or both, then an Open Scholarship examination in December and perhaps again in March, to say nothing of other competitive examinations.

(f) The intensely competitive nature of the majority of examinations upon which scholarships to the university are awarded encourages an excessive devotion to academic study, particularly on the part of candidates with meagre financial resources, just at a time when boys and girls should be encouraged to maintain any interest they may have in those occupations and activities which are, fortunately, not susceptible of examination. The result is that after a year or two at the university there may be a reaction; and scholarship holders not infrequently find themselves played out for lack of any real foundation to their academic and social life.

(g) The system of earmarking grants at the undergraduate stage for intending teachers is extremely undesirable. No one has a good word to say for it, though the modern universities are keenly aware that, broadly speaking, it keeps their faculties of arts and science alive. It requires students to commit them-

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selves to the teaching profession at much too early an age, and some students so commit themselves because it is the only way in which they can hope to secure a university degree. (See Chapter 7.)

(h) There is no provision, as there ought to be, for assisting a specially selected and limited number of boys and girls to attend universities in the Dominions and the United States of America.

61. It would be impossible to make detailed proposals for reform without consulting all the bodies concerned, and particularly the universities whose work does not come within the province of the Board's administration. But a reasonable case can be made for the view that universities are national rather than local institutions, and that in a democratic system of education the State should make itself wholly responsible for seeing that promising Secondary School boys and girls, regardless of the area in which they live and of the financial position of their parents, are enabled to pursue university studies up to the stage of their obtaining a first degree. If responsibility for ensuring this measure of higher education were undertaken by the State, it would perhaps be reasonable for university and college scholarships to be devoted to post-graduate work and research. It is probable that, in so far as the universities are failing to make their full potential contribution to the advancement of science and learning, the reason is partly because the emoluments which they are able to offer to tempt brilliant students to devote their time for a period after graduation to advanced work or research are inadequate.

62. Whether or not it is practicable to aim at such a diversion of university scholarships, it is both desirable and practicable that the existing local and state scholarships should be merged and be administered centrally by the Board of Education. That is to say that steps should be taken to establish some uniform system throughout the country for selecting promising pupils in Secondary Schools; and these should receive State awards rather than local awards. The whole cost need not fall on the Exchequer. An appropriate charge could be levied on all Local Education Authorities which provide Secondary Schools by means of a deduction from the exchequer grant otherwise payable to them. Under such an arrangement the maximum award payable to a State Scholar would of course be the maximum required for the university he was to attend. His actual award would depend upon his parents' financial resources and his other scholarships, if any.

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63. The question of the examination or other test on which State awards should be made is a matter for further consideration; as is also the question of a centralized system of awards for Technical Colleges. Further, steps would have to be taken to prevent an undue proportion of scholars seeking admission to Oxford and Cambridge. These and many other problems could only be decided in consultation with the schools, Local Education Authorities and particularly the universities.

64. In simple terms, the prime reform proposed is an extension of the present State Scholarship system, so as, among other things, to absorb (a) the awards now made by Local Education Authorities and (b) the grants now made by the Board to undergraduates under the Regulations for the Training of Teachers. Such an extended scheme should be on a scale sufficient to ensure an intake to the universities adequate to provide, amongst other things, the graduate teachers required for the public system of education; and should include provision whereby specially selected students were able to proceed to universities in the Dominions and the United States.

65. It is a pre-requisite of any national scheme of awards to universities and similar types of institution that the financial assistance made available to the scholar should not be the bare minimum necessary for him to maintain himself and pursue his studies, but should be fixed at a figure which has regard to the expenses which a full participation in the corporate life of the university inevitably involves. The present arrangements are not such as to secure this.

66. Under Section 80 of the Education Act, 1921, it is the duty of Local Education Authorities to provide for the medical inspection of all children in Public Elementary Schools, Secondary Schools and certain other schools and to make arrangements for the medical treatment of children in Public Elementary Schools. In the case of schools other than Public Elementary Schools Authorities have the power but not the duty to provide for medical treatment of the children.

67. So far as medical inspection is concerned, the ground is more or less adequately covered (apart from inadequacy of staff in certain areas) and the only matter for consideration is whether more of the

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routine supervision of children might not be left to school nurses, the medical staff being used among other things for more detailed forms of inspection than can be practised under existing arrangements. Whatever system may be adopted, it is of importance to secure that children are medically inspected on first admission to school, before or at the time of their transfer from the sphere of primary to secondary education, and again about a year before they finally leave school. If the proposal made in paragraph 69 below is adopted, it would, of course, be essential to ensure that children are kept under medical and nursing supervision before the age of 5.

68. Provision for medical treatment is made by all Local Education Authorities, though in some areas facilities are far more complete than in others. In some few areas it includes only treatment for defects of teeth, eyes, ears, nose and throat, and for minor ailments, while in others it extends to orthopaedic treatment, certain forms of chronic as distinct from acute illness, the supervision and convalescent treatment of rheumatism and its effects, and the treatment of maladjusted children through child guidance clinics or otherwise. These inequalities are in part inevitable in any system of local government, but are in large measure due to the absence of a sufficiently specific definition of the duty of providing for medical treatment. Persuasion is and will always be insufficient, and equally of opportunity so far as the health services of education are concerned can only be secured by requiring Local Education Authorities by statute to provide or secure adequate arrangements for the treatment of certain specific defects and illnesses. These would include all those mentioned above, for which provision is already made in some areas, and also such other forms of treatment as the Central Authority might from time to time direct. If such provision were made a statutory duty on Local Education Authorities the main task of the Board would then be to ensure that the provision made in each area was adequate to its needs.

Legislation on these lines should apply in the sphere of elementary and higher education alike and would make the provision of facilities for these forms of treatment obligatory in respect of children and young persons up to the age of 18 receiving full-time education in any form of grant-aided school.

69. Provision for medical inspection and treatment is at present restricted to children actually attending schools provided, maintained or aided by Local Education Authorities, and certain other schools, the Governors of which may ask for such provision to be made. Experience has shown that large numbers of children acquire in the pre-school years the defects which are only discovered when

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they reach the age of 5 and become liable to school medical inspection. The responsibility for attending to the health of children in the first few years of their life rests with the Minister of Health, and the Maternity and Child Welfare Authorities, and these Authorities have provided throughout the country Maternity and Child Welfare Centres (often associated with school clinics) to which mothers may bring their children for medical advice and attention. They have also appointed Health Visitors whose duty it is to visit the homes and assist the parents with advice in the care of young children. Effort has, however, been as a rule concentrated on the first year of life, with the intention, and happily also with the result, of greatly reducing the infant mortality rate. A further result, however, has been that less effort has been applied to the later years, and that the School Medical Service is confronted year by year with the problem of dealing with large numbers of children entering school already suffering from malnutrition, deformities, skin diseases, pediculosis, and other defects which have arisen between the age of one and the date of first admission to school. In many cases these defects are remediable, though early neglect prolongs the time required for cure. In some cases irreparable damage has been done.

It is of vital importance that the gap should be bridged between the upper limit of effective provision by Maternity and Child Welfare Authorities, that is to say, at about the end of the first year of the child's life and the lower limit of provision by Local Education Authorities, i.e., at the age of 5 or at whatever earlier age a child first attends school. It is suggested that this can best be done by extending the responsibility of Local Education Authorities, which has hitherto been confined to children attending school, downwards so as to include all children above a certain age.

The precise age at which the transfer of responsibility should be made is a matter for discussion, but it is thought that the sphere of Local Education Authorities might appropriately begin at the age of 2. Transition from one Authority to another would be facilitated by requiring the medical records of the youngest children to be handed on by the Welfare Authority to the Education Authority and by extending the practice already adopted in many areas whereby the school nurse also acts as health visitor.

70. Responsibility for the social care and training of children below the age of compulsory school attendance is at present shared

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between different Authorities and (omitting special types of provision designed to meet war needs) provision made for them may take any of the following forms:

(i) Day Nurseries provided by Local Authorities under the Maternity and Child Welfare Acts or by voluntary bodies and recognised by the Ministry of Health. These may admit children of any age before 5 but most of the children are under 2. They are staffed by nurses and, except in some instances where children between 2 and 5 attend, no teachers are employed and there are usually no educational arrangements. The number of Day Nurseries is understood to be decreasing.

(ii) Nursery Schools provided by Local Education Authorities or voluntary bodies and recognised by the Board under Section 21 of the Education Act, 1921. There are about 120 of these Schools with nearly 10,000 children between the ages of 2 and 5 in attendance. The aim of the Nursery Schools is to secure the healthy physical and mental development of the children coming in the main from homes where housing conditions are bad or where many mothers go out to work. These schools are generally open from about 8.30 a.m. to 5 p.m., the children remaining in them throughout the day in the care of trained teachers, nurses and others, and being provided with a mid-day meal and given plenty of rest in addition to carefully planned activities and training.

(iii) Nursery Classes in Public Elementary Schools which provide for children from 3 to 5. Before the war some 170,000 children attended Nursery Classes, of whom less than one quarter were between 3 and 4 years old and over three-quarters between 4 and 5. These classes form part of the Infants' Departments of Public Elementary Schools and have the normal hours of opening of such schools, that is to say roughly from 9 to 4 with an interval at mid-day. They are staffed by qualified teachers and enjoy a curriculum suited to the ages of the children, with opportunity for play and rest. They receive frequent visits from school and other nurses and are under general medical supervision.

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small fraction of the children who would benefit from it is to be made in any reasonable period of time, it must be by some other means. Much could be done by an extension of Nursery Classes and in many areas provision of this sort may meet the needs. In other areas, these could best be met by the continuance in peace time, under the auspices of Local Education Authorities, of simple types of Nursery conducted on the lines of Nursery Centres for evacuated children and War Nurseries for children of mothers in employment. These types of Nursery which, as a war measure, are being administered by Maternity and Child Welfare Authorities, are, so far as children from 2 to 5 are concerned, more in the province of the Education Authorities.

It is accordingly suggested that Local Education Authorities should be charged with the duty of making such additional provision as may be necessary for attending to the physical and mental development of children over 2 and under 5 years of age in Nursery Schools or classes or such other forms of Nursery as may be approved by the Board of Education. Such provision would carry with it the corollary that, as suggested in paragraph 69, the functions of Maternity and Child Welfare Authorities should not extend beyond the age of about 2 years.

72. The statutory provision for the elementary education of blind, deaf, physically and mentally defective and epileptic children is contained in Part V of the Education Act, 1921, and further provision may be made for their continued education beyond the age of compulsion under Sections 70 and 71 of that Act. Broadly, the position is that the parents of such children are required to keep them at Special Schools until the end of the term in which they attain the age of 16, and that Local Education Authorities for elementary education are under a similar obligation to provide or secure suitable education for them up to that age. Beyond the age of 16 there is no obligation on Authorities or parents, though in point of fact the large majority of the blind continue to receive training and further education for anything up to four or five years, while a few proceed to a Secondary School course. A certain proportion of deaf, cripples and those suffering from severe epilepsy also receive training and further education after they reach the age of 16.

73. So far as Special Schools for children up to the age of 16 are concerned, provision has hitherto been somewhat haphazard. The number of handicapped children of any one type (excluding delicate

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children) within the area of all but the largest Local Education Authorities is far too small to justify the establishment of a Special School for children from that area only. The small day school is in any case ineffective, and for satisfactory education a unit of' not less than four, or preferably five or six, classes should be regarded as the minimum. Having regard to the proportion of handicapped children in the child population, it is found in practice that the smallest area which could justify the establishment of a Special School to meet its own need is one containing a population of from one to several millions according to the category of defect. This being the case it has not been practicable for the Board to enforce the law upon individual Local Education Authorities, and though co-operation between Authorities has occasionally been effective, the Board have had to rely on the initiative of the more enterprising Authorities and on voluntary effort. Numbers of residential schools for all types of defective children have been established under voluntary management.

74. Each of the several categories of handicapped children presents its own problems which it would be beyond the scope of this Memorandum to discuss in detail. Broadly, the position is that though accommodation for the blind and deaf, including the partially sighted and partially deaf, is more or less adequate, it is ill-distributed and much of it is old and inconvenient. War-time conditions have led to the evacuation of a number of these schools, generally to their great advantage. In any scheme of reconstruction the opportunity should be taken of reorganising these schools on a regional basis and removing them from the towns to the country, and at the same time of implementing the recommendations of the special committees which have recently examined the problems presented by these children.

Additional Residential Special School accommodation for children suffering from rheumatism and its effects and for delicate and debilitated children is also required and the residential provision for mentally defective children is gravely inadequate. So far as the care of the mentally defective is concerned, little has so far been done to carry out the recommendations of the joint committee of the Board of Education and Board of Control, which reported in 1929. For the large majority of these children and also of the delicate children now certifiable as physically defective, provision will have to be, and should properly be, made within the Public Elementary School system and separate Special Schools are unnecessary.

Some additional accommodation in residential hospital schools is also required for children suffering from crippling defects. Casualties

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due to enemy action may well increase the number of cripples requiring orthopaedic treatment. Some of the additional hospital accommodation which has been provided to meet war conditions may become available after the war and could be used for these children and for other categories of handicapped children for whom residential provision will be required.

75. There are also certain types of handicapped children who are not covered by Part V of the Act for whom special provision is needed - the maladjusted or problem child and the convalescent. For the former, as mentioned in paragraph 68 above, provision may be made by Local Education Authorities under Section 80 of the Act for treatment in child guidance clinics or by sending the child to one or other of the few private residential homes designed to deal with these cases. It is desirable that the scope of Part V should be enlarged so as to include maladjusted children and that a small number of residential Special Schools should be provided for them on a regional basis. It is also desirable that Authorities should be allowed under Section 80 of the Act to send children convalescing after illness to residential homes where they would receive the rest and treatment they require before returning to the ordinary schools, but it is not suggested that such institutions should be provided by Authorities or certified as Special Schools.

76. It has long been felt that the differentiation between the upper age limit for compulsory education in Special Schools and Public Elementary Schools respectively is unnecessary and undesirable, except in the case of the blind and deaf, whose educational handicap is so much greater than that of normal children. The raising of the age of compulsory education for normal children to 15 should, it is suggested, be accompanied by lowering that for physically and mentally defective children to the same age. On the other hand, the upper age for blind and deaf children should remain at 16, and the limitation which now exists on retention after the statutory age in all types of Special School should be withdrawn. By this means continuity of education after 15 or 16 will be secured and development of the curricula towards the needs of a vocation will be facilitated.

At the same time the whole of Part V of the Act, which is based on a series of earlier enactments dating back to 1893 should be revised and brought up to date. Among other things, the provisions of this part of the Act and those of the Mental Deficiency Acts should be brought into line, and a fresh delimitation made of the respective functions of Local Education Authorities and Local Mental Deficiency Authorities. It is also desirable that the present

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requirement should be reconsidered under which all types of defective children must be formally certified as defective before proper arrangements can be made for their educational care.

The recommendations contained in the preceding paragraphs will fail of their purpose unless the education and care of these handicapped children are organised on a wide geographical basis. Given the necessary co-operation between Authorities there is no reason why adequate provision for all the various types of afflicted children should not be forthcoming within a relatively short time.

77. Broadly speaking, Local Education Authorities have power under various sections of the Education Act, 1921, to provide meals for children attending any grant-aided school.

In the case of Public Elementary Schools these powers derive from Sections 82 to 84 of the Act, the general effect of which is (a) that if there are undernourished children in the schools the Authority may provide them with free meals in case of need, and (b) that they may also provide meals on payment by the parents. Where payment is demanded, it is usually limited to the cost of the food only, the overhead expenditure falling on the Authority.

Free meals for necessitous children attending Secondary and Technical Schools may be provided by the Local Education Authorities for higher education, whether under Section 71 (c) as a form of maintenance allowance, or under the general power given by Section 70 (1) to supply or aid the supply of higher education. In many of these schools meals are also provided on payment by the parents of a sum which represents something more than the bare cost of the food.

In Nursery Schools, under Section 21, meals are provided as part of the normal routine of the school, the parents paying what they can afford.

In the case of Special Schools certified under Part V of the Act, meals are usually provided and parents are expected to pay for them if they are in a position to do so.

78. It will be seen that there is a distinction between Public Elementary Schools on the one hand and all other types of school on the other, so far as provision of free meals is concerned. In the former, the view has been taken that meals may be provided free only if (a) the children are undernourished and (b) the parents are necessitous; while in the latter, the only criterion is the means of the parents. The necessity of satisfying both criteria in the case of Public Elementary Schools has been a fruitful cause of difficulty

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in administration and delay in actual provision. There can be no justification for a procedure which allows a well nourished child attending a Secondary or Special School to have meals free if its parents are poor, while withholding this provision from a similar child of equally poor parents if he happens to be at a Public Elementary School. Apart from this anomaly, recent investigations have made it clear that medical opinion on what constitutes undernourishment is not well defined, and that no hard and fast line can be drawn between the varying degrees of malnutrition on which a decision can be properly based whether free meals should be given.

79. The rapid development of provision of meals for school children that has taken place during the war and the expected widespread institution of communal feeding for the general public may produce a marked change in the social habits of the people. It may well be that the provision of a midday meal will become and will remain a normal element in public education.

There is much to be said for the view that midday dinners should be regarded as an integral part of full-time education and, as such, provided free. If this view is not accepted, there remains the question on what basis to determine whether parents are to be required to pay for the meals. At present the income scales on which the decision is reached vary widely from area to area, and it is suggested that if the charge for meals is in future to be based upon the parents' income, the anomalies which exist at present would be reduced by the institution of a national income scale such as is in operation in the case of the National Milk Scheme. The whole question is, however, one that requires much consideration and it is possible that the solution lies rather in the introduction of some system of family allowances than in remission of the cost of meals on the basis of parental income.

80. There still remains the question whether provision of meals should be a power or a duty of Local Education Authorities. So long as it remains a power the exercise of which lies in the discretion of the Authority, it seems probable that there will always be some areas in which no meals are provided, even for the children most clearly in need of supplementary nourishment. In these cases the Board will have no remedy. The provisions of Sections 82-84 of the Education Act, 1921, which are open to more than one interpretation, should in any case be amended and clarified. It may well be felt that this opportunity should be taken of making it obligatory for Local Education Authorities to make or otherwise secure the provision of meals for all children for whom such provision is necessary in order that they may derive full benefit from their education.

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(a) Training

81. There are two main types of institution engaged in the training of teachers, namely: (a) Training Colleges, referred to as T.C.s. and (b) Training Departments of Universities and University Colleges, referred to as U.T.Ds. There are some 80 Training Colleges, 50 of them provided by voluntary bodies (mainly the churches) and the remainder by Local Education Authorities. There are about 20 Training Departments of Universities and University Colleges.

82. The T.Cs. provide a two-year course of combined academic and professional study (at the Domestic Science T.Cs. the course is three years), the minimum age of admission to which is 18. The U.T.Ds. provide a four-year course, the first three being a course for a university degree, and the fourth year being devoted to professional training. The minimum age of admission to this four-year course is 17.

83. There are certain divergences from this pattern. The Froebel Colleges provide a three-year course, only the last two of which are recognised by the Board. Some T.Cs. provide third-year courses in special subjects, which a few students take, either immediately following the completion of their two-year course or after they have had some years of practical experience as teachers. There are also one or two specialist colleges for the training of teachers of physical training and teachers of handwork. There is also a system of training, very little used, known as school-centred training, in which graduates are attached to specially selected Secondary Schools and secure their training at those schools. But these special types of training, though important, do not materially affect the main picture.

84. The annual output of trained teachers from the T.Cs. is about 5,000, and from the U.T.Ds. about 1,600. The T.C. course does not, save in a few exceptional cases, lead to a university degree and the students from these Colleges teach almost exclusively in Public Elementary Schools. The U.T.D. course involves graduation, and some 40 per cent of the output obtain posts in Secondary Schools. The remainder teach in Public Elementary Schools, mainly in the Senior Schools.

85. Both types of training are subsidised by grants. The Board pay 50 per cent of the net expenditure which Local Education

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Authorities incur in providing and maintaining T.Cs.; they pay capitation grants in the form of tuition and maintenance grants to or on behalf of students in voluntary T.Cs.; and, subject to need, they pay tuition fees and maintenance grants in respect of students taking the four-year course at the U.T.Ds. The annual expenditure by the Board on capitation grants to voluntary T.Cs. and U.T.Ds. is roughly £700,000 a year. If the 50 per cent grant to Local Education Authorities were isolated and added to the above figure it would probably show that the total annual expenditure by the Board on the training of teachers was about £900,000. The Local Education Authorities which provide T.Cs. (other than Domestic Science T.Cs.) receive a subsidy raised from those which do not.

86. Students admitted either to T.Cs. or U.T.Ds. normally have had a full secondary education, and if they seek grant aid (that is are not admitted as private students training at their own expense) they sign a declaration acknowledging that they are taking advantage of public money in order to be trained as teachers and asserting their intention to complete the course and thereafter follow the profession of teacher.

87. In the main there are separate T.Cs. for men and women, though there are some "mixed" colleges. The U.T.Ds. with the exception of Cambridge, like the universities themselves, admit both men and women. The T.Cs. are, in the main, residential institutions where the students are segregated by profession, and, as indicated above, generally by sex. There are a few day students living at home at some colleges. The U.T.Ds. are residential in the sense that there are hostels attached to the universities, but a number of students live at home or in lodgings.

88. The scales of salary of the staffs of the T.Cs. are approximately the same as the scales of Secondary School teachers. The scales in U.T.Ds. conform to university standards. In the T.Cs. not only are the students resident, but in general the staff also. No doubt in the men's T.Cs. married men teachers live outside the college, but in the women's T.Cs. the staff with few exceptions are unmarried and in general reside in college.

89. The preceding paragraphs deal with what may be called preemployment training. There is a system, very spasmodic and fluctuating, of post-employment training which takes the form of short courses sometimes extending over three months and sometimes over only a. fortnight or even a weekend, designed to serve as refresher courses for serving teachers. These courses are conducted by T.Cs. and U.T.Ds., by Local Education Authorities and by independent organisations; and for many years the Board have themselves

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organised courses of about a fortnight's duration conducted by their Inspectors. There is, however, no requirement that a teacher, trained or untrained, shall attend a refresher course; on the other hand, the number of courses provided is by no means equal to the demand for them.

90. There is very limited provision whereby serving teachers who wish to devote any period up to a year away from their schools, in order to undertake a special study or investigation, may receive a sum, based on need, not exceeding £200. The money available for promoting this form of "Sabbatical Year" has never exceeded £1,500 a year. There are occasional "interchanges" between T.C. lecturers in this country and in the Dominions.

(b) Recognition

91. The regulations governing Public Elementary Schools require that teachers shall be recognised in some specific category namely as Certificated Teachers, Uncertificated Teachers or Teachers of Special Subjects. (In rural schools Supplementary teachers may in certain circumstances be employed.) A Certificated Teacher now means a trained teacher, that is a teacher who has satisfactorily completed a course of training of the kind already described. There is a class of Certificated Teachers diminishing in number year by year, who are not trained. These are a relic of the days when the Certificate could be obtained by examination only.

92. The regulations governing Secondary Schools do not require the recognition of teachers by category and do not prescribe any precise academic or professional qualifications. They provide that the teaching staff of a school must be "suitable and sufficient in number and qualifications for providing adequate instruction in each subject of the curriculum". In practice, teachers in Secondary schools are normally graduates and many of them are trained. The regulations governing Technical Schools are similar in character, but except in the case of Art teachers the teachers in Technical Schools are seldom "trained teachers". The Board make provision for a course of training for teachers of art, but there is no obligation on teachers in Art Schools to have taken such training.

93. For historical reasons and because of the Regulation requirements governing the recognition of teachers in Public Elementary Schools, the only recognition granted by the Board to teachers who have been trained, even though they may have been trained specifically for work in Secondary Schools, is "recognition as a Certificated Teacher for the purposes of the Code", that is for the purpose of teaching in a Public Elementary School.

94. The courses which a student has to take and the examinations

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which he has to pass in order to be recognized as a Certificated Teacher are as follows:

(a) At T.Cs. The T.Cs. are arranged in groups round the various universities; and Joint Boards, representative of the T.Cs. and the particular university concerned, conduct examinations on courses and under a system which the Board approve. The Board accept the recommendations of the Joint Boards about the certification of individual students. There is a Central Advisory Committee, representative of all the interests concerned, which advises the Board about minimum requirements in the way of subjects; and thus a rough parity, though not necessarily identity, of qualification is required throughout the country for certification.

(b) At U.T.Ds. The Board accept a university degree as adequate evidence of academic attainment and they accept success in the examination for the university Diploma in Education (or Teaching Diploma) as sufficient for professional purposes. If specially recommended by the university, a student who fails in his final degree examination may nevertheless take the fourth professional year with a view to certification; and a graduate who fails to obtain the university Diploma in Education may in certain circumstances, nevertheless, be recognized as a Certificated Teacher.

95. Every Certificated Teacher has to serve one probationary year before his recognition as a Certificated Teacher can be confirmed. In cases of incompetence recognition is withdrawn. The system of probation does not, of course, apply to trained teachers who take posts in Secondary Schools, since "certification" has no meaning for those schools.

(c) Supply

96. The Board control the supply of Certificated Teachers by fixing annually the quota of students at T.Cs. and U.T.D.s. whom they are prepared to recognize as Certificated Teachers on the conclusion of the course.

97. But both T.Cs. and U.T.Ds. admit students outside this quota. The T.Cs. sometimes admit students from the Colonies, who intend to return to their own country, and the U.T.Ds. admit students whose sole object is to be trained for teaching in Secondary Schools,

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and to whom therefore recognition as a Certificated Teacher is irrelevant.

98. The weaknesses of the present system are briefly as follows:

(a) Young people are committed to the teaching profession at too early an age; and - a specialised aspect of this - enter the profession before they have had any experience of life other than that of a pupil at school or a student at college.

(b) The two-year course at T.Cs. is inadequate. The amount of academic and professional work required is such that students have insufficient opportunity to mature as individuals.

(c) Students at the T.Cs. are all preparing for the same profession and, in general, are segregated by sex. This tends to a narrowness of outlook. Further, some of the colleges have a tradition of supervision and discipline not appropriate to young people, especially young people who, on leaving college, will at once enter upon an independent life as teachers.

(d) Training is too uniform in character. For instance, no extensive use has been made of school-centred training, which in its present form is inadequately financed.

(e) Recruitment of the staffs of T.Cs. is not on a satisfactory basis. Some of the lecturers have little or no experience of work in Public Elementary Schools, and the present salary arrangements are not such as to attract the well-established teacher with considerable school experience. There is too much "immobility". Teachers should not only come into T.C. work from the schools, but should also go out from T.Cs. to specially responsible work in the schools. In short, appointment to the staff of a T.C. should not generally be regarded as a permanency.

(f) Training, though it may be for Secondary Schools, issues in a "recognition" which is relevant only to Public Elementary Schools. This is troublesome now and will be quite impossible to justify or administer when schools are organized as primary up to eleven years of age and secondary thereafter.

(g) There is no adequate system of short post-employment refresher courses of training to enable serving teachers to review and improve their professional practice or to acquire the knowledge and technique necessary for developments which are new to them.

(h) There is no regularized or extensive system of "Sabbatical Years"; that is, arrangements whereby teachers can get away from their own schools or colleges for a year in order to teach

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or study elsewhere. This kind of "refreshment" is very necessary, and particularly for teachers on the staffs of T.Cs.

(i) The Local Education Authorities, except the few which provide T.Cs., and the schools generally, except those in the neighbourhood of T.Cs. which are used as practising schools, have no educational responsibility for, and take no part in, the training of the teachers who will ultimately serve them.

(j) There is no provision for the training of teachers of technical subjects who serve in the Technical Schools and Colleges.

99. It will always be desirable, apart from the needs of Technical Schools, to have teachers of two broad classes: graduates and non-graduates. To require every teacher to take a university degree course would be to deprive the schools, and particularly the Infant and Junior Schools, of some of the persons best qualified by character and natural endowment to be teachers. It follows that the broad division into T.Cs. providing non-graduate courses, and U.T.Ds. providing courses after graduation, should not be disturbed. But there must be added a new category of training institution, namely training departments of Technical Colleges.

100. The following are the main proposals for reform as regards T.Cs. and U.T.Ds.:

(a) The course at T.Cs. should be a three-year course, and on the satisfactory completion of his training a student should be recognized as a "trained teacher" without the necessity of serving a year on probation. No teacher should be recognized as a trained teacher before his 21st birthday. This provision would make unnecessary any precise minimum age for admission to a T.C., which always involves hardship on those a few days or weeks under the age.

(b) The second or middle year of the course, except possibly in the case of students at the Domestic Science Training Colleges, should be spent away from college, at least six months of the year being spent in teaching in a school under supervision as a paid "untrained teacher in training". The remaining part of the year should be spent either in teaching or in some other work of approved character.

(c) No student should be called upon finally to commit himself to teaching or to sign any declaration until the beginning of his third year. He should be free to give up training for the profession, and the Board or the college should be free to

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require him to give up such training, at any time up to the end of his second year.

(d) The four-year course, as such, at the U.T.Ds. should be abolished, no grants being earmarked for intending teachers at the undergraduate stage. The money now spent on earmarked grants to undergraduates, with further sums if necessary, should be allocated to the universities or some other appropriate body to be used for the purpose of enabling qualified but needy students to pursue a university degree course (see Chapter 5). No university student should be required to decide whether he intends to be a teacher or to sign a declaration on the matter until he has graduated.

(e) There should be a reasonable capitation grant in respect of graduates who sign a declaration of their intention to be teachers and who take a year's professional course in a U.T.D. (that is the equivalent of the existing fourth year of the four-year course).

(f) The system of school-centred training for graduates as an alternative to training at U.T.Ds. should be encouraged.

(g) The ideal is "every teacher a trained teacher or a teacher under training". But until this ideal can be reached teachers should be regarded as classified under two broad heads: "trained teachers" and "untrained teachers". Each of these two classes is naturally divided into two sub-clauses, thus:

Trained Teachers:

(a) Graduates - from U.T.Ds. or school-centred training.
(b) Non-graduates-from T.Cs.

Untrained Teachers:

(a) Graduates - from the Universities.
(b) Non-graduates-from the Secondary Schools and elsewhere.

(h) The term Certificated Teacher, as implying a trained teacher, should disappear. But some of the existing Uncertificated Teachers in the Public Elementary Schools might, in virtue of long and meritorious service, be raised to a grade called Certificated Teachers.

(i) The training of specialist teachers of practical subjects such as domestic science and handicraft needs separate consideration. The position of the Froebel Colleges, which at present have a three-year course, only the last two of which are recognized by the Board, would also require special consideration.

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(j) The salary arrangements for the staffs of T.Cs. should be revised so as to encourage the recruitment of a more appropriate and distinguished staff, and thus give the T.Cs. a more significant place in the hierarchy of educational institutions.

(k) There should be members of the staff in every T.C. who are not appointed to permanent posts but are serving the T.Cs. in virtue of their special qualifications, for a limited period of years on their way to headmasterships or other responsible and well-paid posts in schools. Further, part-time appointments should be encouraged whereby (i) specially experienced teachers in schools could, while still continuing their school teaching, make some contribution to the work of the T.Cs.; and (ii) married women could play a part in the training of women teachers.

(l) The Board should ensure (i) adequate provision of refresher courses for teachers and (ii) a system of Teacher Studentships which allow annually a substantial number of teachers, particularly teachers on the staffs of Training Colleges, to enjoy a "Sabbatical Year". Interchange arrangements between the T.Cs. themselves and with the Dominions and U.S.A. should be encouraged.

102. But the training of teachers of technical subjects involves new provision. These teachers, if part-time, are employed in, and if full-time have been employed in, industry or commerce. Such industrial or commercial experience is an essential part of their professional equipment, and is, indeed, an integral part of their training as teachers of technical subjects. But they seldom have been trained in teaching methods. Moreover, the full-time teachers may need not only courses of training in method but also courses designed to bring their knowledge of industrial and commercial conditions and practice up to date. Further, part-time teachers of ancillary subjects, e.g., science, who are often teachers in Elementary or Secondary Schools, need a knowledge of the technique required for dealing with technical students, the majority of whom are in employment.

103. None of the forms of training mentioned in paragraph 102

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can be provided either by the U.T.Ds. or the T.Cs., whose knowledge of or contact with industry or commerce is as a rule negligible. It is necessary therefore that Training Departments should be established at selected Technical Colleges and should provide full-time and part-time courses of training to meet the varied needs of teachers of technical and ancillary subjects. Experiment should also be made with school-centred training, whereby a teacher with adequate academic qualifications and with industrial or commercial experience would be attached for training to a Technical College or School.

104. The classification of teachers, mentioned in paragraph 100 (g), into "trained teachers" and "untrained teachers" would apply equally to teachers of technical subjects. But teachers of technical subjects with certain academic qualifications, e.g. a National Certificate or Diploma, plus adequate industrial or commercial experience, should rank in the hierarchy of teachers as equivalent to the graduate rather than to non-graduate.

105. The intensive refresher and other courses which it will be necessary to establish on a considerable scale immediately after the war in order to provide the initial staff of teachers and "leaders" for the two new and inter-related services, namely: (a) Day Continuation Schools, and (b) Youth Centres, are not here described in detail. Rapid improvisation will be called for, and the resources of the U.T.Ds., T.Cs. and Technical Colleges will be taxed to the full. But, in course of time, the training of teachers and "leaders" for these new services will form an integral part of the normal work of the universities (including the Social Science Departments and the U.T.Ds.), the T.Cs. and the Technical Colleges.

106. The objections which could be raised against, and the difficulties which would have to be faced in giving effect to, these reforms, particularly as regards the T.Cs. and U.T.Ds. are chiefly as follows:

(a) The T.Cs. might complain that if the second year of a three-year course were spent in school, resulting in no two consecutive years being spent at college, there would be a loss of continuity in the study of students and a weakening of the corporate spirit of the college. In a sense, however, this loss and this weakening are desirable. The students suffer from continuity of study and the Colleges lack the breath of fresh air which would be provided if each year there returned to the

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college young men and young women of at least 20 years of age who had spent a year of independence in being tested as potential teachers in the schools. It is not corporate spirit but maturity, experience of life and a considered choice of the profession that young teachers lack when they begin their careers as trained teachers.

(b) The Local Education Authorities might complain at being compelled to employ for six months or a year half-baked teachers in training. But training will never be what it ought to be until the schools themselves play a significant part in the training. The Local Education Authorities, and it may be added H.M. Inspectors, would have to shoulder a responsibility never placed upon them hitherto.

(c) The universities would complain unless the national scholarship provision, enabling qualified but needy students to pursue a degree course without committing themselves to any particular profession, were really adequate. At present the Faculty of Arts, and to some extent the Faculty of Pure Science, in practically all the modern universities, is kept alive by the earmarked grants for students who pledge themselves to be teachers at 17 or 18 years of age.

108. The present units of local educational administration were laid down in the Education Act, 1902, but to understand them it is necessary to go back to 1896. In that year Sir John Gorst's abortive Education Bill entrusted the administration of all types of education to the Councils of Counties and County Boroughs. This proposal was vehemently opposed by the non-County Boroughs and Urban Districts, and the 1902 Act accordingly provided for two types of Local Education Authority - one for elementary education and another for higher education. They are -

Authorities for Elementary Education (Part III Authorities): (315 in number):

(i) Non-County Boroughs with a population of over 10,000, according to the 1901 Census;
(ii) Urban Districts with a population of over 20,000 according to that Census;
(iii) County Boroughs;
(iv) Counties in respect of the County areas, exclusive of the areas mentioned in (i), (ii) and (iii).

(i) County Boroughs;
(ii) Counties in respect of the County areas, exclusive of County Boroughs.

110. The inconveniences arising from this dual system of local educational administration were described in a memorandum submitted in 1927 by the Board to the Royal Commission on Local Government in the following paragraph:

The immediate practical difficulty which arises out of the position stated above related to the type of school known as a central school. The recent Report of the Board's Consultative Committee on 'The Education of the Adolescent' clearly contemplates the development of the provision of such schools, under the name of 'modern' schools, as a separate and distinct form of full-time post-primary education alternative and supplementary to the existing secondary schools and junior technical schools. The question therefore immediately arises whether this particular type of post-primary education should be provided under powers relating to higher or to elementary education. Central schools at present fall within the sphere of elementary education and can be provided and administered only by the Authority for elementary education, and under the regulations for the time being applying to public elementary schools. This distinction in the position of central (or 'modern')

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schools as compared with that of other types of institution providing post-primary education may be unfavourable to their development as a separate and individual contribution to the supply of education of post-primary character. Moreover, in those areas which, so far as elementary education is concerned, are administered as autonomous areas, there is the possibility of unprofitable competition or overlapping between the Part II and Part III Authorities in the supply of post-primary education, unless the Authority concerned take steps to co-operate closely in providing the education facilities necessary and suitable to the needs of the particular geographical area. Such cooperation is, of course, possible under section 6 of the Education Act, 1921.

In view of the past history of this matter it would be hazardous to prophesy how or how soon the obstacle to educational organisation presented by the incoherence of administrative areas will be overcome. It is to be hoped that realisation of the great and increasing inconveniences of the present arrangements will lead, whether by way of central or local action, to a real effort to overcome them.

113. That nothing has been done by way of central action is certainly not the fault of the Board's Consultative Committee. Both the Hadow Report, "The Education of the Adolescent" and the Spens Report, "Secondary Education" dealt with the matter at some length.

114. The Hadow Report recommended advance by two, or possibly three, stages, viz.:

(i) co-operation between Part III and Part II Authorities, with the object of securing by mutual agreement that, just as representatives of a Part III Authority already take part in the initiation and administration of Secondary Schools maintained in its area by the Part II Authority, so the Part II Authority

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should be fully consulted before Senior Schools are developed by a Part III Authority;

(ii) legislation transferring to Part II Authorities powers and duties of those Part III Authorities whose areas do not reach a certain minimum standard of population, and vesting with full Part II powers those Part III Authorities whose areas attain that standard;

and possibly later on -

(iii) legislation creating new provincial Authorities in which Part III and Part II Authorities will both be merged.

116. The May Committee on National Expenditure, reporting in 1931, came out with the following categorical recommendation:

First among the changes which we consider necessary in the interests of efficient administration we would place the reduction in the number of Authorities by the concentration of all educational functions, as far as Local Authorities are concerned, in the hands of the County and County Borough Councils.

118. The general arguments in favour of a single type of Local Education Authority are strongly reinforced by the proposals in regard to the lay-out of the educational system, so far as the full-time education of the child is concerned, contained in Chapter I of this Memorandum. If all Schools for children over 11 are to be regarded as secondary and dealt with under a single code of regulations, then the field of elementary education will be limited to education for children up to the age of 11 and, for the time being, such children over that age as of necessity have to remain in all-age Elementary Schools. In the words of the Select Committee on Estimates, the suggestion that the functions of Authorities for elementary education should be limited to the education of children up to 11 "is only to be made to be rejected".

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119. The precise method of constituting Local Education Authorities, assuming that the principle of a single type of Authority is accepted, is outside the scope of this Memorandum. It may be that the solution lies in the direction suggested by the Board's Consultative Committee, the May Committee, and the Select Committee on Estimates. On the other hand account will need to be taken of the growing volume of opinion in favour of larger units of administration, constituted on a regional basis. This solution, however, raises wide general questions of local government which cannot profitably be pursued here.

120. Since the Education Act, 1902, Public Elementary Schools have been divided into provided (or council) and non-provided (or voluntary) schools. The maintenance of schools of both types is a statutory duty of the Local Education Authority, but in the case of non-provided schools the necessary repairs, alterations and improvements are the responsibility of the Managers, the Local Education Authority having no power to spend money for these purposes, except in respect of fair wear and tear. The power given temporarily to Local Education Authorities under the Education Act, 1936, to make grants for voluntary school building for senior children is referred to in paragraph 126 below.

121. The powers of control of Local Education Authorities over non-provided schools are limited. In particular (a) the Managers appoint the teachers, subject to the Authority's consent, which, however, must not be withheld except on educational grounds, and (b) while the Local Education Authority have the control of secular instruction, they have no general power to alter the organisation of a non-provided school in such a way, for instance, as to convert a school for children of all ages into a school for juniors only or for seniors only; (the power given by Section 34 of the 1921 Act to redistribute children among two or more schools of the same denomination in the same locality is of very limited application).

122. The legal safeguards and the divided responsibilities of the dual system have given rise to endless complications in administration, which retard educational progress, engender friction and consume time and energies which could be spent to much better purpose. The system is inconsistent with proper economy and efficiency since, for example -

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(i) a non-provided school with 30 or more pupils cannot be closed, however much spare accommodation there may be in neighbouring Council schools, unless there is another school of the same denomination to which its pupils can go;
(ii) a new non-provided school may be set up although the children who will attend it are adequately accommodated already in Council schools;
(iii) the Authority cannot ensure that a vacancy in the staff of a non-provided school is filled not by a new appointment but by the transfer to it of a redundant teacher from another school in the area, so that without dismissals of teachers, which are contrary to the practice of Authorities, reasonable and economical adjustments of staffing cannot be ensured.

124. The following figures illustrate the results of Managers' lack of funds and of Local Education Authorities' lack of control over the organisation of voluntary schools:

(a) of the 753 schools still remaining on the Board's Black List of schools with defective premises (issued in 1925 and now very much out-of-date) 541 are non-provided schools;
(b) on the 31st March, 1939, 62 per cent of the children of 11 years of age and over in Council schools were in Senior Schools or departments specially organised for children of that age, while the corresponding figure for non-provided schools was 16 per cent.

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in organisation and administration, though due allowance must be made for the fact that a considerable proportion of non-provided Elementary Schools are rural schools. It is interesting to note that in 1902 the children attending non-provided schools were in a majority, there being 3,074,000 in 14,275 schools against 2,344,000 in 5,875 Council schools or 56 per cent in non-provided schools.

126. With the development from about 1926 of Hadow reorganisation, which involves separate Senior Schools or departments for children of 11 and over with proper facilities for handicraft and domestic subjects, for science, physical training and games, and with the prospect of the raising of the school leaving age to 15, the position of the non-provided schools became acute. Managers could not afford to make suitable provision for their older children and many would not consent to the decapitation of their school so that the seniors might attend a Senior School provided by the Council. To meet this situation the Education Act, 1936, enabled, but did not compel, Local Education Authorities for a limited period to pay not less than 50 per cent and not more than 75 per cent of the cost of new non-provided school building for senior children. The building proposals and organisation had to be of a standard approved by the Authority and the Board and the teachers in the school aided under the Act had to be appointed and dismissed by the Authority, subject to the right of the Managers to be satisfied as to the fitness and competence of certain of the teachers (called "reserved" teachers) to give denominational religious instruction. Owing to the inability of many Managers to raise their share of the cost, to the dislike by some of the increased control given to Local Education Authorities and to the unwillingness of a few Local Education Authorities to subsidise denominational schools, only 519 proposals were put forward under the 1936 Act (289 of these were in respect of Roman Catholic Schools), providing for some 136,000 of the 400,000 or more senior children now in non-provided schools. Of these proposals only 37 have materialised and the remainder cannot now be proceeded with without further legislation.

127. It will be evident from what has been said that, under the existing law, non-provided schools will be required, if they are to continue, to shoulder a financial burden far in excess of their capacity. In the first place, Senior Schools will be unable to conform to the suggested policy of equal standards in all forms of secondary education. Secondly, the need for modernisation or replacement of much of the non-provided school accommodation for junior and infant children, a larger number of whom are housed in conditions little short of scandalous, faces the Churches with a

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financial problem greater in extent and no less urgent than that in respect of senior children, a problem which they have shown themselves quite unable to meet in recent years and which they are less than ever likely to be able to meet after the war.

128. If large numbers of children are not to be deprived of healthy and decent school conditions - to say nothing of equal educational opportunities - there is no disguising the fact that, unless a considerable number of voluntary schools are to be brought to an end and replaced by new provided schools, some further assistance from public funds must be found towards the maintenance and improvement of the premises, where such improvement is possible. It is believed that, generally, public opinion would not tolerate what might mean the large-scale abolition of non-provided schools, but would look rather for some measure of extended financial assistance, accompanied, as it must be, by such extended public control as is necessary, not simply to secure a quid pro quo, but to ensure the effective and economical organisation and development of both primary and secondary education. Further, it is believed that public opinion will take the view that in framing proposals for such control the services of the churches to the community as pioneers in public education, as the protagonists of Christian teaching in schools and as having for many generations voluntarily spent large sums on the provision and upkeep of premises for this purpose, cannot justly be disregarded.

129. There are, too, indications that the sectarian and political interests which have obstructed the many attempts which have been made for more than 30 years to solve the problem are now less intransigent, and with the passage of time there is a wider recognition of the educational and social importance of changing the present system. Proposals for a solution may now, therefore, be advanced with more hope of success. A basic element in all proposals for extended financial assistance and extended public control for non-provided schools has been, and must continue to be, the transfer of the power to appoint and dismiss teachers from the Managers to the Local Education Authority, combined with measures for continuing denominational religious instruction. If denominational religious instruction is to continue to be given by teachers, the important issue is raised that in the new circumstances this would involve "religious tests" for teachers appointed by Local Education Authorities to schools wholly maintained from public funds. If, however, denominational instruction is to be given adequately, or even at all, in many schools, it is inevitable

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that it should be given by teachers, among whom are to be found many men and women keenly interested in the work whose debarring from it would be felt as a real loss by themselves and to the schools.

130. A method of meeting this difficulty may be found in the provisions of the Education Act, 1936, for the reservation of teachers. Under Section 9 and 10 of the Act the appointment of all teachers in non-provided senior schools to which the Local Education Authority made a building grant was placed in the hands of the Authority, who, however, had to consult the Managers before appointing certain of the teachers (named "reserved" teachers) the number of whom was specified in the building grant agreement and of whose fitness and competence to give the appropriate denominational religious instruction the Managers had the right to be satisfied. The application of these principles to existing non-provided schools would call for some procedure, in substitution for the procedure through the negotiation of a building grant agreement, for determining the number of teachers to be reserved. It is to be hoped that this question would generally be settled by agreement, but in the event of dispute ascertainment of the wishes of parents as to the religious education of their children would appear to be necessary and could be carried out by means of an approved form of inquiry circulated by the Authority to all parents concerned.

131. A new factor to which reference has been made and which is of great importance in considering possible solutions of the denominational problem, is the policy of equality of status for all education of children over 11 years of age. It follows from the principles laid down in Chapter 1 that all schools for pupils over 11 should be equally classed as secondary, and in consequence that Modern Schools hitherto administered as Senior Elementary Schools under Part III of the Education Act, 1921, should in future fall within the scope of higher education. Generally speaking, there need be no great difficulty in bringing them within the framework of the law applicable to higher education. The Local Education Authority which, under the proposal contained in Chapter 8, will be the Authority for all types of education, will, as indicated in paragraph 6, have a general duty to provide for the secondary education of children for whom sufficient and suitable provision is not otherwise made. Provided Modern Schools will take their place in this system of secondary education side by side with Grammar and Technical Schools, and will be subject to similar

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conditions with them as regards provision, control and maintenance.

132. But certain problems do arise from the transfer of non-provided Modern Schools into the field of higher education. Higher education is mercifully free from the problems and embarrassments of dual control. In non-provided schools of higher education, management and control are vested in the Governing Body, on which the Local Education Authority are represented but without a majority. The Local Education Authority have the power, but are under no duty, to aid the schools in respect of repair, enlargements, etc., of their premises and their maintenance costs, without any corresponding restriction on the Governors in respect of the appointment of teachers and control of education. It would clearly be most undesirable to import into the field of higher education any of the restrictions and limitations which are so fruitful a source of trouble and difficulty in the elementary sphere. The question is whether non-provided Modern Schools can be left to the operation of the law relating to higher education or whether special provisions applicable to them will be required.

133. The width of the gulf which would need bridging if precise equality of treatment were to be enjoyed by non-provided Modern Schools on the one hand and non-provided Grammar Schools on the other is shown in the following comparisons:

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134. The new obligation on Local Education Authorities in regard to the provision of secondary education referred to in paragraph 131 will clearly have to include an obligation to maintain existing non-provided Modern Schools. But this obligation would need to be accompanied by a power vested in the Local Education Authority to cease to maintain unnecessary schools, subject to the consent of the Board in case of dispute. As regards new schools, promoters will in general find it difficult to raise the money needed to build a new Modern School, the provision of which, in accordance with the principles of equality of standards for all Secondary Schools, will be no less costly than a Grammar School of the same size. None the less, it would be a manifest injustice if the fact that Senior Schools are to be renamed Modern Schools and lifted from the field of elementary to that of higher education, and that the standard of accommodation and amenities for such schools is to be materially improved, were to deprive denominations of their existing right, subject to certain safeguards, to provide denominational schools for children between 11 and the statutory leaving age and to look to the Local Education Authority for their maintenance. For these reasons, it is essential that Local Education Authorities should be under an obligation to maintain not only existing but such new non-provided Modern Schools as may be determined by the Board to be necessary.

It is not necessary to place on Local Education Authorities an obligation to maintain existing aided Grammar Schools since part of the cost of the maintenance of such schools is found by the Governors. It is true that this part will be substantially reduced by the abolition of fees in aided Grammar schools, proposed in paragraph 6, but it can be left to Authorities to decide whether in these altered circumstances they will continue to aid the school on the present basis or will demand, as a condition of continued aid, a greater measure of control in the governance of the school.

135. It is unlikely that public opinion would tolerate, and

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educational considerations would not support, the suggestion that, on the transfer of non-provided Modern Schools to the field of secondary education, the Managers should enjoy unrestricted powers in respect of the appointment of teachers and the control of secular instruction, while the Local Education Authority are called upon to bear the whole cost of maintenance. At the same time it would be inappropriate that the powers and responsibilities of the Managers should be in any way diminished when the status of their schools is changed.

136. It is a natural corollary of the assimilation of Modern Schools with Grammar and other schools of higher education that the provisions in regard to religious instruction should not differ in the different types of secondary education. At preset, denominational religious instruction is prohibited in provided Elementary Schools by the Cowper-Temple Clause (Section 28 of the Education Act, 1921), but is allowed in all schools of higher education (Section 72). Uniform conditions for all Secondary Schools will demand not that the restriction now in force in Modern Schools should be imposed on Grammar and Technical Schools but that the arrangement whereby denominational teaching may be provided in schools of the latter type should be extended to Modern Schools.

137. Abrogation of the Cowper-Temple clause in provided Modern Schools and the continued power of the Governors of non-provided Modern Schools to appoint their own teachers should go a long way to compensate the Churches for the increased measure of public control over non-provided Primary Schools, the necessity of which has been indicated. With these provisions the Churches would have fuller opportunities than they have now of presenting their distinctive doctrines to children at an age when they are most likely to be able to apprehend them. The reasons for assimilating the conditions of religious instruction in Modern Schools to those now obtaining in Grammar Schools do not apply to Primary Schools. In this connection, it has to be remembered that there are many - and among them staunch Churchmen - who hold that children of Primary School age are not ready to receive denominational formularies. Their case can best be met by the teaching of the Bible story and of the common principles of the Christian faith which the agreed syllabuses aim at providing. Such teaching will serve as a foundation for instruction at a later age in the tenets of particular denominations.

138. At the present time in provided schools, while it is the almost universal practice to have undenominational religious

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observance and instruction, such instruction is required neither by statute nor by regulation. There is a growing volume of opinion that the time has come when the place of religion as an essential element in education should be specifically recognised. It is accordingly suggested that there should be religious observance and instruction enjoined by statute in all provided Primary and Secondary Schools.

139. To give effect to the suggestions outlined in the preceding paragraphs, legislation might be shaped on the following lines:

(a) Religious observance and instruction in accordance with an agreed syllabus to be given in provided schools in school hours by teachers suitable and willing to give it, subject to a conscience clause and provision for the withdrawal of pupils for religious observance or instruction elsewhere.

(b) Agreed syllabus instruction to be given in non-provided schools on the school premises and during school hours to children whose parents desire them to receive it.

(c) No teacher, other than a reserved teacher, to be required to give religious instruction or to be in a better or worse position by reason of giving or not giving it.

(a) The Local Education Authority to have power to appoint and dismiss all teachers, subject to (d) below.

(b) The Local Education Authority to have the duty to keep the premises (existing and future) in repair and the duty to make necessary alterations and improvements.

(c) The Local Education Authority to have the power, with the consent of the Board of Education -

(i) to cease to maintain an unnecessary school;
(ii) to alter the organisation or age range.

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(a) The management of the school to be in the hands of a Governing Body constituted in accordance with the Regulations applicable to Secondary Schools generally.

(b) The appointment and dismissal of teachers to rest with the Governors, subject to the consent of the Local Education Authority, which consent shall not be withheld except on educational grounds.

(c) The Local Education Authority to be responsible for and have the control of secular instruction.

(d) The Local Education Authority to have the duty to maintain and keep the school efficient.

(e) The Governors to be under an obligation to provide the school house, keep it in good repair, and make necessary alterations and improvements. Should the Governors, however, at any time be unable or unwilling to fulfil their obligations in regard to repairs, alterations or improvements, the Local Education Authority to be under a duty to fulfil those obligations, and the power of appointing and dismissing teachers to pass from the Governors to the Local Education Authority, with provision for the appointment of reserved teachers.

(f) The Local Education Authority to have the power, with the consent of the Board of Education, to cease to maintain an unnecessary school.

140. The provisions suggested above for religious observance and instruction largely meet the views announced on February 12th, 1941, by the Archbishops of Canterbury, York and Wales in consultation with Free Church leaders; their two minor recommendations - i.e., the abrogation (a) of the provisions of Section 27(1)(b) of the Education Act, 1921, that religious observance and instruction should be confined to the beginning or end or to the beginning and end of the school meeting (a provision designed to facilitate the withdrawal of children) and (b) of the provision of Section 27(1)(C), that it shall be no part of the duties of His Majesty's Inspector to inspect religious instruction, would be met so far as Modern Schools are concerned by the assimilation suggested above of the conditions for religious instruction in Modern Schools to those now obtaining in schools of higher education, where these restrictions do not apply. If this were acceptable, the abolition of the restrictions in the Primary Schools also would naturally fall for consideration.

141. It would be idle to expect that these, or indeed any other suggestions for the reform of the Dual System, will escape criticism. But that reform there must be, if the policy of equality of educa-

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tional opportunity for all is not to be an empty slogan, cannot be questioned. It is in the belief that all interests will be ready to make sacrifices to secure the fulfilment of this policy, and that there is a unity of the Christian faith which transcends denominational divisions, that these suggestions are put forward.

142. Under Section 148(1) of the Education Act, 1921, "a local education authority may appoint necessary officers, including teachers, to hold office during the pleasure of the authority, and may assign to them such salaries or remuneration (if any) as they think fit."

143. While, under this Section, the salaries of teachers may be determined by each Authority at will, in practice the salaries of teachers in schools provided or maintained by Local Education Authorities have for over twenty years been governed by agreements reached between representatives of teachers and of Local Education Authorities sitting together on the Burnham Committees, which were set up in 1919 to bring some national order out of a variety of conflicting and competing scales of pay.

144. The salary scales so agreed (and approved by the Board for grant purposes) cannot be enforced by the Board in terms and directly, but they are supported by the Board's Grant Regulations, which provide that, if the scales of pay are less than the recognised scales, and if in the Board's opinion educational efficiency in the area is thereby endangered, the Board may make such deductions from the grant as will, in their opinion, secure that the expenditure by the Authority falling to be met from the rates shall not be less than such expenditure would have been if the scales of salary in question had been in accordance with the recognised scales.

145. The scales now in force are based on three separate Reports, for teachers in Public Elementary Schools, teachers in Secondary Schools and teachers in Technical and Art Schools respectively, though the basic scales for Secondary and Technical Schools are the same. The scales are thus related to the type of school in which a teacher is serving and tend to emphasise the division between different types of school, or at least the division between Elementary and Secondary or other schools in the sphere of higher education. It is clear that, if a policy is to be adopted to secure a greater unification of the educational system and to break down the old distinctions too often redolent of social prejudice, it will be desirable to unify, so far as may be, the teaching profession and to find some

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alternative to a series of differentiated scales which are based on distinctions which it is desired to remove.

146. It is, of course, true that, in so far as the spheres of primary and post-primary education may be re-defined, and Elementary Senior Schools transferred to the province of higher education, teachers in Senior Schools would find their position automatically assimilated under the present system to that of Secondary School teachers. There would, however, still be anomalies which call for consideration.

147. In the case of elementary teachers, the existing scales are three in number: II, III and IV. (Scale I (the lowest), which at one time existed, was abandoned in 1936.) Scale IV is the scale in force in the London area which, in addition to the London County Council area, includes the whole of the County of Middlesex and with one exception the boroughs and urban districts of the metropolitan parts of Essex, Kent and Surrey. Scale III is the predominant scale covering the county boroughs and boroughs, Scale II operating mainly in rural areas. The differentiation was due to the fact that the scales, when framed, were in some measure related to the differing rates of pay current at the time in different types of area, which no doubt reflected a presumed difference in local costs of living. On the other hand, the scales for teachers in Secondary and Technical Schools provide only two scales - a London scale for the London County Council, Middlesex, East and West Ham and Croydon, and a provincial scale for the rest of the country. The questions how far there are good grounds for greater refinement in the case of elementary teachers may call for examination.

148. Some of what may be termed the "personal" anomalies to which the present scales give rise can best be illustrated by two or three sample cases showing the application of the scales to teachers possessing the same paper qualifications but serving in different types of school under the same Authority. In the examples which follow the salary figure selected for illustration is the minimum of the scale in the London area.

149. A trained graduate man teacher who has completed a four-year course - three years for his degree and one year professional training - on entering an Elementary School receives a starting pay of £216. A teacher with the same qualifications entering a Secondary School would receive £291. In practice the teacher in the Elementary School, if in a Senior School, might be teaching boys who were older than those in the junior form being taught by his colleagues in the Secondary School.

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150. The ordinary two-year trained certificated man teacher in the elementary School starts at £192 per annum. In a Secondary or Junior Technical School he would rank as a non-graduate assistant and would receive £204. On the other hand, a non-trained graduate who would start in a Secondary School with £276 per annum would, in an Elementary School, rank only as an uncertificated teacher with a starting pay of £117.

There is something artificial in the differentiations thus made which reflect something artificial in the gradings of our educational system.

151. The remuneration of teachers is not simply a matter of clear-cut scales. Round the scales has grown up a large accretion of "case law": there are special arrangements for the payment of head teachers, allowances for posts of special responsibility, etc. It would be impossible, therefore, in this note to review the working of the scales in detail, nor, indeed would such a review serve any immediate purpose. The recasting of teachers' salaries to fit any new educational layout is not a matter primarily for the Board of Education. It is a matter which, in the first instance, must be dealt with through the machinery of the Burnham Committees.

152. There are, however, one or two principles which, while not necessarily the only ones the application of which might rationalise the remuneration of teachers, may nevertheless at least point the way towards the greater unification of the teaching profession that appears desirable. In the first place, it is suggested that one general principle to be adopted should be to relate basic salary to qualifications, irrespective of the type of school in which a teacher may be serving - thus a graduate teacher would be paid graduate scale, whether serving in a primary or in a post-primary school. In the second place, there must be some recognition of posts (specialists, heads of departments, and headships) carrying special responsibility or normally filled by teachers with special qualifications. In some measure, therefore, pay must be related to the job and not solely to qualifications. This principle is already recognised in the case of both Elementary Schools and institutions for higher education in the special scales payable to principals, heads of departments and head teachers and in the allowances over and above scale salaries for teachers whose service is of exceptional value or who are discharging special responsibility or possess special academic attainments.

153. How these two principles can best be developed and adjusted is not a matter to pursue here. It is, however, believed that along

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some such lines as those indicated a way may be found to create a greater professional unity and with it, a greater unity in the educational system.

154. The present grant system provides for payment of grants to Local Education Authorities under the following heads:

(a) Elementary Education

The grant formula for elementary education up to the outbreak of the present war was derived from that recommended by the Kempe Committee before the last war, as modified by Mr. Fisher after the passing of his Education Act. It was extremely elaborate, containing a number of different percentages of grant in respect of different types of expenditure and two other factors not related to expenditure. The first of these latter factors was a capitation grant of 36s. per child in average attendance, which was added to the amounts of grant determined as percentages of expenditure. From the total grant thus ascertained was deducted the second factor, which was the product of a 7d, rate in the area.

In September, 1938, however, at the time of the Munich crisis, provisional agreement was reached between the Board and the Treasury on a simpler formula to be applied in the event of war. The simplification took the form of assessing the grant for elementary education to Local Education Authorities at the same proportion in each case of the net recognisable expenditure as the grant for the year 1937-38 bore to the net recognisable expenditure of that year. This revised formula was put into operation, after the outbreak of war, for the year beginning April 1st, 1939, with the result that Local Education Authorities now receive a grant from the Board varying from 6 to 72 per cent of the net recognised expenditure. The advantage of this simpler formula was that it greatly reduced the amount of clerical and administrative work, both locally and centrally, and that Authorities knew where they were financially. It resulted in a substantial addition, considerably over £500,000, to the total Exchequer Grant to Local Education Authorities. It may be taken for granted that the experience of this simpler formula has rendered a return to the original complicated formula at once undesirable and impracticable.

Unfortunately, from the point of view of simplicity, the desire of the Government that Local Education Authorities should carry out

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urgently certain special types of work has resulted in the modification and complication of the new formula in the following respects:

(i) As from April 1st, 1939, any expenditure upon air-raid precautions attracted a grant of 50 per cent if the standard rate was less than that figure.
(ii) As from October 19, 1940, any expenditure for this purpose attracted grant at the rate of 100 per cent where the Board were satisfied that the shelter provided would be available to the public at all times when it would not be required for school purposes.
(iii) As from July 1st, 1940, in respect of expenditure on the provisions of meals under Sections 82 to 84 of the Education Act, 1921, a minimum grant of 50 per cent was substituted for the standard percentage and in cases where the standard percentage was not less than 30 per cent, 20 per cent was added to it.

(b) Higher Education

Grant in respect of higher education is based upon the net recognised expenditure of Local Education Authorities and is assessed at 50 per cent. The only exception to this general rule is that as from October 19th, 1940, expenditure upon air-raid shelters attracted grant at the rate of 100 per cent under the same conditions as those applicable to elementary education (see (a)(ii) above). There is a trifling additional grant of £70,000 payable to certain Authorities who maintain Training Colleges. As, however, deductions of the same total amount are made from the grants to those other Authorities who do not maintain Training Colleges, other than those for Domestic Science, this element may be ignored.

155. Any revision of the grant system must be largely conditioned by the nature and number of the Authorities who administer the public system of education and receive grants, a subject which is more fully dealt with in Chapter 8. It is there suggested that a

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reduction in the number of Local Education Authorities is inevitable and that the reduced number must be Authorities for all types of education - Part II Authorities. There are at present 146 such Authorities, composed of the administrative County Councils and the County Borough Councils. On financial grounds alone it may be doubted whether some of the smaller Counties and County Boroughs are well suited to discharge even the present functions of Local Education Authorities for higher as well as elementary education and their fusion in some larger area would undoubtedly be beneficial, but in practice the retention of the existing Part II Authorities must probably be accepted. It has, however, been agreed by the Committees which have considered this problem, that it would be advisable to add to their number a few of the larger existing Authorities for elementary education only (Part III Authorities), whose promotion would on all grounds be highly desirable. It would be necessary to scrutinise closely all proposals for such promotion from the financial as well as the administrative point of view. Any new Part II Authority would have to be of sufficient financial capacity and stability to undertake the provision and supervision of higher education, and at the same time its area would need to be very carefully defined in order not to cripple the County in which it is situated by the withdrawal from the latter of too large a part of its present rateable value.

Assuming that the total number of Part II Authorities were thus to reach some such figure as 180, the administrative task of providing for the various types of education would be greatly simplified and it should be possible at the same time to secure a corresponding simplification in the finance of education. If each of the new Local Education Authorities is to be charged with the provision and supervision of all types of education and if elementary education is to be confined to the education of children up to the age of 11 instead of, as at present, to the statutory leaving age, the need for two separate education accounts and two separate grant formulae seems also to disappear. A single unified grant system would mark a financial advance equivalent to and consequent upon the administrative advance marked by the institution of single Authorities for all types of education. Such a system would need to take account of and provide for all branches of the Authority's educational work and should therefore, it is submitted, properly take the form of a block grant.

156. The proposal that the present grant system should be superseded by a block grant needs some definition. It is suggested that a proper system of Exchequer grants should

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(a) recognise that a fair contribution should be made from the Exchequer to the cost of local services:
(b) ensure that Local Authorities have complete financial interest in their administration:
(c) be adapted in its working to the needs of the areas:
(d) permit the greatest freedom of local administration and initiative: and
(e) provide for sufficient general control and advice from the Central Department to ensure a reasonable standard of performance.

For this purpose a block grant may be taken to be a grant of which the total amount is determinable by the Government for a period of years, there being a statutory regulation of the amount of the grant. This total amount is then distributed among Authorities upon a basis designed to take account both of the amount of the work to be done in each area and of the capacity of each area to pay for it. The basis of the distribution would aim at securing ultimate distribution solely by reference to the relative needs of the various areas and their ability to meet those needs out of the rates. In order to avoid violent fluctuations of rates at the inception of the scheme, provision would need to be made for the new basis of distribution to be brought gradually into effect over a substantial period of years and some new Exchequer money would be necessary to facilitate the process of transition from the old system to the new.

As regards the basis of distribution, there is no reason to suppose that the fundamental factors used in the computation of the Ministry of Health block grant would be unsuitable to a block grant for education, although it would probably be necessary to adapt the weighting additions to meet the special needs of that service. It will probably be conceded that unemployment, sparsity and the rateable value per head of population are all elements which will be properly taken into account in fixing an education grant. When it comes, however, to the weighting to be derived from the proportion of children in the population of the area, it will probably be necessary

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to adopt as the weighting factor the proportion to the total population of children under the new minimum school leaving age of 15; it might even be desirable to extend this to the age of 18, so as to take into account the full range of the new Authorities' responsibilities.

It will be borne in mind that the suggested scheme would be brought in at a period of expansion. Account will have to be taken of this in considering the amount of any new Exchequer money brought in in order to launch the scheme. It is understood, however, that there has been no suggestion that the periodical revision of the Ministry of Health block grant brings the grant too slowly to the aid of developing services. Indeed, the problem of providing for periods of subsequent expansion seems to be satisfactorily met by the provision in the Local Government Act, 1929, that the minimum amount of the general Exchequer contribution for each period shall be determined by reference to a prescribed percentage of the rate- and grant-borne expenditure in the penultimate year of the preceding fixed-grant period. It must also be borne in mind that new services put into operation during a fixed-grant period would be directly grant-aided at their inception, the grant being absorbed in the revision for the next fixed-grant period.

(a) Technical Education

157. Seventeen Technical Colleges and five Art Schools are recognised for direct grant under the Board's Regulations for Further Education. The grant in each case is determined by the Board after consideration of the character, efficiency, volume and cost of the work of the school; in other words, it is assessed ad hoc. These grants, however, are only of the order of £40,000 a year, and the institutions in question are likely, with the passage of time, to become absorbed into the public system of education as aided by Local Education Authorities. It is therefore suggested that no change need be made in the present system so far as they are concerned.

(b) Schools of Nautical Training

There are seven Schools of Nautical Training which receive grants under the Board's Regulations for Further Education. This grant is assessed in the same way as for the institutions mentioned in (a) above. The annual grant to these institutions amounts to some £13,000 a year. As their name indicates, they are non-local in character and it would be unreasonable to expect any Local Educa-

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tion Authority to adopt them as part of its general system owing to the accident of locality. It is therefore suggested that here again no change need be made in the present system.

(c) Special Schools and Schools for Blind and otherwise defective children

Grant is paid upon a capitation basis to Special Schools for defective children and also in respect of the higher education of such children. The total sum involved is of the order of £30,000 a year, and these schools are, generally speaking, non-local in character. It may be that with the extension of the provision for these defective children they will gradually become absorbed by Local Education Authorities, but it is not considered desirable to hasten this process by any change in the present grant system.

(d) Adult Education Classes

University Tutorial Classes and other forms of adult education such as are currently associated with the Workers' Educational Association receive grant at the rate of approximately £100,000 a year. The grant is assessed on a basis related to the fee paid to the tutor of the class subject to certain requirements as regards the regular attendance of the students. The grant system will require adjustment to the changes in local organisation suggested in Chapter 4.

(e) Training of Teachers

There are 73 voluntary Training Institutions, including the University Training Departments, which receive grant, broadly speaking, on a capitation basis for the students in training. The grants to these Institutions are of the order of £700,000 a year. The voluntary Training Colleges are one of the earliest integral parts of the system of public education. They are for the most part denominational in character, and therefore unsuitable for incorporation in the system of the Local Education Authorities, and they may be regarded as fulfilling an essential function. They are also definitely non-local in character and there seems to be no justification for their correlation with any block grant system.

(f) Play Centres and Nursery Schools

Grant is paid to these institutions, which are under the charge of bodies of voluntary Managers, on the basis of 50 per cent of the recognised net expenditure, amounting in all, at present, to £18,000 odd a year. These institutions are the latest product of the voluntary movement in English education. No change in the arrangements for financial assistance is called for.

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(g) Direct Grant Secondary Schools

There are 235 of these schools which receive grant direct from the board on a capitation basis. The grant involved is of the order of £700,000 a year.

These schools may be said to form a more or less irreducible "hard core" of voluntary effort within the Grammar School system, as is shown by the fact that their numbers have for many years remained constant. It is unlikely that they would be willing to accept deficiency aid from local funds, with the local control which such a step would involve, and indeed the variety of tradition which this relative financial autonomy has enabled them to preserve is an element of great and characteristic value in English education.

Assuming, therefore, that their financial status remains unaltered, it remains to consider what allowance, if any, should be made for the provision which they supply in their various areas, when assessing any form of block grant to the respective Local Education Authorities. At first sight it might be urged that the fact that 18 per cent of the total number of pupils in Grant-aided Secondary Schools are in Direct Grant Schools implies a relief to Local Education Authority expenditure of which account should be taken. It must, however, be borne in mind that over 10 per cent of those pupils are boarders and do not, therefore, diminish local expenditure, while in urban areas the proportion of extra-district day pupils in such cases as that of Manchester Grammar School is substantial, and any reduction of the block grant to Manchester in such a case would hardly be equitable.

On the whole, therefore, it is suggested that in dealing with these schools their financial autonomy should be respected and that the amount of Exchequer grant thus disbursed would in the case of any one Authority be relatively so small as to be negligible when the block grant for the area is being fixed.

1. Educational machinery must be adjusted to serve educational needs and not vice versa.

2. The school leaving age to be raised to 15 without exemptions (para. 5).

3. The area of elementary education to be redefined. Education will then fall into three stages:

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Primary: covering Nursery Schools and Classes, Infant Schools and Junior Schools ending at the age of 11+.

Secondary: covering Secondary Schools of all types - the Modern School, the Grammar School and the Technical School with leaving ages ranging from 15+ to 18.

Further Education: covering Day Continuation Schools, full-time education in Senior, Technical and Commercial Colleges, part-time technical and commercial education in the day or evening and Adult Education (para. 5).

5. Provision of secondary education to be a duty and not simply a power of Local Education Authorities (para. 6(c)).

6. All schools at the secondary stage to be on an equality and under one Code of Regulations (para. 6(d)).

7. All Secondary Schools, provided, maintained or aided by Local Education Authorities to be free (para. 6(e)).

8. The Special Place Examination at 11 to be abolished. Children to proceed to Secondary Schools of different types on the basis of their record in the Primary School, supplemented by suitable intelligence tests (para. 6(f)).

9. A genuine review, with a re-sorting as may be necessary, to take place at the age of 13. To facilitate this interchange the content of the education for the age group 11-13 to be generally the same in all types of Secondary School (para. 6(f)).

10. Day Continuation Schools to be established for young persons up to the age of 18 (paras. 13-20).

11. The hours of attendance at Day Continuation Schools to be 280 per year, preferably on two half days of 3½ hours each per week (para. 17(c)).

12. The Appointed Day for the operation of the Act setting up Day Continuation Schools to be the same for all areas constituting single industrial and commercial regions (para. 17(d)).

13. Day Continuation Schools should develop a corporate life related to the social and recreational activities of young persons and to their further leisure-hour educational interests (para. 20).

14. The Service of Youth, utilising to the full the assistance of the voluntary organisations, to be developed as supplementary or complementary to the work of the Day Continuation Schools. In

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this way a complete system may be built up covering the social, physical and educational welfare of adolescents (paras. 26-29).

15. With the introduction of Day Continuation Schools the character and scope of the work of Evening Classes and Evening Institutes for younger students will require reconsideration (paras. 33-35).

16. There is an urgent need in the interests of industry and commerce to secure an improved system of technical and commercial training; in particular, the training of young workers calls for attention and an ordered scheme (para. 36).

17. Closer relations need to be established between education and industry and commerce. Advisory committees representing industry and commerce should be set up to collaborate with the Board in framing policy (para. 41).

18. No development can be secured without extended and improved accommodation. The building programme planned before the war should be completed (para. 42).

19. Association on a regional basis between Local Education Authorities will be essential to secure that technical education is properly related to industrial needs (paras. 43, 44).

20. Art education to be developed, in particular to assist production on the side of design (para. 45).

21. The provision of adult education needs overhaul; further development should be secured by regional organisation on the lines now in operation for meeting the needs of the Armed Forces (paras. 49, 50).

22. The development of adult education on institutional lines should also be considered (para. 51).

23. The system of earmarking grants at the undergraduate stage for intending teachers is extremely undesirable (para. 60(g)).

24. Existing Local Authority awards and State Scholarships should be merged and administered by the Board, an appropriate charge being levied on all Authorities. This would give some uniformity throughout the country and even up opportunity (para. 62).

25. The scheme of awards should be on a scale sufficient to ensure an intake to the universities adequate to provide, amongst other things, the graduate teachers required for the public system of education; it should include provision whereby specially selected students may proceed to universities in the Dominions and the United States (para. 64).

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26. The financial assistance made available to the scholar should be fixed at a figure which has regard to the expenses which a full participation in the corporate life of the university inevitably involves (para. 65).

27á Local Education Authorities to be required by statute to provide or secure adequate arrangements for the treatment of certain specific defects and illnesses of children in the spheres of elementary and higher education alike (para. 68).

28. The gap between the upper limit of the effective provision by Maternity and Child Welfare Authorities (about one year of age) and the lower limit of provision by Local Education Authorities (five years of age) must be bridged. To secure this the responsibility of Local Education Authorities hitherto confined to children attending school should be extended downwards to include all children, say from the age of two (para. 69).

29. Local Education Authorities to be charged with the duty of making such provision as may be necessary for attending to the physical and mental development of children over two and under five years of age in Nursery Schools or Classes or such other forms of Nursery as may be approved by the Board of Education (para. 71).

30. The provision of schools for handicapped children should be reorganised on a regional basis and the schools transferred from town to country (para. 74).

31. Part V of the Education Act, 1921, should be extended to include maladjusted children. This part of the Act should be revised and brought up to date (para. 76).

32. When the age of compulsory education for normal children is raised to 15 the age of compulsory education for physically and mentally defective children should be lowered from 16 to 15. The upper age for blind and deaf children should remain at 16 (para. 76).

33. It should be made obligatory on Local Education Authorities to make or otherwise secure the provision of meals for all children for whom such provision is necessary in order that they may derive full benefit from their education (para. 80).

34. The Two-Year Training College Course to be extended to three years, the second year of which would, at any rate in part, be spent in teaching (para. 100(a), (b)).

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35á The Four-Year Course as such at University Training Departments to be abolished, no grants being earmarked for intending teachers at the undergraduate stage. A year's professional training course to be made available for graduates with appropriate grants (para. 100(d), (e)).

36. A single type of Local Education Authority covering all types of education to be established. The precise method of constituting such Authorities will need to be determined in the light of any general decision that may be taken affecting the reorganisation of local government (paras. 118, 119).

37. The reform of the Dual System is essential if real equality of educational opportunity and sound and economical organisation are to be secured (paras. 121-128). Detailed suggestions for the reform of the system are contained in para. 139.

38. The remuneration of teachers should be reviewed in order to replace the present differential scales by a more uniform system of pay appropriate to a united profession and a more unified system of education (paras. 152, 153).

39. The present elementary grant formula and the percentage grant for higher education to be replaced by a single block grant to be determined for a period of years. The direct grants payable to various bodies other than Local Education Authorities to be continued (paras. 155-157).