The Grammar Schools Act of 1840, which was passed to deal with the case of the decayed “grammar” (i.e.classical) schools which abounded throughout the country, belongs to the history of elementary rather than secondary education.Grammar Schools Act 1840.It expressly empowered the Court of Chancery, where the endowment was insufficient for a classical school, to substitute subjects of useful learning analogous to those contained in the original trusts. As a result of this act a considerable number of ancient endowments were reorganized so as to afford an improved elementary instead of an inefficient classical education, and the schemes made under the act constituted an early, but not very successful, experiment in the direction of higher elementary schools.
In 1843 the Committee of Council decided to make grants in aid of the erection of normal schools or training collegesTraining-college grants.in connexion with the National Society and the British and Foreign School societies, thus marking the definite abandonment of the provision of training colleges to voluntary effort.
In 1846 an important step forwards was taken in the foundation of the pupil-teacher system. The regulations of this year inaugurated annual maintenance grants in the form of stipends for apprenticed pupil teachers receiving aPupil-teacher system.prescribed course of instruction under the head teacher, and a lower grade of stipendiary monitors in schools where such instruction could not be provided. These regulations inaugurated the system of Queen’s Scholarships to assist pupil teachers to proceed to a training college; they also established capitation grants for the support of such colleges, and annual grants to elementary schools under government inspection of from £15 to £30 in aid of the salary of every trained teacher employed. Provision was at the same time made for retiring pensions to elementary teachers.
Down to 1847 state aid was confined to two religious categories of schools: those giving specifically Church of England teaching, and those in connexion with the British and Foreign School Society giving simple Bible teaching. ToExtension of state aid to Wesleyans, Roman Catholics and Jews.facilitate the recognition of other denominational schools the Committee of Council in 1847 issued a minute dispensing schools not connected with the Established Church from inquiries concerning their religious condition, and in the same year state aid was extended to Wesleyan and Roman Catholic schools. The settlement of model trust deeds gave occasion for each of these two great religious bodies to negotiate a kind of concordat with respect to school management, and the Roman Catholic deed was only settled after a controversy, similar to that which had arisenwith the National Society, as to the rights of ecclesiastical authority. Jewish schools received recognition in 1851 upon condition that the Scriptures of the Old Testament should be daily read in them.
During the middle years of the century various unsuccessful legislative attempts were made to establish a national system of elementary schools upon the basis of rate-aid. These attempts began with the education clauses of Sir RobertBills of 1842-57.Peel’s Factory Bill of 1842, and were renewed in a series of bills from 1853 to 1857, of which one set was introduced by Lord John Russell on behalf of the Whig government, whilst a second was promoted by an organization called the Manchester and Salford Committee on Education, in the denominational interest, and a third set by an organization called the Lancashire (afterwards the National) Public Schools Association, in the secular interest. The only one of these attempts which calls for notice here is the bill introduced by Lord John Russell (called the Borough Bill, on account of its being restricted to municipal boroughs) in 1853, and forming part of a comprehensive scheme of legislative and administrative reform of which a portion was actually carried into effect. The bill as a measure for elementary education was supplemented by an administrative system of capitation grants for rural areas. The government scheme also comprised a measure dealing with the administration of charitable trusts (which took shape as the Charitable Trusts Act 1853), the constitution of the Department of Science and Art, and university reform upon the lines recommended by the Oxford and Cambridge commissions. The Borough Bill left it optional with municipalities to adopt the act. It provided for the appointment of a school committee, one half of whose members might be non-members of the council. The school committee was merely given power to assist existing voluntary schools out of the rates. No provision was made for public control beyond the requirement of audit; the sole condition as to religious instruction was the acceptance of a conscience clause.
The failure of the Borough Bill did not affect the new system of capitation grants which was introduced by minute of the Committee of Council dated April 2, 1853. These grants were fixed at a scale varying from 3s. to 6s. per head,Capitation grants.payable upon certain conditions, of which the most important were that the school must be under a certificated teacher, and that three-fourths of the children must pass a prescribed examination. In consequence of the failure of the several fresh bills introduced in 1855 by the government, the church party and the secular party respectively amplifying the proposals previously brought forward, the capitation grant was, by minute of January 26, 1856, extended to urban areas. As in the case of all the early grants, the regulations governing the distribution of the capitation grants were framed upon the principle that subventions of public money must be met by local funds derived from voluntary contributions, endowments and school fees; thus the basis of the denominational system as fostered by the state at this stage was one of financial partnership.
In 1856 a purely administrative bill was passed, establishing the office of vice-president of the Committee of CouncilEducation minister, 1856.on Education as a minister responsible to parliament. At the same time, the Science and Art Department was transferred from the Board of Trade to the Committee of Council.
The progress of state-aided education during this period may be measured by the increase of the annual parliamentary grant, which rose from £30,000 in 1839 to £100,000 in 1846, £150,000 in 1851, £396,000 in 1855, and £663,400 in 1858. This expansion was viewed with misgivingNewcastle Commission.by the friends of the denominational system, and by the strong individualist school of that day, who upon wider grounds clung to the old ideal of voluntary initiative. These sections combined with the advocates of further state intervention to press for a commission of inquiry, and at the instance of Sir John Pakington (the eminent Conservative educationist who was responsible for the denominational bills of the ’fifties) a royal commission was appointed in 1858, under the chairmanship of the duke of Newcastle, to inquire into the state of popular education in England, and to consider and report what measures, if any, were required for the extension of sound and cheap elementary instruction to all classes of the people. TheReportof the Newcastle Commission, issued in 1861, contains an exhaustive account of the existing condition of elementary education, and, with due allowance for the grave defects revealed, and in particular the glaring inefficiency of the numerous little private-venture schools kept by “dames” and others, the graphic picture drawn by the commissioners constitutes a striking tribute to the sterling qualities of self-help and religious earnestness which were so characteristic of the early Victorian period. It was found that in round numbers about 2,500,000 children were attending day schools, the proportion to population being 1 in 7, as compared with 1 in 9 in France, 1 in 8 in Holland, and 1 in 6 in Prussia, where education was compulsory. On the other hand, of this number only 1,675,000 were in public schools of all kinds, only 1,100,000 in schools liable to inspection, and 917,000 in schools receiving annual grant. The result was that only one child in every twenty was attending a school whose efficiency could be in any way guaranteed by the state. In the constructive portion of their work the comments and recommendations of the commissioners reflected the prevailing perplexity of the public mind. A consistent individualistic minority considered that the annual grant should be withdrawn altogether, and that any further state aid should be confined to building grants, which they would concede not as desirable in themselves but as necessitated out of considerations of fairness to the parishes that had not yet received such aid. The commissioners as a body rejected free and compulsory education in view of the religious difficulty and upon general grounds of individualistic principle. Of the religious difficulty itself the commissioners had some wise words to say which hold good in substance at the present time. In their judgment the considerable evidence they had amassed conclusively proved that the religious difficulty originated with the managers, promoters and organizers of the schools, and not with the parents themselves; yet the indifferent or comparatively passive attitude of the people nowise materially diminished the practical difficulty of introducing a comprehensive system, since it was not with the body of the people but with the founders and supporters of schools that legislators would always have to deal. In view of the solution adopted in 1902 it is of interest to note that the Newcastle Commissioners deliberately rejected the parish as unfit to be taken as the unit of elementary education upon the ground that management by parochial ratepayers must tend to be illiberal and niggardly, bent upon economy of the rates to the detriment of educational interests; accordingly they recommended the constitution of county boards (which in the absence of elective councils must needs originate with quarter sessions) clothed with power to levy a rate for the aid of existing voluntary schools.
The one definite achievement of the Newcastle Commission was the famous system of payment by results, which may be said to have excited a keener and more prolonged controversy than any other measure of a purelyPayment by results.educational character. Impressed by the defects of the existing teaching, the commissioners reported that there was only one way of securing efficiency, and that was to institute a searching examination by competent authority of every child in every school to which grants were to be paid, with the view of ascertaining whether the indispensable elements of knowledge were thoroughly acquired, and to make the prospects and position of the teacher dependent to a considerable extent upon the results of this examination. Thus the commissioners hoped to counteract what appeared to them to be the crying defect of the existing training college system, viz. that it tended mainly to adapt the young schoolmaster to advance his higher, rather than to thoroughly ground his junior, pupils. They recognized that to raise the character of the children, both morally and intellectually, was and must always be the highest aim of education, and they were far from desiring to supersede this by any plan of a mere examination into the more mechanicalwork of elementary education, the reading, writing and arithmetic of young children; but they thought that the importance of this training, which must be the foundation of all other teaching, had been lost sight of, and that there was justice in the common complaint that while a fourth of the scholars were really taught, three-fourths after leaving school forgot everything they had learnt there.
Mr Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke) as vice-president of the Committee of Council (1859-1864) adopted the system of payment by results in what became famous in history as the Revised Code, issued in 1862 and so called because it was a revisionRevised Code.of the minutes and regulations of the Committee of Council, which were first collected and issued in the form of a code in 1860. The Revised Code provided for the payment of a grant of 4s. upon the old principle and a further grant of not more than 8s. upon the result of examination. Mr Lowe declared of the system in the House of Commons that “if it was costly it should at least be efficient; and if it was inefficient it should at least be cheap.” In fact, it proved to be cheap; the giant fell from £813,400 in 1861 to £636,800 in 1865. The upholders of the existing system denounced the Revised Code as an undeserved slight upon the voluntary managers, and even as a breach of faith with the great religious denominations. On purely educational grounds, which need not be here re-capitulated, it was at once viewed with misgiving by many authorities, including Matthew Arnold. To meet objections, some modifications were introduced in the code under the Conservative government in 1867. The system of paying grant upon the result of individual examination of the scholars was not finally abolished till 1904.
The years immediately preceding 1870 were occupied with discussion and preparation for the great legislative measure for which the time was now felt to have arrived. Good work was done in this direction by the Select CommitteeProceedings preliminary to the act of 1870.of the House of Commons in 1866, over which Sir John Pakington presided. For reasons connected with the political situation of the moment this committee never reported, but the minutes of evidence and the draft report prepared by Sir John Pakington contained much valuable material in the way of criticism of the existing system and suggestion for the coming settlement; in particular the draft report insisted upon the inevitableness of an education rate. In 1868 the Conservative government brought in, but did not proceed with, an education bill deliberately discarding the principle of rate-aid on the ground that it would destroy voluntary contributions and gradually starve out the denominational schools. In 1867 and again in 1868 Mr Bruce (afterwards Lord Aberdare), Mr W.E. Forster and Mr Algernon Egerton introduced a bill which formed the basis of the measure of 1870. As redrafted in 1868 the bill of Mr Bruce and his coadjutors proposed a universal system of municipal and parochial rating with liberty for voluntary schools to unite themselves to the rate-aided system under their existing management, subject to the acceptance of a conscience clause. The bill also proposed to empower town councils to co-opt outsiders upon their education committees. Thus both in the principle of co-optation and in the extension of rate aid to schools not under public control the bill of these Liberal statesmen in 1868 anticipated certain controverted features of Mr Balfour’s Education Act of 1902. In the meantime, in the country the Education League, originated at Birmingham, was carrying on a propaganda in favour of free secular schools, whilst the Education Union, formed to counteract the influence of the league, urged a settlement upon the old lines. As a concession to the popular feeling against secularism, the league proposed to allow Bible reading without doctrinal exposition. Thus opinion was sufficiently focussed to enable Mr Gladstone’s administration in 1870 to undertake the comprehensive measure of educational reform for which the country had had to wait so long.
The Elementary Education Act of 1870 bore in every respect the marks of compromise. As Mr Forster explained in introducing the bill, the object of the government was “to complete the voluntary system and to fill up gaps,” not to supplant it.Act of 1870.To this end the Education Department was charged with the duty of ascertaining whether or not there was in every parish a deficiency of public school accommodation, and provision made for the formation of school boards in every school district (i.e.parish or municipal borough) requiring further public school accommodation. Such accommodation might consist either of public elementary schools as defined by the act, or other schools giving efficient and suitable elementary education. The definition of public elementary school contained in section 7 of the act is still in force. Shortly, a public elementary school is a school subject to a conscience clause entitling scholars to complete exemption from all religious instruction and observance whatsoever. Any religious instruction or observance in the school must be either at the beginning or the end of the school meeting. The school must also be open at all times to the government inspectors and must be conducted in accordance with the conditions required to be fulfilled in order to obtain an annual parliamentary grant. In the same connexion an important change was made in the conditions of inspection by declaring that it should be no part of the duties of the inspector to inquire into religious instruction, whilst a later section of the act provided that no parliamentary grant should be made in respect of any religious instruction.
Three important changes were made in the measure during its passage through parliament. As at first proposed, (1) the school boards were not to be directly elected by the ratepayers, but were to be appointed by the town council or the vestry. (2) These nominated boards were empowered either to provide schools themselves or to assist existing public elementary schools, provided that such assistance was granted on equal terms to all such schools, upon conditions to be approved by the Education Department. Thus the school board, if it exercised the option of assisting denominational schools, would have been obliged to assist all or none. (3) With regard to its own schools, the school board was to settle the form of religious instruction. These proposals raised serious opposition in the country, and when the committee stage of the bill was reached two fundamental changes were made in the policy of the bill. In the first place, as Mr Gladstone put it, the government had decided “to sever altogether the tie between the local board and the voluntary schools.” In lieu of the suggested rate-aid they proposed an increased grant from the treasury, that is to say, the voluntary schools were left standing as state-aided schools under private management, side by side with the new rate-supported schools.
Next, the character of the religious instruction in the board schools was determined upon an undenominational basis by a provision which has become known to history after the name of its author, then Mr Cowper-Temple,Cowper-Temple clause.as the Cowper-Temple clause (section 14 of the act), directing that “no religious catechism or religious formulary which is distinctive of any particular denomination shall be taught in the school.” The clause was not intended to exclude doctrinal exposition, and was in fact a compromise not merely between absolute secularism and denominationalism, but between denominationalism and the view of those who would have the Bible read without note or comment. The Apostles’ Creed as a symbol common to all denominations of Christians was held by Mr Forster (at the suggestion of Mr Gladstone) not to be excluded under the Cowper-Temple clause. The result was the establishment in the schools, upon the lines laid down by Joseph Lancaster at the beginning of the 19th century, of what may be termed the common Protestantism of the English nation; and though Mr Disraeli urged that a religion without formularies was in fact a new religion, and that in leaving its exposition to the teachers we were creating a new sacerdotal class, the Cowper-Temple compromise, notwithstanding its inherent want of logic, stood the test of experience for more than a generation against the consistent denominationalists on the one hand and the party of secular education on the other. It is important to observe that the act of 1870 left the giving ofreligious instruction, whether in voluntary schools (in which its inclusion might be assumed as of course) or in board schools, purely permissive. In practice it was only in Wales that school boards availed themselves to any extent of the liberty to abstain from giving religious instruction, and this comparative secularism of Wales certainly argued no lack of religious life among the people.
The third change in the bill was the substitution of thead hocschool board for the municipally appointed board originally proposed, a change which commended itself in view of the special difficulty presented by the case of London. These boards were elected by the system of cumulative voting under which each elector had as many votes as there were candidates to be elected, with liberty to give all his votes to one candidate or to distribute them amongst the candidates as he thought fit. This system was much criticized as being unduly favourable to minorities, whose representation it was devised to secure; it continued, however, until the supersession of thead hocauthorities by committees of the county and urban councils under the act of 1902.
School boards were empowered not only to acquire sites for schools under powers of compulsory purchase, but also to take transfers of existing voluntary schools from their managers. The section which enables managers to transfer schools to the school board or local education authority for the purpose of board or council schools freed from religious trusts unquestionably marks an important inroad by the state upon the sanctity of trusts. Thus though the act of 1870 did not itself introduce the principle of compulsory transfer, it formed the point of departure for the proposals in this direction which were the basis of the unsuccessful bills of 1906 and 1908. The act of 1870 did not introduce either direct compulsory attendance or free education, but it took a distinct step forward in each direction by enabling school boards to frame by-laws rendering attendance compulsory, and also to pay the school fees in the case of poverty of the parent.
The policy of compromise between the two systems of voluntary and rate-established schools was carried out in the provisions relating to the future supply of schools. On the one hand, building grants were continued temporarily for the benefit of those who applied (as voluntary managers alone could apply) before the 31st of December 1870. On the other hand, the Education Department was authorized to refuse parliamentary grants to schools established in school board districts after the passing of the act if they thought such schools unnecessary.
The following figures are of interest as showing the progress made under the act of 1870. In the year 1870 there was accommodation in inspected day schools for about 2,000,000 children; the average attendance was 1,168,000, andProgress under the act of 1870.the number on the books about 1,500,000. It was computed, however, that there were, exclusive of the well-to-do classes, at least 1,500,000 children who attended no school at all or schools not under inspection. In 1876 accommodation had been provided for nearly 3,500,000, and of the 1,500,000 new places nearly two-thirds were provided by voluntary agencies. “These voluntary agencies,” says Sir H. Craik, “had received grants in aid for about one-third of the schools they had built, the grants defraying about one-fifth of the cost of the aided schools.” On the other hand, the growth of school boards was rapid and continuous, notwithstanding the permissive character of the act and the strenuous efforts of the voluntaryists to keep pace with the new demands. In 1872, 9,700,000 of the population were under school boards, and of these 8,142,000 were under by-laws; in 1876 the numbers were respectively 12,500,000 and 10,400,000. In the same period the annual grants increased from £894,000 in 1870 to £1,600,000 in 1876.
The development evidenced by the above figures, and in particular the fact that 52% of the population were subject to by-laws, enabled Mr Disraeli’s government in 1876 to take a notable step forward in the direction of universalAct of 1876.direct compulsion. The act of 1876 embodied the declaration that “it shall be the duty of the parent of every child to cause such child to receive efficient elementary instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic, and if such parent fail to perform such duty he shall be liable to such orders and penalties as are provided by the Act”; next, it rendered an employer liable to a penalty who took into his employment a child under the age of ten years, or a child between the ages of ten and fourteen years who had not obtained the required certificate of proficiency in reading, writing and arithmetic, or of previous attendance at a certified efficient school. In order to complete the machinery for compulsion, the act directed that, in every district where there was no school board, a school attendance committee should be appointed by the local authority. The law as to school attendance, resting upon this and subsequent enactments, is complicated and in some details obscure. The subject was dealt with in the report of an inter-departmental committee in 1909, who recommended the abolition of the partial exemptions permitted, and the raising of the age of exemption to 13.
In 1880 Mr Mundella, as vice-president of the Council in Mr Gladstone’s administration, passed a short act which made the framing of by-laws compulsory upon school boards and school attendance committees, thus completing theAct of 1880.system of universal direct compulsion. Under the acts of 1876 and 1880 the average attendance increased from 2,000,000 in 1876 to 3,500,000 in 1878 and 4,000,000 in 1881; in terms of percentage to population, 8.06 in 1876, 9.60 in 1878, and 10.69 in 1881. In the last-mentioned year the annual grant rose to £2,200,000, having more than doubled in the decade.
With the passing of the Elementary Education Act 1880 the education question entered upon a new phase. The country was now possessed of a national system of elementary education, in the sense that provision was made forDevelopment of public opinion.the supply of efficient schools and for compulsory attendance. The question of free education was brought within the range of practical politics by the adoption of universal compulsion, but as yet it was advocated only by a small political group of pronounced collectivist tendencies. Whilst opinion was maturing on this topic, there began to force itself upon the public mind the vastly more difficult problem of combining the two systems of voluntary, denominational, state-aided schools on the one hand, and public, undenominational, rate-supported schools on the other. From the denominational point of view the problem presented itself as that of a burden imposed and a danger threatened in ever-increasing degree by the competition of the board schools, a competition that was felt not so much by direct rivalry of school with school as indirectly by the steady raising of the standard of efficiency with respect to buildings, equipment, salaries of teachers and educational attainment which inevitably resulted from the establishment of authorities with power to draw upon the rates. On the other hand, from the purely educational point of view, it was seen that the dual system tended in practice to an illicit but almost inevitable recognition of two standards of efficiency, the lower being conceded to voluntary schools in consideration of their comparative poverty. Experience, too, of the shortcomings of small country school boards was beginning to confirm the misgivings entertained long before by the Newcastle Commissioners as to the wisdom of entrusting autonomous powers to the parish, when the reform of local government by the creation of popularly elected county authorities turned attention once more to the question of organizing education upon a county basis.
In 1887 a royal commission under the presidency of Viscount Cross was appointed to inquire into the working of the education acts. The labours of this commission produced a thorough discussion of the educational problem in allCross Commission, 1887.its aspects, political, administrative, scholastic and religious. For any clear recommendations with regard to the reorganization of education generally the moment was not opportune, inasmuch as the commission just preceded the establishment of the new county authorities and the powers with respect to instruction other than elementary which parliament was shortly to confide to them under the Technical Instruction Acts. Nevertheless the report of the majority of thecommissioners pointed unmistakably towards the solution adopted in the act of 1902, and their definite recommendation that voluntary schools should be accorded rate-aid without the imposition of the Cowper-Temple clause, served as the basis of that legislation. The commission brought into strong relief the opposing currents of thought in educational politics, the majority report, representing the principles of denominationalism, being balanced by a strong minority report embodying the views of those who looked for progress along the lines of the school-board system. Taken together, the two reports form a comprehensive survey of the difficulties which still in the main beset public education in this country.
Of the developments which followed the Cross report, it is convenient to mention in the first place, out of chronological sequence, the practical establishment of free education by the act of 1891, not by the absolute prohibition ofElementary Education Act 1891.school fees but by the device of a special grant payable by parliament in lieu of fees, called the fee grant. The result of this legislation and of subsequent administrative action was to place free education within the reach of every child, fees being retained (with few exceptions) only where some instruction of a higher elementary type was given.
The establishment of county councils by the Local Government Act 1888 introduced a new factor which was destined to exert a determining influence upon subsequent developments of public education. In the first place, it at onceEducation other than elementary.rendered possible the partial and experimental provision for higher education attempted by the Technical Instruction Acts, which affected secondary education as well as technical education in the proper sense of the term. In order to understand the state of secondary education at this period, it is necessary to refer back to the first attempts made to deal with secondary education a generation earlier.
In 1861, that is to say, nearly thirty years after the state began to concern itself with elementary education, the first step in the way of intervention in what is now called secondary or intermediate education was taken by the appointmentPublic Schools Commission, 1861.of a royal commission, presided over by Lord Clarendon, to inquire into the condition of nine of the chief endowed schools in the country, viz. Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Charterhouse, St Paul’s, Merchant Taylors, Harrow, Rugby and Shrewsbury. The report of this commission led to a statute, the Public Schools Act of 1864, which introduced certain reforms in the administration of seven of these schools, leaving the two great London day schools, St Paul’s and Merchant Taylors, outside its operation. The results achieved were seen to be important enough to call for a further and much wider inquiry.
Accordingly in 1864 the Schools Inquiry Commission was appointed under the presidency of Lord Taunton to inquire into all the schools which had not been included either in the commission of 1861 or the Popular Education CommissionSchools Inquiry Commission, 1864-68.of 1858. It included several men of eminent distinction, such as Dr Temple (afterwards archbishop of Canterbury), Mr W.E. Forster, Dean Hook, and Sir Stafford Northcote; and it was singularly fortunate in its staff of assistant commissioners, among whom were numbered Mr James Bryce, Mr Matthew Arnold, and Mr (afterwards Sir Joshua) Fitch. It thoroughly explored the field of secondary education, discussing all the problems, administrative and pedagogic, which the subject presents, and “its luminous and exhaustive report” (to quote the words of Mr Bryce’s Commission of 1894) remains the best introduction to the problem of public secondary education in England. The existence of numerous and frequently very wealthy endowments arising from private benefactions and bequests has at all times been a feature in education as in other departments of English social life. In the organization of secondary education in particular, private endowments have played and continue still to play a part which cannot be paralleled in any other country. This circumstance has undoubtedly resulted in a great economy of resources, though in numerous instances the difficulties occasioned by the haphazard distribution of endowments and the local jealousies invariably aroused by any attempt to readjust their areas to modern conditions have obstructed useful reform and proved a source of misdirected and wasted effort. At the date of the Schools Inquiry Commission the state of the ancient endowments was largely one of abuse. Very many endowments intended for advanced education were applied for instruction of a purely elementary character, and that of an inferior kind; indeed the possession of an endowment in a rural locality not infrequently operated to prevent the establishment of an efficient state-aided school. The evidence showed that the proportion of scholars in the country grammar-schools who were receiving some tincture of the classical education intended by the founders was steadily decreasing, and nothing had been done to bring the curriculum into harmony with the actual needs of the time. No doubt a small élite of classical scholars were sent to the older universities by these schools, but in the main they were in a feeble and decadent state, giving, more or less inefficiently, an education wholly unsuited to the wants of the class to whom they ministered. In addition to the general inelasticity of the curriculum, the special evils from which the grammar-schools suffered were the want of effective governing bodies and the freehold tenure of the headmasterships.
The commission was singularly successful in bringing about the reform of these abuses, its report being immediately followed in 1869 by the Endowed Schools Act, which was based upon its recommendations and conferred upon a specialEndowed Schools Acts 1869-74.commission (united in 1874 with the Charity Commission) very wide and drastic powers of reorganizing ancient endowments. A direction for extending the benefits of endowments to girls did much to assist the movement for the secondary education of girls. The Endowed Schools Acts 1869-1874 introduced modifications of importance and general interest into the law of trusts. Under the existing rules of the court of chancery, which rules were also binding upon the Charity Commissioners, educational endowments were generally treated, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, as subject to a trust for instruction in the doctrines of the Church of England. Under the Endowed Schools Acts the presumption is reversed, and ancient trusts are treated as free from denominational restrictions, save in virtue of express conditions imposed by or under the authority of the founder. The result was that in framing schemes for the reorganization of ancient endowed schools the commissioners found themselves able to treat the majority of cases as undenominational. In such cases the general practice was to direct that instruction should, subject to a strict conscience clause, be given in the principles of the Christian faith; this provision corresponded in a way to the Cowper-Temple clause in elementary education, with the important distinction that it was positive, not negative, and did not exclude special doctrinal instruction.
Besides the recommendations for the reform of endowed schools, to which substantial effect was given directly or indirectly by means of the Endowed Schools Acts, the Schools Inquiry Commission also submitted proposalsSchools Inquiry Commission’s proposals for reform of secondary education.for the general administrative organization of a system of secondary education. They recommended the establishment of three authorities—(1) a central authority; (2) a local or provincial authority, representing the county or a group of counties, with a certain jurisdiction both in proposing schemes for the reform of endowed schools in their area (such as that afterwards conferred upon the joint education committees under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act), and in administering these schools; and (3) a central council of education charged with examination duties. Further, it was proposed to raise the level of proprietary and private schools by offering them inspection and examination and by establishing a system of school registration. Lastly, in order that the supply of public secondary schools might not be dependent upon endowments, it was proposed to confer upon towns and parishes powers of rating for the establishment of new schools. For these proposals as a whole the time was not ripe. The bill of 1869 as originally introduced in the House of Commons attempted to give effect, with some variations,to one of these suggestions, namely, that for the creation of a central council, but exigencies of parliamentary time made it necessary to drop this part of the measure; the result was that the plan of the commissioners was only half carried out. Nevertheless, owing to the multiplicity and wealth of endowments, the work accomplished was sufficient to exert a considerable influence upon the secondary education of the country. Thus in 1895 Mr Bryce’s Commission was able to report that schemes under the Endowed Schools Acts had been made for 902 endowments in England, excluding Wales and Monmouth, leaving only 546 endowments out of the total of 1448 endowments in England known to be subject to the Endowed Schools Acts, which had not felt the reforming hand of the commissioners. The total income of the endowments known to be Subject to the Endowed Schools Acts, and therefore available for purposes of secondary education, according to the estimate of the Secondary Education Commission (still in 1909 the latest available source of complete information), was in 1895 about £735,000 gross.
Twenty years after the Schools Inquiry Commission the creation by the Local Government Act in 1888 of the representative and popular county authorities of which the need had been felt by reformers alike in secondary andTechnical Instruction Acts 1889, &c.elementary education, rendered the first step in the direction of the municipalization of secondary instruction at last possible. In 1889 the Technical Instruction Act (extended in some particulars by an act of 1891) empowered the councils of counties, boroughs and urban districts to levy a rate (not exceeding a penny in the pound) for the support or aid of technical or manual instruction. Comparatively few councils were prepared to resort to their rating powers, but progress under these acts was greatly facilitated by the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act of 1890, which mentioned technical instruction as one of the purposes to which the imperial contribution paid to local authorities in respect of the beer and spirit duties might be applied. By virtue of the very liberal interpretation given to technical instruction by these acts the financial assistance afforded under them was extended to cover the whole field of mathematical and physical science, as well as modern languages.
The Department of Science and Art acted as an agency in the development of secondary education upon the same lines as the Technical Instruction Acts, administering a parliamentary grant which was gradually extended with aGrants of science and art department.view to encouraging literary studies as well as the scientific and mathematical subjects to the promotion of which it was primarily directed. Thus the combined effect of the local resources available under the Technical Instruction Act and the imperial grant administered by the department was gradually to develop a national system of secondary education with a marked bias on the side of physical science.
An undoubted stimulus was given to secondary education in the great centres of industry during the last quarter of the 19th century by the rise of the new university colleges,Influence of new university colleges.among which must be reckoned those established expressly for women. In the main the influence of these new institutions made for a non-classical and scientific type of curriculum in the popular secondary schools.
At the same time, the pressure of the school boards influenced secondary education in two ways. In the first place, the elementary schools were found to act as feeders for schools of a higher type, and the idea of the “educationalInfluence of school boards.ladder” began to play a leading part in plans for the organization of national education. It was seen that there must be schools to which the more advanced scholars could pass from the public elementary schools, and scholarships to assist such scholars to continue their education in this way. In the next place, it was recognized that to provide adequately for the further education of public elementary scholars a new type of school was required. Thus there came into being through the initiative of the great school boards what were known as higher-grade elementary schools. These were really secondary schools of the third grade, and, as the Commission on Secondary Education observed, the school boards simply stepped in to fill the educational void which the Schools Inquiry Commissioners had proposed to fill by schools of that name. The happy obscurity of the legal definition of elementary education left these schools free to develop during the long years of the neglect of secondary education by the state, and when in 1901 the famous judgment in the test case ofRexv.Cockertonpronounced them to be illegal, it was at once recognized that the legislature must without delay step in to secure the educational work which the undoubtedly correct principles of judicial interpretation had placed in jeopardy.
Such were the agencies at work in the domain of secondary education when in 1894 a royal commission was appointed under the presidency of Mr Bryce to inquire into this branch of education. The terms of reference excludedSecondary Education Commission, 1894.elementary education, and the report may be taken as embodying the views of that school of educational statesmen who held that progress would best be attained by keeping elementary and secondary education entirely separate for purposes of local administration, the parish being regarded as the natural unit for elementary and the county for secondary education, a topic to which it will be necessary to revert in connexion with the act of 1902. The principal recommendations of the commission were: (1) the unification of the existing central authorities, viz. the Department of Science and Art, the Charity Commission (so far as it dealt with educational endowments), and the Education Department, in one central office, and the establishment of an educational council to advise the minister of education in certain professional matters; (2) the establishment of local authorities, to consist of committees of the county councils with co-opted elements; (3) the formation of a register of teachers with a view to the encouragement of professional training, and a system of school registration upon the basis of inspection and examination. The first of these recommendations was carried out by the Board of Education Act 1899, as mentioned below, and under the same act an attempt was made to give some effect to the third-named object, which, though it unfortunately fell short of success, may serve as a point of departure for further efforts. The realization of the second, and the most important, of the recommendations was deferred till 1902, when it was brought about as a part of a wider reorganization of the educational system.
The religious difficulty in elementary education during the period immediately succeeding the report of Mr Bryce’s Commission in 1895 once more reached an acute stage, and this circumstance was immediately unfavourable to aAgitation on behalf of voluntary schools.resolute handling of educational problems as such, public attention being largely concentrated upon the demand of the supporters of voluntary schools for relief from the growing financial burden which was laid upon them by that steady raising of the standard to which reference has been made above. In 1896 an endeavour was made to meet the demands of the voluntary managers by means of a bill introduced by Sir John Gorst on behalf of the Conservative government. This bill with its provision for a special aid grant to be administered by county education authorities, which were to exist side by side with the school boards, represented a kind of compromise between the systems of 1870 and 1902. It encountered opposition in all quarters and was withdrawn. In 1897, however, the position of the denominational schools was strengthened by the Voluntary Schools Act, which provided for a special aid grant of five shillings per head of the scholars in average attendance in these schools.
In view of the difficulties which beset any comprehensive treatment of the education question, partial effect was given to the recommendations of the Secondary Education Commission by the Board of Education Act of 1899,Board of Education Act 1899.which abolished the office of vice-president of the council, united the Department of Science and Art with the Education Department in one central office under the title of the Board of Education, with a president and parliamentarysecretary; and provided for the transfer to this board of the powers of the Charity Commissioners in relation to educational endowments; also for the association with the board of a consultative committee, consisting as to not less than two-thirds of persons qualified to represent the views of university and other bodies interested in education, for the purpose (1) of framing a register of qualified teachers, and (2) of advising the Board of Education upon any matters referred to the committee by the board. The administrative reorganization of the Education Office was completed shortly after the passing of the act of 1902, when a tripartite division was adopted to correspond with the three branches of education with which the Board of Education is concerned, viz. elementary, secondary and technological.
No law of recent years has excited an acuter or more prolonged controversy than the Education Act of 1902, and amid the dust of religious and political strife it is not easy for contemporaries to view it objectively and in its trueAct of 1902, general principles.proportions. Nevertheless, considered historically, the act becomes intelligible as the product of the forces, partly religious and partly educational, which have been already described. The immediate impulse for this measure must be sought in the agitation that during the preceding decade had been gathering force among the adherents of the Established and Roman Catholic churches for equality of financial treatment as between voluntary and board schools. It must be placed to the credit of the constructive statesmanship of the Conservative party that it availed itself of an ecclesiastical agitation to take an important step forward in the organization of national education. The difficulty inherent in such a measure was the admitted difficulty of securing public control, as a necessary concomitant of public maintenance, without jeopardizing or destroying the special religious character of the voluntary schools. The act of 1902 sought to solve this problem, so difficult of solution under democratic conditions, upon the principle of a division of financial responsibility justifying a corresponding division of control between the voluntary managers and the local authority. The constitution of the local authority to be charged not only with the delicate duty of participating in the dual control of the voluntary public elementary schools, but also with the responsible task of co-ordinating public higher with public elementary education, presented features of controversy only less formidable than the purely religious question itself. Boldly reversing the settlement of 1870, the act of 1902 abolished the parochial school boards, and with them the system ofad hocelection, and made the county councils, already seised of technical and secondary education under the Technical Instruction Acts, the local authorities for all forms of education, thus reverting to the solution propounded by Conservative statesmanship in the middle period of the 19th century and endorsed by an important memorandum contributed by Lord Sandford (formerly permanent secretary of the Education Department) to the report of the Cross Commission. The unquestionable niggardliness and inefficiency of many small country school boards, which had been foretold by the prescience of the Newcastle Commissioners, constituted the chief educational argument for the selection of the wider area so far as the interests of elementary education alone were concerned. On the other hand, experience has shown that in the rural districts against the undoubted gain in general efficiency there must be set a certain loss on account of the decay of local and personal interest consequent upon the centralization of authority in the hands of the county councils. Account, too, must be taken of the comparative heaviness with which a uniform county rate is apt to press upon sparsely populated agricultural parishes, especially in counties which include considerable industrial districts. Notwithstanding these minor drawbacks, it may be said that upon the whole the best opinion has endorsed the policy of 1902 with respect to the area of administration. At any rate it has been necessary to recognize the impracticability of disestablishing the strongly organized provincial authorities which the act brought into being, and proposals for amendment in this particular have been confined to schemes, favoured in principle by all parties, for securing some measure of decentralization and delegation of powers calculated to restore and stimulate local interest without derogating from the financial and administrative responsibility of the county council.
The principal provisions of the act of 1902 may be summarized as follows:—