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 to the reformation of many cases of abuse or waste of wealthy endowments, and eventually to the establishment of the Charity

Commission in 1853. In 1820 Brougham introduced a remarkable bill which proposed to make the magistrates in quarter sessions the rating authority, to require teachers to be members of the Church of England and to be appointed upon a certificate from the parochial clergyman, and on the other hand to prohibit religious formularies and to confine religious instruction to Bible reading without comment. The bill naturally failed through the opposition cf the Dissenters, and served only to accentuate the religious impasse.

In 1832 the Whig government which passed the Reform Bill placed on the Estimates a sum of £20,000 for public education, thus initiating the system of the annual grant voted by parliament and dispensed under regulations framed by administrative act. The grant of 1832 was administered by the treasury and not by a special department, under certain conditions laid down by treasury minute of August 30, 1833. The chief of these were that grants were confined to the erection of school buildings, and were to be administered only through the National and the British and Foreign School societies; there was a provision for audit, but no condition of inspection.

In 1839 Lord Melbourne’s government by means of an order in council established a separate education office under the style of the Committee of Council on Education, and the sum voted by parliament was increased to £39,000. The original intention of the government was to establish a state normal school or training college as the foundation of a national system of education. Unfortunately this design had to be abandoned in view of the religious difficulty, with the result (so fruitful in controversy at the present time) that the training of elementary teachers was left in private hands and became a stronghold of the voluntary and denominational interests. In view of the limited resources placed at their disposal by parliament, the Committee of Council were at first compelled to confine their assistance to capital grants in aid of the provision of school buildings, but in the distribution of the money three important conditions were at once imposed. In the first place, the continuing right of inspection was required in all cases; secondly, promoters were obliged to conform to a fixed standard of structural efficiency; thirdly, the building must be settled upon trusts permanently securing it to the education of poor children.

By the minute of August 10, 1840, the Committee of Council concluded what came to be known as the concordat with the church. Under this minute no appointment was to be made of any person to inspect schools in connexion with the Church of England without the concurrence of the archbishop of the province, and, what seems still more extraordinary to modern ideas, any such appointment was to be revoked should the archbishop at any time withdraw his concurrence. The inspectors were charged with the duty of inspecting religious teaching, but under instructions to be framed by the archbishop, and their reports were to be transmitted in duplicate to the archbishop and the bishop for the information of these authorities. Further, the general instructions of the Committee of Council themselves were to be communicated to the archbishop before being finally sanctioned. The march of events, and in particular the altered financial relations between the state and the voluntary managers brought about by the institution of maintenance grants, soon rendered this concordat obsolete, but it remains historically important as showing how at the outset the denominational principle was recognized and fostered by the state.

Among the first acts of the Committee of Council was the promulgation of a set of model trusts deeds, one or other of which applicants for building grants were required to adopt for the settlement of their school premises. The necessary conditions were the permanent appropriation of the site to purposes of education, and the permanent right of government inspection; it must, however, be noted that this latter right was generally limited in terms to the inspection provided for by the minute of August 10, 1840. A conscience clause was not obligatory, and indeed was only offered in the limited form of exemption from instruction in formularies and attendance at Sunday school or public worship. A more systematic attempt to promote public control by means of trust deeds in 1846 led the Committee of Council into a controversy with the National Society which extended over a period of three years, turning chiefly upon the management clauses and the question of appeals, and resulting in compromises which constituted a fresh concordat with the church. In point of fact, the management clauses proved to be of little practical consequence, save in a few controversial cases, until the act of 1902, which had the effect of bringing them once more into prominence in connexion with the constitution of statutory bodies of foundation managers. The act of 1902 also dealt specifically with two other points arising upon the old trust deeds, viz. the control of religious instruction and the appeal to the bishop in religious questions. Special facilities for the conveyance of land for school purposes were afforded to limited owners by the School Sites Acts of 1841 and subsequent years. The landed gentry responded with great public spirit to the call thus made upon their generosity by the state, with the result that the vast majority of rural, and many urban, parishes were freely endowed with sites for elementary schools.

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. 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 colleges 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 a 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. To 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 arisen