Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/1004

 commissioners 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 of 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 once 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 appointment 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 Commission 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 special 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 proposals 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,