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 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 and 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 a 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, 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 “educational 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 of Rex v. Cockerton pronounced 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 excluded 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 a 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, 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 parliamentary