Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/357

Rh to the local education authority—and the constitution of education committees of councils having powers under the act are various further salient characteristics of this measure to which it is necessary to draw attention. In the case of the education committees it is to be noticed that the whole educational administrative work will be done by these committees which will possess all the educational powers of the council except that of raising a rate or borrowing money for education purposes. It is perhaps impossible to exaggerate the importance of this act of Parliament. Doubtless it has certain defects, but they are defects inherent in any act that endeavors to reconcile interests that are apparently in conflict. The political dissenters declared themselves wronged because rate-aid was given to the voluntary schools without a corresponding control by the representatives of the rate payers. Only one third of the managers represent the rate payers in the managing body of a voluntary school, and the fact that the majority of the managers are still private persons is a source of grievance to a certain class of liberals. On the other hand the owners of voluntary schools think themselves aggrieved in the fact that managers, who may not represent the denomination to which the school belongs, should have any word as to the religious teaching. These owners think that the public have the best of the bargain; the public have gained complete control, through the local education authority, over the secular teaching in these schools, while the views of the owners and managers are continually kept before the public by the representatives of the rate payers or the managing body. All the old privacy is lost.

On the whole, however, a fair bargain has been struck. The owners of the schools have a guarantee given them that the denominational character of each school shall be preserved, and they in return have for most purposes (other than religious) handed over the school to a body representing the public—the local education authority, i. e., the education committee of a publicly elected body. An effort all through the act is made to do justice to denominational bodies on the one hand and to secure absolutely efficient and coordinated education on the other, and on the whole the measure may be regarded as the great starting point of a new and beneficent educational system. London does not come within this scheme, but the metropolis is now being dealt with on the same lines by a bill 'to extend and adapt the Education Act, 1902, to London.' The educational authority for London will be the London County Council represented by an education committee composed of members of the council and representatives of the various London borough councils and of various metropolitan educational interests. This central educational body will exercise control over the metropolitan borough councils in their new capacity as managers of all public elementary schools provided by the County Council.