13 FEBRUARY 1886, Page 9

THE SCHOOL BOARD BUDGET.

rpm figures in the Budget of the London School Board will reassure those who feared that the recent election would give a serious check to the work of education in London. So far as that work can be gauged by its cost, it is going on as actively as ever. For the coming year there is a gross ex- penditure of £1,568,000, to set against a gross expenditure for the past year of £1,466,000. Of this, £1,128,000 will have to be provided by the ratepayers in 1886-87, against £1,045,000 drawn from the same source in 1885-86. The first-fruits of the economical victory are apparently an increase of £82,000 in the burden laid on the London householders. The increase in the gross expenditure—which as regards the future is a more significant item, since a con- tinuous growth in the receipts is not a thing to be relied on—is £101,633. This is mainly due to an increase of 22,567 scholars in average attendance, compared with an increase of ls. 9d. per head in the cost of education. Whereas last year each child cost the Board £3 ls. ld., it now costs them £3 2s. 10d. In addition to this, the principal of the Board's debt has been increased by £800,000, which means a further charge of £34,358 for interest. In presenting this Budget, Sir Richard Temple drew an interesting com- parison between the financial history of the last Board and that of its immediate predecessor. The latter began with a

rate of something over 6d , representing a deficit of £629,000, and ended with a rate of something under 6d., representing (owing to an increased valuation) a deficit of £685,000. The list Board began with a rate of something less than 7d., representing a deficit of £810,000, and ended with a rate of nearly 9d., representing a deficit of £1,045,000. In the cost per child the increase is still more marked, though here the last Board but one was the principal sinner. It began with paying £1 17s. ld. per head, and ended by paying £2 18s. 3d., —to which sum the last Board added a further 2s. 11d. On the other hand, if there is more money spent, there is also more to show for it. The last Board but one began with 198,000 children in average attendance, and ended with 240,000. The last Board began with 240,000 children in average attendance, and ended with 312,671 ; and this great increase has been achieved at a very slightly augmented outlay per child. The chief extravagance of the last Board seems to have been in borrowing. Its loans amounted to two millions, as against a million and a quarter borrowed by its predecessor. At best, however, as Sir Richard Temple says, the increase of charge for elementary education in London during the last six years is very large. There is a rise of 74 per cent, in the expenditure, of 66 per cent. in the taxation, and of nearly 100 per cent. in the amount borrowed.

The Budget for the coming year, the heaviest yet presented to the ratepayers, is really, as Sir Richard Temple is careful to remind us, the work of the late Board. It is based on expenditure either already incurred or sanctioned beyond the power of the present Board to revoke. The interest of the Budget, therefore, depends less on the actual figures than on the room there is for expecting that this expenditure can be reduced, or at least kept where it is, in the future. As regards the latter point, Sir Richard Temple is sanguine. We have overtaken, he thinks, the educational need of London. The law requires that places shall be found for 456,589 children between five and thirteen ; and in Board schools and Voluntary schools taken together there are places for 598,462. This gives an excess of 141,873 places ; and if these were really vacant, it is clear that the Board need provide no more sohools for a long time to come. But as a matter of fact, these places are not really vacant. There are 121,846 children between three and five who cannot be compelled to come to school, and for whom, as Sir Richard Temple considers— differing in this point, we believe, from the Education Depart- ment—the Board are not obliged to find places. As a matter of grace and benevolence, however, it usually does find places for them, and at present it has no difficulty in doing so. There is ample accommodation for these additional children in the places which are going begging. But if the Board are to continue to provide for them—and in the interests of elementary education it is greatly to be desired that they should so continue—the existing places are only slightly in excess of the numbers on the school-roll. Still, it is a great gain that the educational needs of London have been over- taken, and something more than overtaken, because future developments of that need will coincide with the spread of London over a larger area, and with a corresponding growth of the property subject to rates. There seems good reason to think, therefore, that the increase in the expenditure has come to an end, and that the in- terest of the new Board's proceedings will depend rather on its success in reducing the present net expenditure. Partly by economies, and partly by looking more closely after sources of income, Sir Richard Temple thinks that a saving of about £100,000 can be effected, which would bring down the school rate to 8d. The chief of these economies is a redaction in the teaching staff. The rule of the Board is that there shall be one assistant-teacher for every sixty children ; but as a matter of fact, there was, in the year ending Michaelmas, 1885, an assistant-teacher for every fifty children. Sir Richard Temple does not propose to dismiss any teachers, but he would not fill up vacancies until the numbers had fallen to the proportion contemplated by the rule. Something, too, may be done in the way of a stricter collection of school- feee. They have fallen since 1883 from 8s. 4d. a child to 7s. 7d. ; so that at present, instead of paying a third of the coat of their children's education, which was what Mr. Forster estimated in 1870, London parents only pay about a twelfth. This is the result partly of remissness in paying the fees charged, and partly of an omission on the part of the Board to charge higher fees in cases where the parents might fairly be expected to pay them. In only sixteen Board schools in London do the children pay a sixpenny fee, and in only two do they pay nine-

pence. We agree with Sir Richard Temple that these figures argue a very careless estimate of the parents' ability to pay.

We can very well understand that it may be necessary in 481 schools to charge no more than twopence, or that in 231 it is necessary to lower the fee to a penny. But at the other end of the scale, we feel sure that there are more sixpences and ninepences to be had than are at present obtained. This seems to us a more hopeful method of improving the School Board revenue than the application of greater strictness to the collection of fees generally. With the disposition there is now in many quarters to abolish school-fees altogether, the wisdom of mutiplying cases of possible hardship is not beyond impeachment. Indeed, we are inclined to think that it might be wiser to increase the number of remissions rather than to encourage non-payment by acquiescence, or to make fees more unpopular by apparent harshness. Two minor items of economy are the modification of the system under which school-books are supplied free to all the children without regard to the means of their parents, and the making evening schools self-supporting.

To these proposals, except to the one relating to the collec- tion of school-fees, we see no objection ; and though, when all is told, the saving will not be great, it will be worth making, especially as the curtailment of existing expenses is one of the best securities against the incurring of new ones. To one way, however, of saving money—not proposed by the Finance Com- mittee, but moved as an amendment by Mr. Gover—the most strenuous resistance ought to be offered. The late Board made a most righteous and necessary alteration in the system of training pupil-teachers. Instead of being condemned to teach all day long in school, with the prospect of having to prepare for the Government examinations at night, they are now worked half the time, and allowed the other half for private study. The result has at once been visible in the greater proportion of passes obtained by the pupil-teachers, and will undoubtedly be still more visible hereafter in the diminished per-tentage of broken constitutions. The members of the Board who plead for a return to the old system, on the score of economy, would be quite at home on a cheaply worked slave-plantation, or on the direction of a London Tramway Company.