THE LONDON SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS.
IN regard to the elections for the London School Board, which are to take place on the 29th inst., it is not possible for us to advocate the undiscriminating support by the ratepayers of either party's " ticket." The Progressives have been in a majority on the retiring Board. In relation to what can be called matters of principle they appear to have acted sensibly and equit- ably, with one exception. It is impossible to read Sir Charles Elliott's article in the Nineteenth Century for October and come to any other conclusion. That much- respected Indian ex-official and member of the Moderate party on the Board, who by the wise assent of the Pro- gressives has occupied the position of its •Chancellor of the Exchequer, went carefully into the causes of the considerable rise in annual expenditure—some £430,000— which has taken place since 1897. He affirmed that£300,000 of that increase was due to causes unavoidable by the Board, and which would have operated equally if the Moderates had been in power. These were such circum- stances as the increase in the ordinary child population of school age, the addition by Act of Parliament to the responsibilities of the Board of classes of unfortunate children—blind, deaf, crippled, mentally defective, and epileptic—who previously were in the charge of the Guardians, and the enhanced cost of building. In respect of the remaining £130,000 of added annual expenditure, £100,000, in the opinion of Sir C. Elliott, was to be assigned to features of policy, in which the Progressives had not acted alone, and as to which there was a justification either of virtual necessity, or at least of clear expediency, for the line taken by the Board. These points included an addition to the number of certificated teachers,which was required to ensure a reason- able amount of competent attention being paid to the individual members of each class ; an increase in the scale of pay for the class-teachers, as to which Sir C. Elliott said that some Moderates doubted if it went far enough ; and a growth of the amount of instruction in cookery and laundry work for girls and in woodwork for boys. This last development is of a kind which cannot fail to command the approval of all prac- tical educationists. There remained some £20,000 or £30,000, in regard to which Sir C. Elliott was apparently of opinion that by rigid economy in the treatment of requisitions for library books, drawing-class materials, kindergarten apparatus, and school furniture, a consider- able proportion might perhaps have been saved. Such a sum is not to be despised, but it would not come to more than, say, half-a-farthing in the pound in the School Board rate, and we gather that even if a larger estimate be made of possibly unnecessary outlay, including that involved in the abolition of fees in the evening continuation schools, and the teaching of some subjects there for which there appears to be only a very small demand, a halfpenny in the pound would cover all the saving in the rate which might have been made or could be looked for. We notice, indeed, that the Moderate candidates for Westminster in their address, besides touching on the two points just alluded to in relation to the evening schools, express the view that " the steady increase in the Board's expenditure is owing to the fact that nothing is done to keep the spending Com- mittees within their own estimates," and promise, if elected, to " promote a sounder financial system." That would certainly seem desirable, if there is the laxity of control indicated by Major Skinner and his fellow-candi- dates ; but in view of Sir C. Elliott's explanation of the great bulk of the increase in the annual expenditure, the hopes of economy suggested by the sentence we have quoted from their address seem pitched somewhat too high.
We are very far from wishing to make light of the need For thrifty administration in the work of the School Board. There are so many branches of that work in connection with which stinting would be injurious, there are so many ratepayers to whom the saving of a mite in the pound would mean a very sensible alleviation of crushing burdens, that there is every reason why the most business- like principles should rule in every department of the Board's activities. We imagine that it is broadly true that Moderate candidates can be trusted with more con- fidence than Progressives to bestir themselves, if elected, to seo that a pound is never spent when seventeen and sixpence would meet every reasonable requirement. No Moderate that ever was born would have " rejoiced " with Mr. Stewart Headlam at the School Board meeting the other day over the fact that twenty-one young German clerks were learning the English language gratis at an evening continuation school. The thing is entirely absurd. On the other hand, there is undoubtedly, as Sir C. Elliott pointed out, and as every one who has had anything to do with electioneering in this connection knows very well, a numerous class of persons whose one idea is that the rates are too heavy, and ought to be kept down, and to whom it never occurs to ask whether, after all, the School Board expenditure does not, on the whole, bring in corresponding money's worth to the community. To these persons it would never occur to consider, as, in in our judgment, it ought to be considered, whether any particular sum spent on evening continuation schools may not be worth spending, not because the parents of the children benefited have a claim on the ratepayers, which they very possibly have not, but in order to prevent the loss to the community of that precious article, an improved citizen, which the expenditure of many previous years' schooling has only partially secured. It is at least con- ceivable that, in the first instance at any rate, it may be worth while to spend money on, so to say, creating the demand for rational occupation, developing the intelligence, and steadying the character, during the evenings of the years from fourteen to twenty. Such questions as these seem to demand attention from thoughtful citizens, in view of "Hooliganism" on one side, and the notorious want of adaptability on the part of many of our working people, as compared with those of the United States, on the other. They bear both on the question of evening continuation schools and on that of the higher elementary schools, concerning which there is unfortunately a good deal of uncertainty as to the law at the present moment, an uncertainty that can only be thoroughly and satis- factorily cleared up, as the Duke of Devonshire lately pinted out, by Parliament facing the subject of educa- tional reorganisation.
We have said that in matters of principle, apart from matters of administrative detail, there is only one point on which the expiring School Board has what seems an unsatisfactory record. That is its attitude towards voluntary schools. We are aware that there is some difference of opinion on this question, but it seems to us that the balance of probability is in support of the view that the Progressive majority, in a considerable number of cases, have exhibited an unfriendly temper, by building new Board-schools, or agitating for them, in positions where they would needlessly compete with existing denominational schools. Mr. Asquith touched on this subject in his speech in Marylebone on Monday, but even he had to acknowledge that out of seven thousand school places to the creation of which, in the positions proposed by the Board, objection had been raised by the Moderates, some two thousand were actually disallowed by the Board of Education. A com- paratively small amount of action of the kind complained of is enough to produce a considerable amount of incon- venience, and even loss, to those whose private educational efforts have deserved well of the State, and a very niuch larger amount of justifiable anxiety and misgiving. On this question it is probable that there are many shades and degrees of feeling among the Progressives, and that it would be fair to say of some, and quite unfair to say of others of them, that if they had their way they would starve or crush out all the voluntary schools. However that may be, it is perfectly clear that alike in the interests of religious education and in that of preventing an alarm- ing increase of the rates, unfair treatment of the volun- tary schools ought to be steadily discouraged. On the whole, the moral seems to be much as it was in the case of the municipal elections the other day, that the rate- payers should take trouble to make up their minds what they care for most in regard to the principal points of School Board administration, and then ascertain which of the
candidates are most likely to put their views in force. Practically, it may often happen that they will find it the best plan to vote for candidates on both "tickets." But by all means let them show, by voting, that they really care for the good administration of the schools of this city of five million souls.
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