The new Vice-President of the Council, Mr. Stanhope, brought in
his Educational Budget on Tuesday night, and made his exposition very lucid and interesting. The number of children on the books is 4,337,000, and the number in average attendance is 3,273,000. In other words, of every 100 children who ought to be at school, 96 are on the books, but only 72 are in average attendance. The items of our annual expenditure on education are as follows :—
Government Grant 22,846,000
Voluntary Contributions 734,000 School-pence (including amounts paid by Guardians) 1,734,000 Rates 915,000 Endowments, tao. 222,000 £6,451,000
Besides this, since the Education Act passed in 1870, very large sums have been devoted to school buildings Voluntary con- tributions towards buildings have reached the immense slim in the fifteen years of 26,348,000; the Government Building Grant to these Voluntary Schools was 2312,000; Board Schools have borrowed and spent, 216,000,000. So that in fifteen years 222,660,000 has been raised in England and Wales for the building of schools alone. Cooking, said Mr. Stanhope, is taught to girls at the Elementary Schools much more generally every year, and the lessons are so popular that the teaching of cookery is steadily increasing. Mr. Stanhope Wok a very large view of the problem of education. "We cannot," he said, "yet solve, we cannot half understand, the new and great educational problems which the complexity of our social life will present to us."
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