The Select Committee on the Endowed Schools' Act (1869) have
agreed to their Report, which has been presented to Par- liament. The Committee recommend that the powers of the Act about to expire be renewed, with certain modifications. The Report admits that "much sound and good work has been done," while regretting that certain good schools have been touched at all ; and they recommend that the time during which objections and suggestions may be received after the publication of schemes should be shortened from three months to two,—which will cer- tainly quicken the now too ponderous action of the Commission. They propose to lengthen, however, the time during which the Education Department must receive representations from outside, to one month, and give the Education Department itself the power to make alterations in the scheme after the expiration of the month, —a power which Mr. Forster seems not to have ventured to claim in his Bill founded on the Report, as he only takes power to suggest alterations to the Commissioners. The Committee also propose what seems to us a very great im- provement, that unopposed schemes shall become law without the delay of lying for forty days on the table of both Houses. They recommend that, in dealing with endowments under Sec- tion 17 of the Act, the Commissioners should be enabled "to return an ecclesiastical officer [a rector or vicar, for example,] as an ex officio governor, if such an appointment is directed by the original instrument of foundation,"—a change which will not please the Birmingham League ; it was carried by 11 to 7 in the Committee. On the whole, the report is a success for the Endowed Schools' COMIllif16011.
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