In the House of Commons on Monday, Mr. Balfour made
an announcement: of great importance in regard to the Educa- tion Bill. One of the objections urged against the Bill by the plain man who is not concerned with the religious contro- versy, and who, we fear, is also not very much concerned with education at all, has been ,that the one thing certain about the Bill was that it would increase the rates. Con- sidering the great burden already imposed by the.rates, this WAS anobjection, which the Government felt must be met, and accordingly Mr. Balfour announced that the: Govern- ment would increase the grant made to elementary schools by a sum of 2900,000,, At present there was a grant of R.60,000 to voluntary schools, and a grant of 2220,000 to necessitous Board-schools. These grants would be abolished, and a new grant of 21,760,000 made in their place. The obvious way of distribliting this grant would be a grant of 7s. 6d, per child, but as this would lead to many anomalies, it was proposed that only 4s. per child should be granted automatically. The rest of the fund should be distributed among the poorer dis- tricts on the principle of equalisation of burden,—i.e., accord- ing to relative want of capacity to bear the burden. The test would be the product of a penny rate in a district. Free-traders to the imposition of the Curn-tax, which passed When that amounted to 10s. per child, the district would only its third reading by 105 votes (286 to 181).
get 4s. per child. When it produced less, the district would get help in proportion to its poverty, but no school would get more than 8s. per child, which would be the outside limit.
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