EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS IN SCOTLAND.
THERE seems at last a reasonable prospect of the passing of a measure, which Mr. Mundella has brought forward during three Parliamentary Sessions, for extending the useful- ness of Educational Endowments in Scotland, and, to quote the significant words of the preamble, "so far as may be to make an adequate portion of such endowments available for afford- ing to boys and girls of promise opportunities for obtaining higher education, of the kind best suited to aid their advance- ment in life." The Bill passed through committee in the Commons on Saturday, and is not likely to be rejected by the Peers. Lord Salisbury's well known zeal for the "pious founder" may indeed lead him to object to a suggestion which Mr. Mundella accepted at the eleventh hour, reducing the date of endowments to be dealt with from forty to ten years from the passing of the measure. It was in the year 1872 that the Elementary Education Act was passed which is now in force in Scotland, and which marks a most important stage in its intellectual history ; and the char- acter of the change that will be effected by the pro- posal now accepted may be inferred from the fact that in Glasgow alone it will place upwards of £400,000 of endowments, instead of £100,000, at the disposal of the Executive Commission to be immediately appointed. On Saturday, however, Conservative Members were quite as eager as Liberals in urging this alteration on Mr. Mundella, and this fact may have weight with Lord Salisbury. It is a curiosity of fate that Mr. Lyon Playfair should pre- side over the Parliamentary destinies of this measure. No living Scotchuaan has done more to open the eyes of his country- men to the obscurantist and extravagant management of their Educational Trusts. In 1869, and in opposition to a permissive Bill allowing these Trusts to reform themselves, he delivered a powerful speech on their weak points, and especially on the evils of the celebrated Hospital system. He predicted that permissive Bills would simply block up the way towards effective reform, by favouring "crude and disjointed schemes of self- reform." His prediction has been fulfilled. Most, though not all, of the Scotch Trusts have either refused to re- form themselves, or have brought forward "crude and disjointed schemes" of reform. The last effort in the way of permissive legislation was made in 1878. The present Government have been compelled, in consequence of the failure of that effort, to introduce a final measure, of a compulsory character, empowering an Executive Com- mission to frame schemes of reform for Trusts, and allowing the Governing Bodies which are themselves reformed, only to administer the new schemes. It is this final measure that, appropriately enough, has just passed through what seems its crucial stages, under the eye and supervision of Mr. Playfair.
A purely Scotch Bill of this kind is full of technicalities which are practically inexplicable, and deals with vested interests that seem altogether trivial, to the English mind. Mr. Mundella, however, put both its character and the objects of its oppo- nents in a nutshell, on Saturday. "We spend in Scotland," he said, "about a million a year upon public Elementary Schools, and there are about £200,000 a year of endowments. The whole object of a very few of the Scotch Members is to apply these endowments to save the rates and taxes, whereas this £200,000 might be so applied as to raise the whole char- acter of the Education of Scotland, giving to every poor but clever boy or girl a chance of rising to something better." Mr. Mundella takes a rather optimistic view of the future, however. That would, indeed, be a glad day for the educational reformers of Scotland, which should see £200,000 added to the present annual income of her secondary instruction. At the present moment, such endowment amounts to £16,550 a year, of which only £3,400 goes to those institutions which would be styled in England secondary or grammar schools. We are not quite sure that Mr. Mundella is right in his figures. No thoroughly accurate register of Scotch Endowments has been kept, but the total reported on by a Royal Commission in 1875 yielded .£174,000 a year. Supposing, however, this sum to have increased since 1875 to Mr. Mundella's £200,000, how much, or rather how little, of that will be available for the general purposes of secondary education ? In order to get his Bill passed, he has tied up himself, Parliament, and the coming Executive Commission most tightly to respect the wishes of founders as to the localities their endowments are to benefit, as to the giving of gratuitous elementary education, and as to the maintenance of certain charities. Anything like a general or systematic endowment of secondary education in Scotland is thus out of the question. In order to show at once how the Bill will act, let us take the case of Edinburgh, the managers of whose Heriot's Hospital have notoriously been the head and front of the opposition to this Bill. Out of a total income of £26,000, they devote between £8,000 and £10,000 to the gratuitous education of the poor, in schools of their own. These schools can, when the Act is passed, be closed, or devoted to other purposes. The children in them can be sent to the Board schools, where they will get the same education, at a fourth of the cost to the Trust. The sum thus saved, some £6,000 or £7,000, will be used, as Mr. Mundella says, as a ladder to raise poor children to the higher schools— which are so numerous and so excellent in Edinburgh—and put them in the way of a higher education than the Heriot schools can give.
The practical effect of the measure, so far as Scotland generally is concerned, may be thus summed up. Edinburgh, perhaps Glasgow also, will get a good technical college. The secondary schools there and in the smaller provincial towns may get some direct addition to their revenues, and also some indirect endowment, in the shape of university and technical bursaries and scholarships, for the promising children of what Professor Bryce says very properly should be called, not the poor, but the industrial classes. This is not much, but it is something. The Executive University Commission, which will probably be issued next year, may also do a little towards the organising of secondary as well as of superior instruction. Some benefit, too, may be expected from a very sensible Circular which the Edu- cation Department recently sent to the Scotch School Boards. In this it was shown how, in a quiet and inexpensive way, Boards may even now do a good deal for public in- struction,—the distinction between elementary and secon- dary education is officially unknown in Scotland—by co- operating with each other in grading schools, in establishing a higher-class public school in every country district, and, where possible, in connecting such institutions with the middle-class schools in the provincial towns by a chain of bursaries.
All this will do good, but the true organisation and endowment of secondary education in Scotland on a permanent basis are still in the future. We are surprised that the minority of the Scotch Members who opposed Mr. Mundella's Bill did not see this. The arguments they offered in criticising it and the amendments they brought forward in committee say very little for their intelligence in educational matters, or even for their historical information. Some excuse, such as the natural infirmity associated with common-place ambitions, may be offered for the Heriot Trustees, who have been fighting desper- ately for the maintenance of what has been to them a source of power and a fountain of patronage. But the din that was made about free education on Saturday had no meaning. If Scotland wishes for free education, it must be introduced by a comprehensive measure, not smuggled into a few towns through hospital charities. Then, again, the talk indulged in as to " the popularly-elected element" in the future governing bodies of educational Trusts can only be described, in Sir Stafford Northeote's phrase, as "an unreasoning panic." The Members who used it forgot that these Trusts are essentially private. When, in 1623, George Heriot left his money to be managed by the Edinburgh Town Council, that body was not popularly elected. Besides, Mr. Mundella has on this matter done all he can, if not more than he should. He has intro- duced into Trusts hitherto absolutely close a popular element to the extent of a third. In Trusts, again, which have hitherto been partly open, he has raised the popular element repre- sented by town councils and school boards to two-thirds. There will be little enough room left on these governing bodies for the representation of those intelligent men, to be found especially in country dristricts, who are invaluable for aiding in the promotion of public culture, but who can never be induced to face the ordeal of popular election. When Scot- land is ripe for the endowment of secondary education on a truly national basis, then by all means let the organisation of that education, or the compulsory elementary education now established, be entrusted entirely to popular Boards. Were we to judge of the public spirit and enlightenment of the country solely by the character of the opposition offered to this modest measure by a minority of Scotch Representatives, we should say that that time is far off indeed.
Previous page
