The evolution in the House of Commons during the week
of the London Education Bill, which passed through Committee on Tuesday night, has been without parallel in recent Parliamentary history. On Monday the Government, amending their amendment of their original proposals, with- drew the whole of the representatives of the Borough Councils from the Education Committee, and left only the representatives of the County Council and the nominated "experts and women." But even this tremendous change was not enough. On Tuesday they agreed that the impracticable plan of dividing management and control, and giving manage- ment to the Borough Councils and control to the Education Committee, should be struck out, and that, instead, managers should be appointed to manage groups of schools, of whom one-fourth should be named by the Education Committee and three-fourths by the Borough Councils. These bodies of managers are, however, not to be virtually autonomous bodies with statutory powers of choosing the teachers and so forth, but, instead, bodies analogous to the old School Board managers. This plan the Government accepted at the hands of Mr. William Peel, who is to be congratulated upon a very signal Parliamentary success. For ourselves, we agree that the Bill has been immensely improved by these alterations, which, it may be remembered, were in effect urged by us on the intro- duction of the measure ; but we cannot, while glad that they have been adopted, help protesting against the want of tact and sound Parliamentary strategy displayed by the Govern. ment. A worse case of mismanagement we cannot remember.
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