The results of the School-Board Elections in London, which were
not known last week, are, on the whole, in very fair accord- ance with those obtained in the rest of the country. The party professing to favour the voluntary denominational schools,. and to resist expenditure on Board Schools, has gained_ more than we should wish, and the party most opposed to this policy has gained more than we should wish, both of them generally at the cost of the party favourable, on the whole, to the gradual increase of Board Schools pledged to an un.sectarian plan of religious education,--schools which must, by their com- petition, raise higher the standard of secular teaching in the Voluntary schools, and even convey into their religious training a more liberal spirit. But we do not believe that in any one of the recently elected School Boards, except that at Birmingham, there is any danger of a revolutionary policy. It is quite clear that in the London Board the moderates who are favourable to working out the old policy will have a good working majority, perhaps 30 against 19; indeed, many of those who, like Mr. Peek, elected in the City, have been regarded as in sympathy with the Clericals because, they favour low rates and the fullest use of existing denominational schools before attempting to build afresh, have distinctly declared themselves moderates, unfavourable to any attempt to give sectarian religious instruction. We should ourselves earnestly deprecate an ex- cessive economy of this kind, in a city well able to bear a moderate education rate, and equally well able to secure an effective administration for its Board Schools ; but the true atti- tude to take towards these extreme economists is not to reproach them with denominational prejudices, but to appeal exclusively to the test of educational efficiency or inefficiency. We regret that only two ladies have been elected to the London School Board, and both of them for Marylebone,—Miss Chester and lira Herbert Cowell. Like Mrs. Garrett-Anderson and Miss Emily Davies on the last School Board, they will be hard-worked members.
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