6 MAY 1871, Page 3

The London School Board has at last decided to get

to work, or rather to get to what the world would recognize as work, for it has really done a great deal of good work in its Committees. It has resolved :—" That the Board, without waiting for the com- pletion of the inquiries into the efficiency of the existing schools, and into the social and religious condition of the whole of the metropolis, do undertake forthwith the providing of a limited num- ber of schools in various localities of the town where the deficiency is already ascertained to be great, and where there is no doubt that large provision for public elementary education must here- after be made by the Board." In Chelsea, for instance, it seems certain that there are 16,000 children for whom there is no school accommodation at present ; in Southwark, 17,000; in Finsbary, 39,000. It would have been mere pedantry to wait for the official verification of the facts in places where it is absolutely certain that many schools will be wanted.