Mr. Acland (the Vice-President of the Council in the last
Government and practically its Education Minister) made a, speech to his constituents at Rotherham on the Education Bill on Wednesday night, attacking it, as it seems to us, in a very prejudiced fashion. He treated the Bill as if it quite breaks down the powers of the Education Depart- ment, which it certainly does not, as the Bill requires in Clause 13, that every school shall be examined and inspected in the manner laid down by the Education Department; and in Clause 14, that if there is any complaint of the mode in which the new Education Autho- rity does its duty, there shall be an appeal to the Education Department, which shall determine the matter finally. And again he made a great deal of the fact that those counties which
have been chiefly under great School Boards, will get a very small proportion of the new grant-in-aid, while those which have been chiefly under voluntary school managers will get a very large grant-in-aid. In other words, Mr. A°land com- plains that those schools which have had no power of helping themselves out of the rates should be assisted largely by the new measure, while those which have had that power and have used it freely, are not to be assisted to anything like the same extent. He might just as well have said plainly that he did not think it at all reasonable that the poor schools should have more help than the rich, the very object at which the policy of the Government aimed. His speech was a party speech, and it was also ineffective.
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