Sir John Gorst brought forward the Education Estimates yesterday week
in a very short speech in which he explained that the expenditure on elementary education last year had exceeded the expenditure in the previous year by £275,000, and that for this year the expenditure would be 27,122,218, or £186,000 of estimated increase on last year's expenditutt. He lamented earnestly the party spirit with which theEducd- tion question was discussed, and anticipated that we should never come up to our rivals in France and Germany unless the subject was discussed in a different spirit. A more liberal expenditure on training colleges and on teachers was greatly needed, as we are at present obliged to accept a considerable number of ill-qualified teachers, because we have no better qualified teachers to resort to. He gave an interesting and carious account of the leaps and bounds with which the teaching of the laundry business to girls is now expanding. Between 1894 and 1895 the number of girls instructed in the laundry business had increased from 7,338 to 11,720, and it was evident that the teaching of laundry work was only beginning. The discussion which followed was not specially interesting, and the vote, of course, was agreed to.
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