EDUCATION AND FREEDOM
have read with interest the article entitled "Education and Freedom" which appeared in your issue of September 17th. In the last paragraph it states, " The public schools have to be fitted harmoniously into the national system of secondary education ; that question is still being studied by the Fleming Committee."
It would seem that the Committee's deliberations on this question have been prejudiced in an important respect by the publication, a month ago, of its special report on the abolition of tuition fees. This recommends that tuition fees should be abolished in all grant-aided secondary schools. Is there any reason in logic or equity why this should not also apply to all schools which may subsequently become grant-aided? If there is not, then any independent school, whether boarding or day school, which becomes linked to the national system of secondary education by any form of subvention from public funds, must give up charging tuition fees. The Fleming Committee, when issuing its special report, may not have had this in view, but there must be many persons interested in secondary schools who will maintain that it is implied.
Surely, had the Fleming Committee as a whole accepted the opinions expressed in the Minority Report, which does-not recommend the complete abolition of all fees in grant-aided schools, they would have left their hands freer for dealing with the more important part of the task submitted to them in their terms of reference, i.e., the connexion of the public schools with the general educational system of the country.—! am, Sir,
yours, &c., T. STINTON. The High School, Newcastle, Staffs.
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