On Saturday last the Duke of Devonshire, as President of
the Council of Education, received two deputations on the educational controversy of the day, the one headed by Mr. George Dixon, Al P., against the proposal to give extra aid to voluntary schools in their competition with Board-schools, in which he confessed that in the Government itself, as elsewhere, there are differences in the amount of the sympathy given respectively to the voluntary schools and the Board-schools; and the other headed by the Bishop of Coventry, asking for the recognition of the voluntary schools as a permanent and substantial factor in our educational system, and for a policy winch would give the voluntary schools a fair chance of holding their own against the Board-schools. The Duke was very impartial in discouraging the heat of both the deputations, and pointing out that, unless each side relaxed to a considerable extent the magnitude of its demands, there must be either enormous additional expenditure, or a con- siderable lowering of the standard of education,—for neither of which results the English people are prepared.
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