SIR,—Mr. Stuart Maclure's article, Educationists and the Block Grant, which
appeared in your issue of November 8, pointed out some of the serious effects which the introduction of the block grant will have on public education generally. One branch of this service, however, will be so heavily penalised that it seems to me that it ought to be specially considered. I refer to the training of teachers, which will be affected in two ways.
Firstly, by the nature of the service, the moneys allocated by local authorities for teacher-training are not always spent within the local authorities' areas, and not every local authority has a training college of its own. Moreover, teachers trained at the authority's expense do not necessarily return to that area when they begin to teach, nor is it always desir- able that they should do so. The training of teachers is one of the great national services entrusted to local authorities, as is the provision of roads, the police and the health service. These three latter services have been specially exempt from the operation of the block grant system for this reason, but the same con- sideration has not been extended to the training of teachers. When local councils are faced with training more teachers and extending the period of training, they will be hard put to it to persuade their tax- payers to raise moneys, which will not be spent in the area, and the fruits of which they will not immediately enjoy.
Secondly, the Government itself evidently expects that one of the results of the block grant will be to restrict the development of higher education, for they have themselves removed higher technical education from its operation in order that this branch of the service may be free to develop in view of the urgent needs of the day in this field. Such freedom is denied to the training of teachers, in spite of its fundamental importance and its peculiarly vulnerable position in the allocation of local authorities' expenditures.
There is but one argument for the imposition of the block grant, as Mr. Maclure has pointed out. It is an economy measure that is to fall on the whole field of public education, and particularly heavily on the training of teachers, although on it the whole future of our national ,education depends, and, not least, that of its technical branches.—Yours faith- fully, A. M. MILLARD Battersea Training College of Domestic Science
58 Clapham Common, North Side, SW4
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