Is there going to be a scandal in the London
School Board ? We trust not ; but there has been somewhere among its agents very gross negligence, if not corruption. At the weekly meeting of Thursday, Mr. Helby, as Chairman of the Works Committee, stated that he had discovered grave failures in the building of some of the Board schools, upon the whole of which £2,000,000 has been expended. It has been necessary to shore- up the last-built school—that for West Norwood—lest it should tumble on the children, while shameful imperfections have been discovered in Woodland Road School, the mortar used in which " is a dark substance resembling mud." The builders of this last school have executed works for the Board to the amount of £325,000, while the builders of the first-named school have, said Mr. Helby, gone bankrupt, and are practically beyond reach. The clerk of the works at the two schools has been recommended for dismissal; but pro- ceedings should be carried far beyond this. There must be a thorough inspection of all the Board school-houses, and if necessary, an investigation as searching as that which resulted in the fall of the Metropolitan Board. These huge contracts are the danger of our municipal life, and the system of accepting the lowest tender directly provokes contractors to obtain the profits they cannot obtain in their prices by scamping the work.
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