THE SCOTCH EDUCATION QUESTION.
HAD Lord Advocate Young yielded to advice pressed upon him from many quarters, he would have reintroduced this year the Education Bill which in 1869 Mr. Moncreiff and
the Duke of Argyll failed to carry through Parliament. That Bill, as it stood when rejected by the Lords, dealt neither with the Parish nor the Burgh schools, both of which were left for future legislation ; so that, though nominally a pro- ject of national education, it was really little more than a scheme for relieving the various sects in Scotland of the burden of the series of schools which their rivalries had called into existence. It is fortunate that Mr. Young rejected the advice. The measure he has introduced comprehends the Burgh and Parish Schools, which are in future to be public schools managed on a popular basis ; provides for the estab- lishment of new schools where necessary, and for incorporating existing schools, other than burgh and parish, in the public- school system ; while continuing to efficient schools other than public now existing the aid of Privy-Council grants. Thus the Bill, unlike Mr. Moncreiff's, covers the whole field of Scotch popular education, primary and secondary.
The following is as correct a general account of the main provisions of the Bill as we can compress into a newspaper paragraph :—School-boards are to be elected in every parish and burgh in Scotland within six months after the passing of the Act. The elections are to be superintended by the Scotch Education Department—a committee of the Privy Council on Education in Scotland to be appointed by Her Majesty—which department is to have power, on the expiration of the six months, to nominate a Board for any parish or burgh that may have failed to elect one. The Boards, on coming into existence, will be the owners, in parishes, of the parish schools and schoolmasters' houses, &c. ; in burghs of the burgh schools. Both sets of schools will become public schools under the Act, and will be controlled, managed, and super- intended by the Boards. The Boards are directed at once to expand the system of public schools thus formed till it meets the whole educational wants of the community ; by buying existing schools—such as those of the Free Church—and building new ones, or enlarging old. Provision is also made for the expansion of the system from time to time in the future, so as to secure that there shall always be a sufficiency of accommodation for the children of Scotland in efficient schools. The Boards are empowered, moreover, to erect infant and evening schools, and industrial and free schools in certain cases. The expenses will, so far as necessary, be met by a rate levied along with the poor-rate, and, in the same manner, on all lands and heritages ; and the ratepayers in each district will have in their hands the election of the School Board. The Bill provides a strict conscience-clause for all State or rate-aided schools, and the inspection is to be nn- denominational, and confined to secular subjects. Beyond this the Bill is silent on the subject of the religious difficulty, which is left without direction to the School Boards. At this point it seems to be in substantial agreement with Mr. Forster's Bill of last year, as it is also in its provisions for permissive compulsion of school attendance.
Scotland has, from an early date, had a series of national schools covering the country, though meeting its educational wants inadequately. The Burgh Schools are publiely provided, although not rate-supported ; the parish
schools have all along since 1696 been publicly-provided and rate-supported schools, — in the strict sense of the word national. They have not been numerous enough, however, and their connection with the Established Church has, in some measure, been prejudicial, leading to the erection of schools by other Churches to rival rather than supplement them ; so that in some districts in Scotland the cause of education has suffered quite as much from there being too many schools as from there being too few. And in passing, we may observe that in our opinion it is a defect in the Bill that it contains no clear and distinct pro- vision that secures the suppression, in such districts, of schools that tend mutually to destroy each other by the withdrawal of the Parliamentary grant from such of them as, on inquiry, may appear to be unnecessary. The seventy- fourth section of the Bill has a provision against the rise of this species of evil in the future, and it is probable that the condition of the grant—that a school must be " effi- ciently " contributing to the secular education of the district —may suffice for the purpose we have in view. Be that as it may, the chief merit of this Bill clearly consists in the con- ception that what was requisite to be done was to remodel the existing national system, detach it from its Church connection, popularize its management, and provide for its expansion by the addition of new schools, and inclusion of existing schools where expedient, so as to make it commensurate with the educational wants of the time. This the Bill succeeds in providing to be done by simple and, we should think, easily worked machinery. The boldness of the proposal would in 1869 have struck one more than its originality ; but since then the air has been cleared by various occurrences, notably thej disestablishment of the Irish Church, and we may now admire the originality more than the boldness. It is much to Mr. Young's credit that while there was a clamour for the intro- duction of the Bill of 1869, he should have thought out a scheme so radical.
The Bill should become law. The Scotch Church, for the disestablishment of which many are calling out, will scarcely hasten a conflict that is inevitable by a struggle to preserve the guardianship of the schools. The existing heritors will not object, because, on the whole, the Bill will bring them relief. The various denominations whose schools will certainly be thrown on the rates will not object, for they will have all the relief that was offered to them in 1869, and any satisfac- tion that the detachment of the parish schools from the Church may afford them into the bargain. Two sets of people there are, however, that are certain to object,—those who wished the central authority of the Scottish school-system to be established in Edinburgh, and those who, along with Mr. M'Laren, if we recollect rightly, opposed Mr. Moncrieff's Bill on the ground that the heritors rated at present for the Parish Schools should be made to pay any new rate that might be imposed in addition to the rates they had been paying. It is difficult to see the force of the objections to the Scotch Education Department proposed in the Bill. The Bill contains provisions for fostering those features in the system of education in Scotland that are peculiar, and, indeed, for the encouragement of secondary education in general ; and no doubt it will be the least that will be considered due to Scotland, that Her Majesty, in nominating the committee of the Privy Council that is to constitute the department, shall nominate a proportion, if not a majority, of Scots-
men. It can scarcely be doubted, again, that there is an advantage in removing the control from the bickerings, at
short range, that are sure to arise in Scotland ; and also in the freer choice the scheme offers of skilled and independent administrators. Any board that could be established in Edinburgh must be a board of clergymen of different persua- sions, like that proposed in 1869. We think also that it is beyond hope now that any minister could carry a proposal for a Board to be established in Edinburgh, such as Mr. Moncreiff's Bill contemplated. The chairman was to be paid £1,000yearly, and each of the other two members of the Board £750 yearly. Since that suggestion was made we have seen a popularly- elected School Board in London, with a population to deal with as great and as variously circumstanced in regard to the means of education as Scotland, determine that not even its chairman should at the outset of its operations have a salary. Besides this, we do not see how the Government can dispense with a system of imperial control, seeing that, as the Lord Advocate stated in introducing the Bill, the State is to con- tribute in future so much more extensively than hitherto to the cause of education in Scotland. The contention that the heritors rated for the parish schools should pay their rates as at present, and the new rate in addition, we can scarcely regard as being serious. The rate has long been levied, but that cannot be regarded as altering its character as a tax ; and no one can maintain it to be a principle of taxation that a tax may be levied so long that it must be levied for ever. The Annuity-tax in Edinburgh had been levied for a very long time ; but we do not recollect that Mr. M'Laren ever maintained that in respect of its old age the people of Edinburgh were bound to pay it evermore ; or that there was anything wrong when the area of the tax was widened, and its amount reduced, as it was at one time, in conformity with a scheme of his own. The fact is, it has been owing to what we may call an accident that the rates have not been equally imposed on all lands and heritages ever since 1696, instead of on some lands and heritages only, most unequally, according to their rent as valued in the middle of the seventeenth century. The " valued rents " and the real rents have no longer any correspondence ; and the proposal to lay the rate on the real value of all lands and heritages is not only a recurrence to the intention of the statute of 1696, which imposed the rate on the heritors, but is just in itself, and a feature absolutely requisite in a scheme which, like that of the Lord Advocate, takes the control of the schools out of the hands of the few, and places it in the hands of the people.
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