THE TEACHER'S DEMAND
Stn,—Leaving it to others to speak for the elementary schools, I would like to emphasise Miss Nesbitt's statement that all is not well with the maintained secondary schools. In too many cases, since teachers in them have neither contacts nor influence with the sub-committee of the Educa- tion Committee which governs them, they are unable to present their views effectively to the Committee, and a broad chasm divides the teachers from the administrator. Presumably, Education Committees regard their administrators as omniscient in the whole educational field (disregarding the fact that most of them have done no teaching for years) and so evince no wish to learn at first hand the problems which face teachers. It is not generally realised that in many cases the headmaster has no control over admissions to the school, and that on the very rare occasions when he meets the governing body his position is painfully like that of the defendant who led a blameless married life and was posed with the question, " When did you stop beating your wife? "
But the solution hardly appears to lie along the lines indicated by Miss Nesbitt. As Dr. Terry Thomas wisely remarked recently, " The centre of gravity must be in the school." I submit that it is at present in the case of the direct grant and independent schools (the great grammar schools and the public schools), and that it is not in the case of the maintained schools, where :t is at the Education Office. But the experience and example of the direct grant schools is of the greatest importance in this matter. They have shown that schools can be governed in the best interests of the whole community by bodies of competent well-educated people, vitally interested in their schools, that payment of grant direct from Whitehall places the schools beyond the range of party politics, and that the regular attendance of the head at governors' meetings ensures that he shall be the instrument of a policy normally determined in consultation with him, who is not ignorant of nor impervious to the opinions of staff and parents alike. Thus all opinions are considered, the school develops in its own individual way conditioned by the needs of the community which it serves, and that deadening regimentation which so often attacks the maintained school is avoided.
A point which is often forgotten, although it is very pertinent to the question of the control of schools, is the fact that although local authorities claim and exercise complete control, only 5o per cent, of the cost of the school is met from the rates and the remaining 5o per cent. is provided from taxation. There is therefore a certain justice in the suggestion that the control of secondary schools by L.E.A.s should not be absolute. The whole problem of the satisfactory government of schools lies at the very heart of genuine reform in education, so that doubtless the new Education Art will try to provide the solution. It is to be hoped that full use will be made of the experience available from the direct grant schools. While I am very well aware that not all maintained secondary sohools suffer in the way indicated, there are too many which do, and the tendency is for the number to increase.—Yours, &c., HEAD OF MAINTAINED SCHOOL.
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