SCHOOL REFORM

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 13773, 16 October 1942, Page 6

SCHOOL REFORM

LABOUR PROPOSALS

Education For All

Equality For Rich and Poor

London Aug. 29

State subsidising of extended education and abolition of private schools were included in Labour proposals for post-war education reform in Britain made public this week.

The proposals were contained in a special comprehensive memorandum published by the British. Trades Union Congress August 24. The proposals, which will be placed before the T.U.C. delegates for adoption at their conference at Blackpool on September 7, included the following points:

1. Equal education chance for all wi;h school-leaving age raised from 14 to 15 immediately after the war and to 16 within three years of the armistice and with day continuation until the age of IS. Education for All 2. To make the extended education possible for all, maintenance allowances for children above 11. 3. T.U.C. sees no place for private schools in the reformed system save where they serve experimental purposes. Other private schools not closed should be taken over by the State.

4. T.U.C. would also end the payment of public funds to church schools.

5. Universities to be open to all on system of State scholarships for all with, capacity to benefit from higher schooling.

The proposal makes one of the most forthright statements yet heard on the thorny question of denominational schools and religious teaching in schools generally.

“Let denominational teaching be done in the home, Sunday School, and Church.,” it says. What religious teaching there is in State schools, it adds, should be in accordance with an agreed syllabus.

There are some interesting comments in the press on the T.U.C.’s “All private schools must go” plan. One Conservative daily, the Daily Express, wholeheartedly supports the T.U.C. proposal. Schools Also For Rich It wants State schools for the socalled rich as well as for the poor. Hitherto, it says, “Children of the rich have had the disadvantages of private education,” adding that in future the rich must also have the advantage of council schools. On the other hand the Left Wing weekly, New Statesman and Nation, published a letter, though it doesn’t agree with it, from a correspondent avlio has been a public school governor for 20 years claiming that Britain’s traditional public schools “are in no wise threatened with bankruptcy,” and should continue to play a vital role in the life of future Britain.