EDUCATION.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20564, 4 June 1932, Page 8

EDUCATION.

A COLOSSAL COST. SIR D. MACLEAN'S STATEMENT. our own cohresi'OK»e:;t.) LONDON, April 21. When the Education Estimates were discussed in the Commons, Sir Donald Maclean laid special stress on the colossal cost of England's system of education. Tho President of the Board of Education told tho liouse that in 1906 the educational estimates were £12,652,548. In 1914 they were £14,660,311. To-day, the estimates which I am submitting to tho Committee provido for an Exchequer expenditure of £42,892,676, which compares with tho estimate of £48,362,677 last year. With the sum raised from the rates by the local education authorities, there is a total of £86,000,000 for all educational purposes, including universities and agriculture, but if we include Scotland it is nearly £100,000,000, more than half the total national expenditure of tho year before tho war. This is a colossal sum. I doubt whether there is any other country in Europe to-day whose Budget contains so generous a provision for education. In faco of the need for economy, he claimed that, even after the reduction of the cut in teachers' salaries to 10 per cent, from tho 20 per cent, proposed by the Maj Committee, the saving effected totalled £5,466,000, which was more than half the total reduction in the Civil Estimates. It was not surprising, therefore, that ho had to tell teachers to wait for less abnormal conditions before the cuts were reviewed. Best Paid in Europe.

Meanwhile, Sir Donald pointed out that unemployment among teachers was very slight, that they were still the best paid in Europe, and that tlio cost of their pensions to the State was heavy and increasing, because they received full pensions, though they began to contribute, towards pensions only in 1922. Expenditure on scholarships and hoalth services was also increasing, but was specially defensible. Tor example, nearly 1,000,000 children were now receiving milk every day, most of them ou payment of Id each. In regard to the future, he claimed that education, after a period of rapid expansion, would be none the worse for a period of stock-taking; and ho appeared to lean towards such concentration upon vocational education as local possibilities might permit. But t.e was very firm on the fact that the nation's financial troubles were not over, and that the present was a probably prolonged period of convclescence. Children's Organisations.

Speaking on tho subject of tho gang instinct among boys, Sir Donald Maclean said it was interesting to note that since 1924 the membership of juvenile organisations, including scouts, guides, brigades, boys' and girls' clubs, and so oil, affiliated to the Board of Education Juvenile Organisation had increased by nearly 100 per cent, in the case of girls, and over 50 per cent, in tho ease of boys, and that the total for the largest half-dozen organisations now stood at well over 1,500,000.

Mr Morgan Jones, giving the Socialist. point of view, said that economy when applied to education was applied in tho main to tho poorer class of children. Ho protested against tho enormous drop in capital expenditure since tlio National Government came into office. The Labour Party regardod that with grave apprehension. Free places in secondary schools wero far too few, and the result was that those schools wero fast becoming the preserves of tlio well-to-do classes. Very largely on account of tho economy campaign reorganisation of schools was at a standstill. Technical education was still the Cinderella of our educational services. We wero handicapping the youth of this country in tho great raco with other countries.

Technical Schools. Hi i' Percy Harris declared that education must suffer if teachers were discontented. Ho regretted that the president of the Board of Education had not been able to send out a message of hope to tho teachers. Mr Ramsbotham (Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education) replying to various points raised in the debate, said that he was not afraid of our education being too vocational. There was far more danger of it being too academic. He pointed out that nearly 1,000,000 adolescents were receiving continuation education, and ho appealed to employers to release move of them for part-time education during working hours. The State, through its technical schools, had largely taken over the training of apprentices, and lie hoped this might lie increased. In "■eneral, he admitted that financial stringency retarded expansion, but there was educational virtuo in having to insist that no money was wasted. We were spending three times as much on education as before tho -war, ahd liO only wished 'that education was three times as good.