Evening Post. SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 1897. THE NEW ENGLISH EDUCATION BILL.

Evening Post, Volume LIII, Issue 79, 3 April 1897, Page 4

Evening Post. SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 1897. THE NEW ENGLISH EDUCATION BILL.

« — . The second reading of the Voluntary Schools Aid Grant Bill in the House of Lords marks a fresh stage in the settlement of the English educational controversy. For years the battle has been waged over the three questions of religious instruction, public control, and financial aid. The new Bill is very short and simple. It only prtffesses to deal with a single group of points at issue ; and is of much narrower scope than the ambitious measure which the Government was forced to withdraw last June, in deference to tho storm of secular democratic antagonism that it raised. It contains three main provisions for the relief of voluntary 'or denominational primary schools. Ths> first classes them with scientific, and learned institutions as exempt from payment of rates, the second abolishes the minimum limit of subscriptions created in J074, and the third authorises the J^ymept of aid grants from the Imperial exchequer. The total grant is to be at the rate of 5s per child in average attendance, or £016,500 in all. Since the funds arc to be drawn from Imperial taxation, the Education Department is the authorised distributor. li/. will allocate the sums at its disposal according to the need,s of the various schools to be subsidised, and provision is made for the groupiiy^of schools in Associations in order to lessen the strain upon the machinery of di^ribijtion. No

school will be forced to join an Association professing an alien religion, and beyond the audit of accounts there will be no State interference with the general management of the schools. The conciseness of the Bill proved the Government's determination to assist Denominational education, placate the Church party, and avoid all risk of failure from a multiplicity of amendments. We in New Zealand hare fortunately emerged from the disputes which are still agitating England, though some injudicious clerics did their best about ayear ago to revive them, and it is difficult to understand the real issues at stake without a glance at the history of the education movement at Home. Until 1870 popular education was in the hands of volunteers, who were aided by small grants from the State. The Church of England was everywhere supreme, and exercised almost universal control over the elementary schools. This was very galling to almost all shades of Nonconformists, who at last turned the tables upon the clergy, and, by the legislation of 1870, established rate-supported Board sphools, in which no Denominational religious instruction of any description was to be given. Since that date the two systems of public schools and voluntary schools have existed side by aide. The religious temperament of a large section of the English people, however, has always encouraged schools in which definite religious instruction is given, so that more than half the children of the country are still being educated in Denominational primary schools. The free education laws and the length of purse behind the Board schools have given them a considerable advantage in the struggle with their voluntary rivals. The Bill just passed in aid of the latter seems proof conclusive of the present Government's acceptance of the two points that the State cannot supply a religious education that would be acceptable to all, and that a majority of parents wish their children to receive Christian instruction at their *ecular schools. The questions of public control and of finance have throughout the controversy been, unfortunately, subordinated to that of religion. The uudenominationalists claim that public aid entails public control. Their opponents reply that public education is a public commodity, worth so much no matter under what roof it is produced, and its cost price in public money taken from • the rates and taxes should follow each scholar to whatever public elementary school his parents may send him. Cardinal Taugban, the spokesman of the Roman Catholics, compares elementary education to a factory product, w hose purchase does not give the buyer a right to control the machinery of production. He also lays great stress upon the rights of parentage, and insists that when attendance at school is made compulsory, the right of parents to ensure the education of their children in their own creed must be carefully safeguarded. With these arguments all colonists who have fought the battle of national education) compulsory and free, have been familiar for the past quarter of a century. A quarter of a century hence the Old Country may find herself on this question where we are to-day. In the present measure the Salisbury Cabinet has decided to adopt the historic policy of Imperial rather than local aid } of grants from the taxes rather thair from the rates. The private managers of voluntary schools are regarded as in a similar position with reference to the institutions under their control to that occupied by the ratepayers m relation to the Board schools. The opposition to the present Bill does not seem to have been very keen. The relief from rating and the abolition of the 17s 6d limit wero unavailingly opposed by tho Secularists, and the provisions for the aid graut were seemingly only criticised because they failed to include necessitous Board schools. The Government, however, ► has practically pledged itself to a supplementary measure for the relief of the latter. The Bill of last year, apart from its denominational clement, to which, of course, we are entirely opposed, contained some useful provisions, but was too ambitious a measure for the excited state of public feeling. It attempted to transfer the levying of the Education rate from the Board schools to a committee of the County Councils. This would hare given the power of taxation to a body which could consider the pressure of local rates as a whole, and would probabty have operated to the alleviation of ratepayers. Necessitous Board schools were also to have participated in the grant. The debates on the new Bill lid to some interesting and curious passages-of-arms between Mr. Balfour, the Leader of the House, its introducer) and Sir John Gorst, Vice-President of the Council of Education, the father of the cashiered measure. Sir John will be remembered by New Zealanders as the energetic Commissioner of the Waikato, who tried with schools and native newspapers to wean the Maoris from their allegiance to the King movement. Even in those larly days Sir John, then Mr 1 . Gorst, proved his devotion to the cause of education. In the present instance his official position and the fate of his own Bill must have rendered very galling his practical supersession by Mr. Balfour. Sir John posed as the candid frifnd pi the Government, who did not quite approve of the measures adopted by his colleagues, and the Opposition duly cheered the " backhanders " he from time to time administered to his "right honourable friend, the First Lord of the Treasury. 1 ' The situation was the more strange from the fact that Mr. Balfour and Sir John Gorst are the surviving members in Parliament of the small and select Fourth Party which did so., much to' democratise English Conservatism. English Liberals are always rather afraid of the educational measures of a Conservative Government. They <}oubt tlfeir sincerity, and ascribe to their oppppents a desire to lower the standard of primary education lest the masses should be educated above their position. The present Government came into power pledged to aid voluntary schools, and the Bill, now well on its way to become law, is a redemption of the pledge given, and a limited and by no means permanent settlement of a few of the great questions at issue. Tim Salisbury Government has succeeded in subsidising the old-established Churches, to

help in their schools to dam back the rising tide of Liberalism. They will check for a little while its onward flow, but ere long there will come a. flood in which Denominationalism in National Education will be swept away, and will be no more seen.