CABLE NEWS. [BY ELECTIEC TELAGRAPH.-COPYRIGHT.] FATE OF THE EDUCATION BILL

Evening Post, Volume LXXII, Issue 111, 7 November 1906, Page 7

CABLE NEWS. [BY ELECTIEC TELAGRAPH.-COPYRIGHT.]

FATE OF THE EDUCATION BILL

TREATMENT IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS. ' THE ''AMENDMENTS ADOPTED. ]>KEB3 ASSOCIATION.! LONDON, 6th November. The House of Lords continued the debato on the Education Bill in committee yesterday. Lord Heneage proposed an amendment to clause four, making it mandatory for a local authority to 1 allow extended facilities for giving religious instruction. The amendment was carried, the voting •being — For .., w- -« "• 157 Against ... >„ 46 Government minority... 11l Lord Jersey moved! a further amend-, ment providing that extended facilities should not be confined to urban areas. This was adopted. The voting was as follows: — For ... >«i ».< ... 160' Againsb ... >.. ... 44 Government minority ... 136 Lord Crewe (Lord President of the Council) declared that the Loxds were battering the Bill out of recognition. STULTIFYING THE NATION'S VERDICT,*.' (Received November 7, 8.42 a.m.) LONDON, 6th November. At a meeting of the National Free Church Council, attended by twelve hundred delegates, a resolution was passed declaring that the amendments to the Bill made by^ the House of Lords stultified the nation's verdict on the education question, and appealing to the Government to oppose every alteration giving a foothold to sectarian privilege. The Right Re*. A. Clifford, Bishop of LucknoW, described the Archbishop of Canterbury as a minister who 1 was facing 'both ways. It will be remembered that in the Bill as originally introduced in tho House of Commons clause 1 placed all schools eligible for the Go 'eminent grant tinder the Board or Council school system, with representative management* and undenominationalism. AfteT a certain, period every voluntary school was either to bo transferred to tho local education authority and be conducted as if it we,re a council school, or else carried on without the aid of any public money at all. By amendments in committee in the Commons a small exception to that rule was made. In an urban area, where the pajents of at least four-fifths of the children dtsired the religious teaching to continue to be denominational, but the local authority refused them that privilege, an existing voluntary school might j be permitted by the Board of Education j to stand outside the control and management of the local authority, Temain <ie- ! notnlnational, and go on receiving* Gov« ! etnmSnt grants at the pfesent fate. This did not rfeally relax to any con* siderable extent the new rule of the Bilß as ib emerged from th© House of Com--mons that a voluntary school must either ' be -handed over to the local authority \ ior be Maintained by private puTses. But the conditions of transfer were slightly altered. The owners of a. voluntary school might make it a condition that religious teaching of the undenomina- 1 tional kind should be given aftei' the transfer, so that the sohool might not be-com-a a wholly secular institution. And in the cose oi a voluntary school where transfer wns pending, or was in the end to be refused, any new teachers appointed would have to be willing to give the [ same religious instruction as before, co I that when the school finally got free of the local authority the Teligious character of the institution would have suffered no j breach of Continuity. j On the other hand, clause 4 had been so modified that no rent could be paid for urban schools which the local authority allowed to remain undenominational, the wishes of parents in that respect being ascertained by elaborate ballot. Though there was tv be an appeal to the Board of Education— from the owners, if the local authority denied the claim of the balloting paients, and from the parents if, ew, teachers of a different religious persuasion were appointed to the school — th 6 most probable result of these appeals it was to be expected would not be tho coercion of the local authority, but merely tho recognition of the institution as a State-aided school. That was the position before the House of Lords made the amendments reported in the above message.