TEACHERS' PROTEST.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 113, 15 May 1911, Page 7

TEACHERS' PROTEST.

DEMONSTRATION IN ALBERT HALL. By Telegraph.-— Press Association.— Copyrlghn. (Received May 15, 9.10 ajn.) LONDON, 14th May. Six thousand school teachers held a demonstration in the' Albert Hall as a protest against the Holmes-Morant circular in March last. [Mr. Holmes is ex-Chief Inspector of the Board of Education, and Sir Robert Morvant is Permanent Secretary. The issue from the board of an unauthorised circular was the subject of a lively and acrimonious debate in the House of Commons on 21st March last. It was represented that in this memorandum or circular the ex-chief inspector of the board on the elementary side had iudvised the board's divisional inspectors to use their influence with local education authorities/ with a view to confining .important administrative appointments to candidates educated at Oxford or Cambridge. Mr. Hoare, who brought the matter forward, explained that inspectorships under the local education authorities wore regarded as the plums of their profession by elementary school-teachers, and that if the. circular, which was issued a year before, had been carried into effect they would now be excluded from these appointments, unless they had graduated at onu of the two old universities. The document which had been circulated was marked "strictly confidential," but extracts from it had appeared in the press. Mr. Runciman, President of the Board of Education, affirmed with great emphasis that the policy which the member for Chelsea had arraigned was not the policy of the Board, and would never be its policy so long as he was its president. . . . The circular did not express the view of the board ; it was not issued in the ordinary way, and was not sent to anybody having power to select candidates tor local inspectorships. It was merely circulated among one class of servants of the board. He had himself never held the opinion that ex-elementary teachers could not fill high positions un--der local authorities. In fact, such teacßfers, provided they had the necessary^ educational equipment, were better qualified to become inspectors than men who had never been through an elementary school. . . . The memorandum contained the private views of an ex-official, and for these ho was not responsible.]