SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Evening Star, Issue 21254, 8 November 1932, Page 10

SECONDARY SCHOOLS

ECONOMIES PLANNED IN ENGLAND

Severe economics in secondary education are being seriously planned m England, says a writer in the ‘Alan.Chester Guardian.’ The Board of Education is also considering the possibility of imposing fees in all secondary schools, but not necessarily _ for all secondary school children. The plan contemplates fees varying from three guineas to nine guineas per annum, with power to the local authority to remit in eases of necessity. Fees, of course, are charged already in a good many secondary schools, even municipal secondary schools, but there are also towns in which second ary education, like elementary, can be bad free on certain conditions. And there arc the free places which must bo provided as a condition of Government grant 'This rulo was imposed by Air Al’Kcnna as Jong ago as 1907, the year after Air BirrelTs great education Bill had been killed by the Lords. The necessity for public economy, however, is leading to considerable changes in the system. It is probably unlikely that the proportion of free places as a condition of grant will be altered, but it is pretty certain that fees will be more generally charged, and that is sure to lead to a diminution in the number of children in the secondary .schools of the land. The change, however, cannot come, all at once. It has been the practice of local authorities to exact from the parent whose child was given a free place a written promise that it was iiis intention to keep his child at tho .secondary school for the full course, that is till about sixteen years of age In these circumstances the present free scholars will not be charged lees, nut local authorities, encouraged by the Board of Education, are showing a desire to cut down the number of free places and to impose a regular scale of fees for future entrants. MAINTENANCE. From many parts of the country comes news that local authorities are ceasing to provide free books and so forth. It is not generally tnown that local authorities have power also to provide maintenance allowances tor secondary school children, although they have no siich power m the case of elementary school children. These maintenance allowances are being cut in many places. If the economists in the House of Commons get their way the system of percentage grants to local authorities will be swept away, and block grant.” substituted. In that case tho local authorities would have to be allowid to make their own economies, and there would be no method of prevent ing the reactionary ones frm slipping back into pre-war methods. AH educationists fear the block grant system. The plan of providing £1 of Government grant for every £1 spent out of local rates has encouraged progress. The block grant system will dis courage progress, and that is its real virtue in the eyes of those who ire trying to impose it on the Government.

During the coming autumn and win ter we are going to see determined efforts to reduce still further the ;ost of education, both nationally -ud locally. Proposals for curtailing the school life of the child, for providing baby-minders instead of teachers in tile infants’ schools, and for severely restricting facilities for secondary and higher education generally are all neing pressed on the Government by pow oriul reactionary influences.