EDUCATION QUESTION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13890, 30 April 1907, Page 5

EDUCATION QUESTION.

MR M'KENNA'S BILL.

GRIEVANCES OP CHURCHMEN,

Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright.

LONDON, April 29. (Received April 29, at 10.57 p.m.) Lord Hugh Cecil and others, in a letter to Sir Henry Camphell-liannerman, declare that if Mr M'Kenna's bill bccomes law il will bo tho duty of churchmen to withhold a portion of the education rate. 'fliey consider their grievances far exceed those of the Nonconformists.

The object of Mr M'Konna's bill is "to make provision for relieving the locttl education authority of tile cost of giving spccial religious instruction in schools not provided by the authority." The clauses are as follow:

1. Tli c managers of every public elementary school maintained, but not provided "M.j' local education authority, in which religious instruction which would not lie permissible 1 in a school provided bv the authority under section H of "The K'cmentary Education Act, 1870," lias been giien during the financial year ending th° 31st day of March, 1907, or during anv subsequent, financial year, .shall, within six months after the expiration of that year, pay to the authority a sum equal to oneuifeenth part ot the sum paid during the year m salaries to the teachers who have been employed in tho school and have given that instruction: provided that where a teacher has given that instruction in a school during part. oM |y 0 f (] lp V(j!lr> (j ]e sum to lie paid in respect of tlmt teacher shall bo proportionately reduced. 2. The managers of a school shall not, by reason of this act, be under anv personal liability to pay any such suins to the authority, but one of the conditions to be fulfilled in order to enable a school not provided by tho local icducation authority to be maintained by that authority and to bo. a school in yospocfc Ol which parliamentary grants are pavablc, shall be that the provisions of this section are complied with in respect of the school. o. If any question arises under this act between the local oducatiou authority and the managers of the school, that question Shall be determined by the Board of Education, wnose decision shall he .final; and where any such question is raised, the provisions of this act prohibiting Ihe maintenance of the school by the authority and the payment of parliamentary grant's shall not take effect until one mouth after tho question is so decided.

The objection of Anglicans to the bill has boon stated by the Saturday Review a s follows:—"There is no argument in favour of the Nonconformist Relief Bill which Clnirchmon and lloman Catholics cannot apply wifth equal force to their own case. Ihev object to paying rnte s for Cowperlcmple- religion, a political compromise whicli is not their religion, and, according to Mr M'Konna, is not religion, and, in fact, as we have often said, is nobody's religion."