TWO days after the introduction of the Irish Land Bill, on the 17th of February, Mr. Forster, the Vice-President of the Council, brought in his Elementary Education Bill, a measure which, fair as were its opening prospects, was destined ultimately to become far more of a bone of contention in England than many Irish questions. Mr. Forster had kept his secret admirably. It was, of course, known that Government had pledged themselves to deal with the Education Question during the Session, and that the construction of an Education Bill had been long ago entrusted to Mr. Forster. As the Radical member for Bradford, Mr. Forster had many times proved his Liberal principles, and had already gained the respect and attention of the House before taking office. His vigorous character, his capacity for hard work, and his known ability seemed to point him out as specially fitted to deal with the vexed and intricate problem of National Education. But how was he going to deal with it? What line were Government, as represented by him, about to take up with regard to the great questions of free education, compulsion, and State aid to denominational schools? The London newspapers guessed in vain. No one out of the Cabinet had any idea of the provisions of the Bill before the night of the 17th of February, when Mr. Forster disclosed his scheme to a crowded House. His speech, as a speech, was perhaps a greater success than any he had achieved before. Perfect mastery of his subject gave a freedom and self-possession to his manner in which it had sometimes been wanting, and his whole demeanour was that of a man who had gone to the bottom of a great question, and who felt himself to be the most competent person to lead the opinion of the House and the country to a satisfactory decision with regard to it.
Before describing the means by which Government hoped to effect a radical change in the educational condition of the country, it may be as well to glance over the system of National Education as it existed at the time of Mr. Forster's speech. The whole system of National Education in England before the Act of 1870 was a matter of voluntary effort. In bygone ages, Greek philosophy had held the education of children to be one of the most essential duties of the State as such—a duty which could not be relegated to private hands, and which the State was bound to conduct with reference to the general welfare of the community. In more modern times Prussia had recognised this political view of education, and had made the training of every Prussian child a State matter. In England alone, with her over-fondness for self-government, and her love for the system of local provision for local needs, voluntaryism remained intact; and the education of the poor was left wholly at the discretion and in the hands of their richer and more intelligent neighbours. Voluntary effort must come first; then, indeed, State help would follow in the shape of building grants or annual grants, coupled with the condition of Government inspection; but in all cases the help given by the State had to be called forth by the prior voluntary action of some particular individual or some particular neighbourhood. It had long been felt that the results of this system were most unsatisfactory and inadequate; and as the Reform question advanced, and political enfranchisement had to be yielded step by step to the working classes, the gross and widespread ignorance prevailing among the lower orders began to force itself more and more strongly upon the attention of the country. Mr. Lowe only expressed the general feeling in a bitter and cynical way when, after the passing of the Reform Bill of 1867, he pointed out the power that it had conferred upon the working-man, and uttered the famous phrase, "Let us educate our masters!" The amount of educational destitution existing in England in 1870 may be roughly gathered from the following statistics. From the Census of 1851 it appeared that about one-fourth of the population of England were of an age to go to school—that is to say, from the ages of three to thirteen or four to fourteen. In 1870 the population of England was twenty-one millions, so that about five millions and a half of children would be of what is technically called the school age. Of these, 23 per cent. had to be allowed for as absent from school from allowable causes, such as sickness; half a million were at school for the upper or middle classes; and rather less than two millions and a half of the remaining three and a half millions were actually at school. There remained about one million one hundred thousand children who were not at school at all. Nor did this represent by any means the whole extent of the deficiency. Of the two and a half millions represented as actually at school, only a very small proportion indeed could possibly derive real benefit from the education offered them, because, as was abundantly proved by statistics, far the greater number of children were removed from school before their twelfth year—that is to say, before the age when the average child, much more the child of poor and uneducated parents, becomes capable of anything like lasting and profitable learning. This evil of short-lived and irregular attendance had been increasing during the years preceding 1870 rather than diminishing, and it was admitted on all hands to form one of the most serious elements of the educational difficulty. With regard to local deficiencies, especially to the educational needs of our large towns, let Mr. Forster speak for himself. "It is calculated," he said, "that in Liverpool the number of children between five and thirteen who ought to receive an elementary education is 80,000; but, as far as we can make out, 20,000 of them attend no school whatever, while at least another 20,000 attend schools where they get an education not worth having. In Manchester—that is, in the borough of Manchester, not including Salford—there are about 65,000 children who might be at school; and of this number 16,000 go to no school at all.... As a Yorkshireman I am sorry to say that, from what I hear, Leeds appears to be as bad as Liverpool; and so also, I fear, is Birmingham."
The educational need, then, could scarcely be denied, though extreme Conservatives, like Lord Robert Montagu, might attempt to palliate it. But the question of "how is this need to be supplied?" admitted of very different answers; and opinion was indeed divided into at least two hostile camps with regard to it, represented by the National Education Union and the famous Birmingham League. The avowed object of both was "to bring a good education within the reach of every child in the country." But the Union proposed to accomplish this by means of the existing system, supplemented and reformed; the League, on the contrary, aimed at the destruction of the existing system, and at the gradual erection of something wholly different upon its ruins. The Union desired, above all things, to keep education in England denominational and founded upon religious teaching; while the League asserted strongly that education ought to be wholly undenominational, that State aid should only be given to secular instruction, and that religion should be provided by the voluntary efforts of all religious sects, the Church of England included. The doctrines of the League were supported inside the House of Commons by men like Mr. Mundella, Mr. Dixon, and Mr. Fawcett; and outside it, by the bulk of the Dissenting communities, who saw in the programme of the League a protest against the undisputed supremacy of the Church in education. On the other hand, the sequel showed that the partisans of the more moderate policy advocated by the Union had Mr. Forster himself in the main on their side, a large majority (both Liberals and Conservatives) in the House, and the whole influence and power of the Church of England. The Church talked of her "claims," and pointed triumphantly to the work done by her, and by her alone, in the cause of education; while the Dissenters complained of grievances, accused the clergy of intentional violations of the Conscience Clause then existing, and professed to regard their zeal for education as a mere cloak for widespread projects of priestly aggrandisement. Between these contending factions Mr. Forster had to take his stand, and to frame a Bill which should if possible satisfy both.
Mr. Forster had set about his great undertaking in that spirit of conscientious thoroughness which characterised him through life. From his well-known biography by Sir Wemyss Reid, we gather that so early as the 21st of October, 1869, he had submitted to the Cabinet an exhaustive memorandum, in which the four ideals of the Birmingham League, the National Education Union, Mr. Bruce's Bill of 1868, and Mr. Lowe's plan for supplementing voluntary effort by compulsory rates were submitted to the most searching criticism. He decided that Mr. Lowe's scheme was the best of the four, but suggested that it might be strengthened in various ways, and concluded—"In venturing to submit the above suggestions, I may be allowed to add my conviction that in dealing with this Education Question boldness is the only safe policy; that any measure which does not profess to be complete will be a certain failure; but that we shall have support from all sides if, on the one hand, we acknowledge and make use of present educational efforts, and, on the other hand, admit the duty of the central Government to supplement these efforts by means of local agency." His views found favour with the Ministry, but meanwhile the Birmingham League had begun to stir, and Mr. Forster was much annoyed by rumours that the Cabinet was of divided mind, and that the measure would in consequence be postponed. On the 6th of December we find him writing to Mr. Glyn, the Ministerial Whip, an earnest protest against procrastination. He received a fairly reassuring reply; nevertheless there were dissensions in the Cabinet. Mr. Gladstone was immersed in Irish land tenure, and Lord De Grey, the President of the Council, had to bring considerable pressure to bear so as to prevent the measure from being shelved. In the end Mr. Forster's memorandum was practically adopted, though his proposals for compulsion were made less stringent, and his provision that the aid given to already existing schools should be confined to secular education was, somewhat injudiciously, toned down.
We cannot do better than let Mr. Forster describe his Bill mainly in his own words. The first problem, then, to be solved, said the Vice-President of the Council, was this: "How can we cover the country with good schools?" The answer to this must be influenced by three considerations—considerations of the duties of parents to their children, of the duty of Government to the taxpayer, and of the duty of every educational reformer to those who were already labouring in the cause of education, and to the system which they at great cost had built up and supported. That is to say, "in solving this problem, there must be, consistently with the attainment of our object, the least possible expenditure of public money, the utmost endeavour not to injure existing and efficient schools, and the most careful absence of all encouragement to parents to neglect their children." The principles upon which the present Bill is founded, he continued, "are two in number—legal enactment that there shall be efficient schools everywhere throughout the kingdom; and compulsory provision of such schools, if and where needed, but not unless proved to be needed. So much for the principles of the Bill. Coming now to the actual provisions by which they are to be enforced, it will suggest itself to the minds of all that there must be to begin with a system of organisation throughout the country. We take care that the country shall be properly mapped and divided so that its wants may be duly ascertained. For this we take present known divisions and declare them to be school districts, so that upon the passing of this Bill there will be no portion of England or Wales not included in one school district or another. We have taken the boundaries of boroughs as regards towns, and parishes as regards the country—and when I say parish, I mean the civil parish, and not the ecclesiastical district. With regard to the metropolis, we have come to the conclusion, subject to the counsel and advice of the metropolitan members, that the best districts we can take in the metropolis are, where they exist, the school districts already formed for workhouse schools; and where they do not exist, the boundaries of the vestries. Having thus got our districts, our next duty is to ascertain their educational condition, and for that purpose we take power to collect returns which will show us what in each district is the number of schools, of scholars, and of children requiring education. We also take power to send down inspectors and officers to test the quality of the schools and of the education given in them. Then if in any one of these districts we find the elementary education to be sufficient in quantity, efficient in quality, and suitable in character, that is to say, hampered by no religious or other restriction to which parents can reasonably object, we leave that district alone; and we shall continue to leave it alone so long as it fulfils those conditions. And I may as well state that for the purpose of ascertaining the condition of a district we count all schools that will receive our inspectors, whether private or public, whether aided or unaided by Government, whether secular or denominational."
Here Mr. Forster, before describing the means by which districts insufficiently supplied with schools were to be sufficiently supplied, explained an important change in the character of Government inspection to be introduced. "Hitherto," he said, "the inspection has been denominational; we propose that it shall no longer be so." The reasons for this change were obvious. In the first place, an invidious distinction was kept up between Church inspectors and inspectors of other denominations—the former alone having the right to inquire into the teaching of doctrines in any school. Thus both sides were in many cases aggrieved. Clergymen complained that their school children were subjected to examination in religious doctrine by an inspector whose religious views differed from their own, while a Wesleyan or an Independent school could not be subjected to any such examination at all. On the other hand, the Dissenters were justly irritated by a distinction that seemed to imply that their peculiar tenets were not, and could not be, recognised by the State in the same way as the doctrines of the Church. The denominational character of the inspection also very much complicated the whole system of inspection, introducing many practical difficulties into the division of inspecting-districts, and so on. In consideration of all these objections, and believing that the existing system was favourable neither to religion in general nor to the Church cause in particular, "we propose," said Mr. Forster, "that after a limited period one of the conditions of public elementary schools shall be, that they shall admit any inspector without any denominational provision."
The next provision of the Bill concerned the framing of a stringent conscience clause to be accepted by every elementary denominational school before public money would be granted to it. There had been at one time strong opposition on the part of a fraction of the Church party to any conscience clause whatever. It became evident, however, several months before the introduction of the Education Bill, that public opinion, both lay and clerical, was strengthening in its favour, and the adoption of a conscience clause into the programme of the National Education Union virtually settled the matter. The Conscience Clause in the Bill of 1870 ran as follows:—
"No scholar shall be required, as a condition of being admitted into or of attending or of enjoying all the benefits of the school, to attend or to abstain from attending any Sunday school, or any place of religious worship, or to learn any such catechism or religious formulary, or to be present at any such lesson or instruction or observance as may have been objected to on religious grounds, by the parent of the scholar sending his objection in writing to the managers or principal teacher of the school, or one of them."
By far the most practical objection that had been made to a conscience clause had been that it would be in reality of little or no use in any case where the clergyman or other manager of a school should be bent on setting it aside. "That, however," said Mr. Forster, "is not the view that I have formed from my personal experience. In the first place, I do not know any case in which our present conscience clause has been applied in which it has not been found thoroughly effective; but our new clause will be different in this important respect, that whereas the old clause was applicable only in some cases to building grants, the new one will apply to all grants, and especially to all annual grants. It is perfectly clear in its operation, and I am quite sure that no manager of a school will risk the loss of the annual grant by violating its conditions."
