At the same time, the pressure of the school boards influenced secondary education in two ways. In the first place, the elementary schools were found to act as feeders for schools of a higher type, and the idea of the “educational Influence of school boards. ladder” began to play a leading part in plans for the organization of national education. It was seen that there must be schools to which the more advanced scholars could pass from the public elementary schools, and scholarships to assist such scholars to continue their education in this way. In the next place, it was recognized that to provide adequately for the further education of public elementary scholars a new type of school was required. Thus there came into being through the initiative of the great school boards what were known as higher-grade elementary schools. These were really secondary schools of the third grade, and, as the Commission on Secondary Education observed, the school boards simply stepped in to fill the educational void which the Schools Inquiry Commissioners had proposed to fill by schools of that name. The happy obscurity of the legal definition of elementary education left these schools free to develop during the long years of the neglect of secondary education by the state, and when in 1901 the famous judgment in the test case of Rex v. Cockerton pronounced them to be illegal, it was at once recognized that the legislature must without delay step in to secure the educational work which the undoubtedly correct principles of judicial interpretation had placed in jeopardy.
Such were the agencies at work in the domain of secondary education when in 1894 a royal commission was appointed under the presidency of Mr Bryce to inquire into this branch of education. The terms of reference excluded Secondary Education Commission, 1894. elementary education, and the report may be taken as embodying the views of that school of educational statesmen who held that progress would best be attained by keeping elementary and secondary education entirely separate for purposes of local administration, the parish being regarded as the natural unit for elementary and the county for secondary education, a topic to which it will be necessary to revert in connexion with the act of 1902. The principal recommendations of the commission were: (1) the unification of the existing central authorities, viz. the Department of Science and Art, the Charity Commission (so far as it dealt with educational endowments), and the Education Department, in one central office, and the establishment of an educational council to advise the minister of education in certain professional matters; (2) the establishment of local authorities, to consist of committees of the county councils with co-opted elements; (3) the formation of a register of teachers with a view to the encouragement of professional training, and a system of school registration upon the basis of inspection and examination. The first of these recommendations was carried out by the Board of Education Act 1899, as mentioned below, and under the same act an attempt was made to give some effect to the third-named object, which, though it unfortunately fell short of success, may serve as a point of departure for further efforts. The realization of the second, and the most important, of the recommendations was deferred till 1902, when it was brought about as a part of a wider reorganization of the educational system.
The religious difficulty in elementary education during the period immediately succeeding the report of Mr Bryce’s Commission in 1895 once more reached an acute stage, and this circumstance was immediately unfavourable to a Agitation on behalf of voluntary schools. resolute handling of educational problems as such, public attention being largely concentrated upon the demand of the supporters of voluntary schools for relief from the growing financial burden which was laid upon them by that steady raising of the standard to which reference has been made above. In 1896 an endeavour was made to meet the demands of the voluntary managers by means of a bill introduced by Sir John Gorst on behalf of the Conservative government. This bill with its provision for a special aid grant to be administered by county education authorities, which were to exist side by side with the school boards, represented a kind of compromise between the systems of 1870 and 1902. It encountered opposition in all quarters and was withdrawn. In 1897, however, the position of the denominational schools was strengthened by the Voluntary Schools Act, which provided for a special aid grant of five shillings per head of the scholars in average attendance in these schools.
In view of the difficulties which beset any comprehensive treatment of the education question, partial effect was given to the recommendations of the Secondary Education Commission by the Board of Education Act of 1899, Board of Education Act 1899. which abolished the office of vice-president of the council, united the Department of Science and Art with the Education Department in one central office under the title of the Board of Education, with a president and parliamentary secretary; and provided for the transfer to this board of the powers of the Charity Commissioners in relation to educational endowments; also for the association with the board of a consultative committee, consisting as to not less than two-thirds of persons qualified to represent the views of university and other bodies interested in education, for the purpose (1) of framing a register of qualified teachers, and (2) of advising the Board of Education upon any matters referred to the committee by the board. The administrative reorganization of the Education Office was completed shortly after the passing of the act of 1902, when a tripartite division was adopted to correspond with the three branches of education with which the Board of Education is concerned, viz. elementary, secondary and technological.
No law of recent years has excited an acuter or more prolonged controversy than the Education Act of 1902, and amid the dust of religious and political strife it is not easy for contemporaries to view it objectively and in its true Act of 1902, general principles. proportions. Nevertheless, considered historically, the act becomes intelligible as the product of the forces, partly religious and partly educational, which have been already described. The immediate impulse for this measure must be sought in the agitation that during the preceding decade had been gathering force among the adherents of the Established and Roman Catholic churches for equality of financial treatment as between voluntary and board schools. It must be placed to the credit of the constructive statesmanship of the Conservative party that it availed itself of an ecclesiastical agitation to take an important step forward in the organization of national education. The difficulty inherent in such a measure was the admitted difficulty of securing public control, as a necessary concomitant of public maintenance, without jeopardizing or destroying the special religious character of the voluntary schools. The act of 1902 sought to solve this problem, so difficult of solution under democratic conditions, upon the principle of a division of financial responsibility justifying a corresponding division of control between the voluntary managers and the local authority. The constitution of the local authority to be charged not only with the delicate duty of participating in the dual control of the voluntary public elementary schools, but also with the responsible task of co-ordinating public higher with public elementary education, presented features of controversy only less formidable than the purely religious question itself. Boldly reversing the settlement of 1870, the act of 1902 abolished the parochial school boards, and with them the system of ad hoc election, and made the county councils, already seised of technical and secondary education under the Technical Instruction Acts, the local authorities for all forms of education, thus reverting to the solution propounded by Conservative statesmanship in the middle period of the 19th century and endorsed by an important memorandum contributed by Lord Sandford (formerly permanent secretary of the Education Department) to the report of the Cross Commission. The unquestionable niggardliness and inefficiency of many small country school boards, which had been foretold by the prescience of the Newcastle Commissioners, constituted the chief educational argument for the selection of the wider area so far as the interests of elementary education alone were concerned. On the other hand, experience has shown that in the rural districts against the undoubted gain in general efficiency there must be set a certain loss on account of the decay of local and personal interest consequent upon the centralization of authority in the hands of the county councils. Account, too, must be taken of the comparative heaviness with which a uniform county rate is apt to press upon sparsely populated agricultural parishes, especially in counties which include considerable industrial districts. Notwithstanding these minor drawbacks, it may be said that upon the whole the best opinion has endorsed the policy of 1902 with respect to the area of administration. At any rate it has been necessary to recognize the impracticability of disestablishing the strongly organized provincial authorities which the act brought into being, and proposals for amendment in this particular have been confined to schemes, favoured in principle by all parties, for securing some measure of decentralization and delegation of powers calculated to restore and stimulate local interest without derogating from the financial and administrative responsibility of the county council.
The principal provisions of the act of 1902 may be summarized as follows:—
Part I. Local Education Authority. The council of every county and of every county borough is the local education authority for the purposes of the act, i.e. for both higher and elementary education, but for the purpose of elementary Act of 1902, summary of provisions. education autonomous powers are conferred upon boroughs with a population of over 10,000, and urban districts with a population of over 20,000 (§ 1).
Part II. Higher Education. “The L.E.A. (local education authority) shall consider the educational needs of their area and take such steps as seem to them desirable, after consultation with the Board of Education, to supply or aid the supply of education other than elementary, and to promote the general co-ordination of all forms of education.” For this purpose the application of the money received by the local authority under the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act 1890, heretofore optional, is made compulsory, and power is given to levy a rate which in the case of a county is not to exceed two pence in the pound, or such higher rate as the county council with the consent of the Local Government Board may fix (§ 2). Concurrent powers are given to the councils of non-county boroughs and urban districts, with the limit of a penny rate (§ 3). A council must not require any particular form of religious instruction or observance, but the usual conscience clause in schools, colleges, or hostels provided by the council is modified by a provision for facilities for any particular religious instruction to be given at the request of parents of scholars at such times and under such conditions as the council think desirable, otherwise than at the cost of the council (§ 4).
Part III. Elementary Education. (1) Powers and duties. School boards and school attendance committees are abolished and their powers and duties are transferred to the L.E.A., who are also to be responsible for and have the control of all secular instruction in public elementary schools not provided by them (§ 5).
(2) Management of schools. (a) For public elementary schools provided by the L.E.A. (now officially styled “council schools”): (1) in counties, there is to be a body of six managers, viz. four appointed by the county council and two by the borough or urban district council, or parish council or parish meeting as the case may be, called in the act the minor local authority; (2) in non-county areas, the L.E.A. (being the borough or urban district council) may, if they think fit, appoint a body of managers consisting of such number as they may determine (§ 6 [1]).