P RIVATE.-Draft Proof for Discussion. Fabian Tract N o. g:. T HE EDUCATIONAL MuDDLE AND THE WAY OuT. T he Muddle. "AY-excellent system of public education is one of the best forms of national investment. In commercial and industrial efficiency, in a higher level of civic duty, and above all, in the wider diffusion of moral culture and religious feeling, the nation is amply repaid for what it spends." These complacent platitudes were enunciated by the Education Department in its Report for 1897. And at inten·als a cynical Minister of Education horrifies the House of Commons with disclosures of facts which are generally safely buried in Blue Books which no one reads. At one moment we glibly quote the millions we spend on education, the next we abuse the School Board Rate. It would almost seem as if we tolerated rather than fostered education. Certainly if some evil genius had inspired us to do our worst to hamper and restrict instruction it could not have done better than create the existing system of administration. A true ideal of education would take into account the needs of the nation as a whole, and while duly estimating the requirements of each separate section would preserve a proper balance between competing claims on public funds, not setting off over-development in one direction ::~gainst stan·ation in another. It would not concei ,.e of elementary, secondary, and technological education as so manywater-tight compartments to be kept rigidly isolated from each other, but as standing in an organic relation to one another, so that a student could begin at the bottom of the ladder and travel to the top without at any time coming to a stage where there ,,·as an abrupt seYerance from the one preceding. At the centre of administration it would assemble the best of educational experience and kno\dedge, to prO\·ide an adequate guidance for the subordinate part:; of the machinery, while to ensure a due regard for local needs it "·ould create local authorities reflecting the same comprehensiveness and unity. In this way it would combine efficiency with economy, and any other kind of economy is false and wasteful. The average man, though dimly aware that he does not getvalue for his money, is apt to suspect exaggeration in the criticisms ofeducationalists. He is inclined especially in after-dinnher speeches, to thank God with patriotic fen·or that we are not a logical nation in our institutions, but that we muddle along in a busine:;slike fashion soh·ing difficulties as they arise. ConsoFng as such reflections may be to the insular mind they yet form a poor off-set to the dailyexperience of inefficiency and incompetency which contact with other nation~ brings to our knowledge. It would indeed be hard to parody the chaos of authorities, the welter of systems, under which our national education is administered. 2 The Central Authont1es. There are no fewer than six government departments inter- meddling with different branches of education. The Education Department deals with primary education, but touches secondary education in its relations to the training colleges, higher grade elementary schools, and evening continuation schools. The Charity Commissioners deal with endowed schools under the Charitable Trusts Acts, which give them a general ::tdministrative jurisdiction over accounts, etc., and the Endowed Schools Acts which enable them to frame schemes for the governance of the schools. Under the former Acts they :1ct as a judicial body, a kind of extension of the Court of Chancery, and are independent of all other Departments ; under the latter, their functions are largely legislative, and they must submit their schemes to the Education Department. Eton and Winchester are wholly exempt from their control. Charterhouse, Harrow, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Westminster, and all schools whose endowments date from within fifty years before 1869, come under the Charitable Trusts Acts only. So, too, do endowed schools supported by voluntary contributions, and endowed elementary schools with an income from endowments below £Ioo a year, or which received a grant from the Education Department in 1869. "Out of this two-fold origin and constitution has come the usual crop of anomalies and difficulties" (Report of the Royal Commission on Secondary Education, page 88). The Science and Art Department extends not only over the United Kingdom, but also to British colonies and dependencies. Originally founded for the instruction of adults in the industrial arts, it is now the chief authority for secondary and technical education, while it also aids drawing in elementary schools. Besides science and art in the stricter sense, its curricula, in various places, include such subjects as banking, book-keeping, voc::tl and instrumental music, commerce, political economy, veterinary science, and seamanship. But its functions are limited by the regulation that the parents of its students must not have an income above £500 a year. The Board of agriculture giyes grants to colleges for higher instruction in agriculture ; the Local Government Board is responsible for poor law schools, and the Home Office for industrial schools and reforma tories. The Local Authorities. Elementary Education in England and \Vales is managed locallyby 2,5 I I school boards, and, in districts where there are no boards, 790 school attendance committees. The total population under School Boards is 19,979,924, and under attendance committees, 9,o2z,6o1. Besides school boards, boards of managers for schools of the National Society and the Church of England, for \Vesleyan, Roman Catholic, British, and Jewish schools also share in the disorganization. At least two of these different bodies do, and all of them may, co-exist in the same district. Poor law schools are under the boards of guardians. Truant and industrial schools under the school boards, and industrial and reformatory schools under the municipal authorities, and so, too, are day industrial schools. Under the Technical Instruction Acts, 1889 and J39r, countycouncils, and the councils of county boroughs, boroughs, and urban 3 sanitary districts are authorities for technical and secondary education, and may levy a rate of rd. in the £ for these purposes. ·while the boroughs spend most of their local taxation grants on "technical" education, many of the county councils spend a large proportion on purely "secondary" education, and twenty of the counties spend no money at ali on secondary education. Many pay their money over to the school boards, to be spent on purely secondary subjects, on science teaching, or on scholarships ; some do so unconditionally. Other secondary education authorities are : school boards with higher grade schools, which, at least in the upper classes, are not elementary, and do not share in the grants of the Education Department, and evening continuation schools which equally are not elementary, but as a rule commercial ; the managers of voluntaryelementary schools ; the governing bodies of endowed schools ; local committees under the Science and Art Department ; and the managing committees of proprietary schools and institutes of a semi-public character, such as polytechnics. "Each of these unconnected local agencies must! or may, have relations with one, two, or perhaps three central authorities, which are similarly independent of each other. It is not surprising that, under such conditions, ability, energy, and a cordial desire for co-operation. have not always a\·ailed to prevent waste of power, or one-sided developments of educational forces" (Report of the Royal Commission on Secondary Education, page 65). The universities and university colleges are managed by their own go\·erning bodies, and, as a rule, are not related to one another in any way, or to any government department, except in so far as the Education Department associates day training colleges with such colleges, or the Board of Agriculture makes grants for teaching of agriculture. It need only be added that instruction in the supreme] y important art of teaching is left to private denominational institutions. The Result. In elementary education, thanks to the Acts of 1870 and 1891, there is less confusion than elsewhere, but there are other evils as great. An open field is afforded for the conflict of ecclesiastical hatreds, and the possibilities of education are measured not by the highest ideals or even the needs of the localities, but by the maximum which can be extracted from "voluntary" subscribers. Parsimonyand prejudice combined work such ha\·oc that, as Sir J ohn Gorst* said, " Such glimpses as we get of rural education are extremelydiscouraging." In the: towns the evil is as a rule not so great, but the "drum ecclesiastic" is beat vigorously at every election and .a subdued tapping is kept up between whiles. Dear, too, to certain grades of the lower middle class is the higher social status of the voluntary school. And yet we assume that the instruction of our children is controlled by educational theories. The sphere of secondary and technical education shows confusion in full bloom. After summarizing our educational history, the Report of the Royal Commission on SecondarY: Education poi~ts t~e fJllowing moral (pages 17-18) :-''But there 1s one feature 111 th1s growing concern of the State with education which must not be * Speech onintroducing Education Bill, r8g6. 4 here overlooked. The growth has not been either continuous or coherent ; z".e., it does not represent a series of logical or even connected sequences. Each one of these agencies whose origin has been described was called into being, not merely independently of the others, but with little or no regard to their existence. Each has remained in its working isolated and unconnected with the rest. The problems which secondary education presents have been approached from different sides, at different times, and with different views and aims. The Charity Commissioners have had little to do with the Education Department, and still less with the Science and Art Department. Even the borough councils have, to a large extent, acted independently of the school boards, and have in some instances made their technical instruction grants with too little regard to the parallel grants which were being made by the Science and Art Department. Endowments which, because applied to elementary eduaction, were exempted from the operation of the Endowed Schools Acts, have been left still exempt ; though the public pro. vision of elementary education in 1870 and the grant of universal free elementary education in r89r, have wholly altered their position. The university colleges, though their growth is one of the most striking and hopeful features of the last thirty years, remain without any regular organic reb.tion either to elementary or to secondaryeducation, either to school boards or to county councils. This isolation and this independence, if they may seem to witness to the rich variety of our educational life, and to the actiYe spirit which pen·ades it, will neyertheless prepare the observer to expectthe usual results of dispersed and unconnected forces, needless competion between the different agencies, and a frequent OYerlapping of effort, with much consequent waste of money, of time, and of labor." 0\·erlapping occasionally takes the form of an oYerlapping of schools of the same type and grade in the same district, and more often of the premature attraction to a higher institution of pupilswho should be in a lower school-a charge brought against the colleges at Liverpool, Leeds and Birmingham. Most frequently the higher grade elementary schools-whose work is admirable-are chargedwith retaining pupils who are ripe for schools of a higher type. But in this instance it must be remembered that often they fill a gap caused by the want of those other schools, and supply a demand for secondary education from those social strata which cannot afford to pay high fees. Not only do public institutions providing education in science and art or of a purely "secondary " nature enter into competion with private schools, but, if we take London as an example, we find two great bodies, the school board and the countycouncil, competing against each other ; for the school board in its day science schools, its art classes, and its evening continuation schools provides instruction of a similar nature to that supplied bypolytechnics and other institutes subsidised by the Technical Education Board. There is no co-operation between these bodies, and a final touch to the confusion has been added bythe decision of the auditor (which is being appealed against) that school board has no legal authority for its expenditure on instruction in science and art. The muddle is aggra\·ated by the varyingaction of the goverment departments. "From the Education Department every encouragement is giYen to the school board ; from the Science and Art Department verymuch the reverse. In Chelsea a higher grade school will be established, no fees charged. In Greenwich a science school cannot be established by the board, but by a committtee, and this committee must charge fees. Parents in Greenwich, entitled to free education for children below fifteen, will have to pay for chemistry ; but parents in Chelsea will not have to pay for history and geography. If one department took charge of all education given in public elementary schools no such anomaly could arise."* This confusion is not confined to London. "We have at Manchester the Grammar school under its Charity Commission scheme, the organized science schools under the school board, the technical schools under the corporation, and the Owen's College, all at certain points rivalling rather than supplementing each other, while the science grants encourage and increase the confusion rather than repress and reduce it'' (Secondary Education Commission Report, page 102). Lastly, the local authorities are hampered by doubts as to whether theyhave powers under the Technical Instruction Acts to found a general secondary school and as to the kind of schools at which scholarships are tenable. The Remedy. I.-AT THE CEKTRE. For confusion, isolation, and want of co-operation, the remedyis unity. The need for concentration of authority has been fully acknowledged, and since the passing of the Education Act, 1899, we shall have a Minister of Education combining into one department the Education Department, the Science and Art Department, and the Charity Commissioners (as regards endowed schools). So far so good ; but the mere congregation of these offices under one roof is no cur~ for disorganization. To take an example, quoting from a correspondent of the Tz"mes (9th October, I 899) :-''The Science and Art Department at present has relations with the followmg verydiverse educational institutions amongst others : (i) higher grade elementary schools ; (ii) some secondary day schools of a ' modern' kind; (iii) evening classes in nrious subjects; (iv) polytechnics and technical institutions ; but it has not to do with classical schools, nor with modern schools sufficiently rich to do without its grants, nor with private schools, nor in general with proprietary schools (if they yield more than five per cent. profit), nor in any considerable degree with girls' schools. If, therefore, the duties of this Department are merely to be transferred to the new Board of Education, but are not to be reorganized or redistributed, it will be a mere matter of chance as to which department will have charge of any particular school; e.g., Bradford Grammar School receives paymentfor its science and art teaching from the Science and Art Department, but the Birmingham Grammar or High School does not receiYe such grants. Hence these two schools, though of the same character and doing the same work, would be under different departments. The schools of the London City Companies (e.g., Grocers', Mercers', Merchant Taylors',) receive as a rule no grantsfrom the Science and Art Department, and, therefore, though their • Lord Reay: Annual Address to the London School Board, October 5th, r8gg. 6 teaching includes science, they would be placed outside the science and art category, and classed as 'secondary proper' in a different category, and under a different department and different inspectors from other schools doing similar work. Girls' schools similarly will be placed in the secondary department only until some curriculum is invented for which grants may be given them under Science and Art regulations, and they apparently cease to be secondary schools under the secondary department and come automatically under the Science and Art Department." The new board must organize education not on the basis of the subjects taught, but according to the demands of different classes of the community, and it must grade its schools on the scheme of instruction of the whole school. Roughly, the school population may be divided into those who will begin to work about the age of fifteen or earlier, those who will stay at school till eighteen or nineteen, and those who will proceed to higher instruction at a university or technological college. Each of these classes requires an education of a different nature from the others, arranged from the beginning with a view to the life purposes of the children. We therefore require a triple division of functions into primary, secondary, and technological corresponding to these classes. Under the primary department might be grouped also higher grade schools and eyeningschools, whose work was based on the training in the elementary schools. The secondary department would deal with those who stayed till eighteen or nineteen years of age, whether the instruction was classical, commercial or scientific. The technological section would include the application of art to industry, the technology of manufacture and agriculture, and might also extend to the universities such supervision as night be deemed necessary. The Board of Education should have, subject to the authority of Parliament, powers of inspection, criticism, and audit of all education of eyery kind and grade, which is maintained or aided out of monies provided by Parliament, or from endowments or trust funds derived from persons deceased ; and the board should therefore take cognizance, not only of such primary and secondary education as it controls, but also of universities and university colleges, non-local schools, and other endowed educational institutions, army and navyschools, training colleges, poor Iaw schools, and industrial and reformatory schools and school-ships. II.-THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES. For the local muddle, as for the central, the remedy is the same- concentration of authority. The supervision of education for a county or a borough involves much the same problems as for the nation. The general principles which have been laid down by the central experts have to be applied to local needs and circumstances: the organic unity of all education must be preserved. If the educational ladder from the elementary school to the university is to be kept open to all, it must be under the control of one body. If primary and secondary schools are to be worked, as they must be, on essentially different educational schemes, it follows that a pupil cannot pass straight from an elementary school to a grammar school and profit fully by the higher instruction he will receive there ; he must receive a preliminary training at some intermediate form of 7 school. At present, the means adopted to facilitate pas~age from the elementary to_ the secondary school is by scholarships ; but this method tends to mduce teachers to concentrate their best efforts on their most promising pupils, to the detriment of the rest of the school. It is obvious that a proper connection between primary and secondary education can only be established by a body which has control over both. Mr. Yoxall, M.P., admirably summed up the advantages of having the same administrative authority for primary and secondary education in a Memorandum to the Secondary Education Commission (Evidence, vol. v., page 33) as follows : " (i) Economy of management, by avoiding- Multiplication of officials ; Duplication of functions; Overlapping of authorities ; Over-supply of schools ; Undue competition between authorities and schools. (ii) Administrative efficiency, by securing- Systematized and continuous oversight ; Accurate knowledge of i-nter-dependent requirements ; Organic connection of curricula in primary and secondary schools ; Definition of scope of various kinds of secondary schools ; Systematic adjustment of schemes of scholarships and exhibitions ; Organic relation between primary, secondary, and higher instruction. (iii) Discouragement of unnecessary social prejudices arising frGm- Separation in administration; Non-educational distinctions between schools; Want of unity in the teaching profession as a whole." And, he added: "There is hardly any price, in the way of administrative readjustments or legislative reconstruction, too high to pay for reforms so desirable in the public interest as these." The same views were put forward by the National Union of Teachers, the Association of School Boards, and by experts like Sir P. Cumin, Sir ]. Fitch, and the Rev. Mr. Sharpe. It is plain, too, that it was only because the Secondary Education Commissioners felt themselves precluded from touching primary education that they refrained from advanciug a similar proposal. We may, therefore, conclude that there is a consensus of opinion in favor of the union of both the primary and secondary grades of education, whether in literary, scientific, commercial, or technological subjects, under one and the same local authority. An "ad hoc" Body. In organizing the administration of any public service there are two conflicting theories. According to one, the best form of local government is that which concentrates in a single elected body, for each locality, all the public business entrusted to that locality; and which provides for the administration of the various public services by separate committees. According to the other, by electing a separate body, ad hoc for each public service, the men who are 8 specially qualified, or specially interested, would be attracted to serve thereon, to the great advantage of administration. In a modified form, the latter theory forms the basis of the present system of administration. Although there is a considerable amount of overlapping, local services are roughly grouped into municipal, poor law, and educational, and the complete separation of these groups, to eliminate overlapping, is the maximum of change proposed by some. It must not be forgotten that our present system of local government has owed much in its growth to the accident of there being no elective bodies in the counties till r 888. When the boards of guardians were created in rX34, town government was unreformed, and county government was in the hands of the justices who had grossly failed at poor law work. A timid Whig ministry, averse to large constructive schemes, could do no other than create an ad hoc body. Similarly, in r87o, Mr. Forster found himself faced by the necessity of taking rural education out of the hands of the squire and parson, and he had to create a body to be the recipient of the new functions. There is nothing specially sacrosanct, therefore, about our existing institutions. And it is significant that, immediately after the creation of county councils, the Technical Education Act of I 889 entrusted them with considerable educational powers. The opposition aroused by the proposal of the Government in 1896 to amalgamate the municipal and educational authorities shows that there would be no little difficulty in achieving such a revolution as the union of all local authorities into one body; but, on examination, it will be seen that the present system involves graYe disadvantages and does not fulfil the expectations of the theorists. The hesitation to carry the ad hoc theory to its logical conclusion shows an inherent doubt in its validity. Mr. Chaplin's proposal to create a special authority for poor law children met with universal condemnation, and during the debates on the London Government Bill, 1899, the suggestion that Boards of Guardians should be abolished and their duties handed over to municipal authorities, met with general acceptance, especially from experts like Canon Barnett. It would be a rash thing to say that the present system attracts to each service the men specially qualified for it. Doubtless, the first London School Board was a marvellous collection of educational experts ; but it is the only case on record. The members of school boards, boards of guardians, and town councils in any large town, are drawn from the same classes of the community, and are possessedof much the same qualifications. The existence of town and county councils, with their varied functions, is evidence that separate bodies for separate sen·ices are superfluous. There is at least as much difference between main drains and lunatic asylums, between street sweeping and technical education, between prevention of infectious disease and a municipal water supply as there is between "purely municipal,'' poor law, and educational functions-problems no less difficult, duties no less important, are involved in the Yaried work of a single municipality as in the three separate services. The Sphere of the Expert. Much is talked of the need for "experts" on local bodie~. yet, though it sounds rash, it may be doubted whether a board of 9 experts would be an unmitigated boon. When a number of men, whether officials or representatives, are confined to one sphere of action the inevitable tendency is towards over-specialization, and when they have to work within limits prescribed by a higher authority there is the danger that they should be overcome by the letter of the law and should neglect the spirit. An excellent example is to be found in the Boards of Guardians, who have made the administration of the Poor Law a hissing and a bye-word throughout the whole land. And yet the duty of caring for the poor, the aged, and the feeble is one which, we might reasonably have expected, would call forth all the best feelings of sympathy. In the School Boards it is somewhat different, but generally only because education is the last thing talked about on very many of these bodies. The squabbles of competing ecclesiastics, the necessity of keeping down the rates, and the labor requirements of the local farmers and tradesmen are too frequently more popular topics than codes and theories of education. Even the London School Board felt itself at liberty, in the sacred cause of education, to evade the prO\·isions of the Housing of the Working Classes Act, which the County Council has to administer. Apart from such instances, we can discover that school boards tend to view the whole subject of education from the standpoint of elementary teaching. This tendency to over-specialization is almost inevitable on the part of officials, but the function of the representative body which employs them is to correct this tendency by taking more comprehensive views of things. If, then, the representativebody is also composed of " experts," this safeguard is destroyed. Another assumption is that "experts" will agree on the best course of action to be taken. As far as experience goes, this is not at all the case. To quote the words of the Secondary Education Commissioners, who had experts in abundance before them :-" The experiences of highly specialized experts, who yet differ in office, function, standpoint and aim, can hardly be expected to yield so peaceable a fruit as an identical policy or plan, for if doctors differ in their diagnoses they are not likely to agree in their remedies" (page85). Experts who cannot agree are not of much use on administrative bodies. It will then be asked, are to neglect experts altogether ? By no means. but they must be kept in their proper places. A business man does not take a lawyer, an architect, an engineer into permanent partnership to help him to conduct his business, but when questionsarise which demand their special knowledge he consults them, or if his business is large enough he engages them as subordinates. Everydepartment of the work of a town council requires expert knowledge, but it is to be found in the paid municipal departments carrying on the work. The Asylums Board of the London County Council does not consist of experts in mental diseases ; it adopts the wiser plan of putting them in charge of its asylums. The Water Co~mittee of the Birmingham City Council is not composed of builders and engineers ; but men of competent skill are set over the con~tru~tion of the great aqueduct. The business of the local authonty IS to take bro<1d views, to decide on large issues, to frame policies based on comprehensive consideration of all the needs of its district, and then to employ and control men of special knowledge to execute its decisions. If further expert knowledge is desirable it can be had of IO the best quality by paying for it, and if it is thought necessary to go a step farther, experts car! be associated with the local authority by some process of co-option or delegation which will still leave the control essentially in the hands of the elected representatives. In discussing the question of experts it is here assumed that men of real experience are meant, not mere doctrinaires-men, say, who know all about the history of education but have ne\·er conducted a class. For such as these latter we can assume that there is no place Yacant, although the person who poses on public platforms as an expert is too often but a doctrinaire, and one, too, of very limited knowledge. The Specialty of Education. The last refuge of those we are criticizing is that education is a function of so peculiar a character that it cannot be entrusted to any other but a body of persons specially interested and qualified. Even if the premise were correct, the conclusion is not justified. \Vhat the Secondary Education Commission say about the schoolmaster is equally true of the person supposed to possess the qualifications of a schoolmaster : "It would be a serious eYil if education were allowed to become the business of the schoolmaster alone ; the more completely it grows into the concern of the whole people, and is made an integral part of their common life and civil policy, the more will it flourish and the better will it become" (page I r I). The further expectation is held out that by creating an ad !zoe authority for education, able and distinguished men would be induced to become candidates for election. Leaving isolated cases out of account, this expectation is not justified by the results, even in places large enough to offer po itions of great dignity and importance. Birmingham, for example, has about 6o,ooo children under control of its Board, and i:, the traditional headquarters of educational reform, yet, in the supreme test of the influence of expert knowledge, the employment of properly trained teachers, it is a lamentable failure, only fifty-one per cent. of the staff being certificated teachers. \Vhat is special about education in this country is that it is thought necessary to give religious instruction in elementary schools as part of a national system. The result is that elementary education is the prey of warring creeds. With a rare prescience, the Commission on Popular Education, presided over by the Duke of I\ewcastle, in I86r, while recommending the election in everyborough with more than 40,000 inhabitants of a school board of six persons, added the condition that not more than two should be ministers of religion. It is impossible to keep religion out of the elections, and the moment the banners of theology are raised all other que tions sink into insignificance. No denomination is less guilty than another in this respect. \Vhat concerns us is not to apportion blame, but to take account of the magnitude of the eyiJ. The greatest obstruction to popular education has been that it has been regarded as ancillary to religion. Questions of curricula, staffing, etc., are neglected, and when Mr. Acland attempted to getthe wor t of the "voluntary" schools put in a sanitary condition he \\"a~ howled at as an enemy of the Christian religion. To extend sectarian bigotry to the control of secondary and university education \\"Ould be a national disa ter ; in respect of the universities we II have already bought our experience. So lon()' as relio·ion retains its power. of exciting the passions to the pitch"' of fren~y, we cannot have It coming into competition at election times with subjects of pure education which rouse little enthusiasm in the ayerage elector. This consideration alone is conclusive aaainst an ad hoc body for educational purposes. "' The Plague of Elections. Ev~~ if theoretical arguments against the system of separateauthonties for separate services were less complete than they are, th~ practical drawbacks attaching to many elections are such as to bnng the representative system into discredit. "The electorate is already over-burdened with elections, and is arowina restive under t~eir. combined annoyance and expense. In rural areas parish~ distnct, and county councils, members of parliament, and, occasionally, school boards ; in urban areas, vestries, boards of guardians, councillors, school boards, and members of Parliament, make up, especially when taken along with their different electoral areas and modes of election, a rather anxious burden for both electors and candidates.... It is certain that the increase in the number of elections tends to beget carelessness in the electors, who begin to· feel that what comes so often requires little thought when it does come. Then the law of parsimony, the need for doing with the least expenditure of energy and resource what has to be done so often, tends to throw all these varied elections into the hands of single organizations, 'which are inevitably the organizations of the great political parties, and so it directly results in turning a question~ which ought to be, in its essence, non-political, into a distinctly political question" (Secondary Education Commission Report, page 121). Many know to their cost that the intrusion of imperialpolitics into local affairs is a sad reality. Even at the present moment there may be found on the walls in many quarters of London the weather-worn remains of posters referring to the last vestry elections, with the legend "Vote for the Unionist Candidates" at their head. Everyone who has had to deal with elections will confess that he has had to face two great difficulties-the difficultyof securing a sufficient number of suitable candidates, and the difficulty of getting the voters to the poll. But these lessen as the sphere of the body to be elected is wider. The elections for boards of guardians are mostly farcical, and in school board elections it is almost impossible to get half of the electorate to come forward even when religious or personal issues are involved. On the other hand, even in apathetic London, seventy-five per cent. of the voters can be got to take part in the election of a body with such Yaried activities as the County Council. Reduce the number of local elections to one and the difficulties of getting good candidates and of arousing the electorate will disappear. One Municipal Body. We therefore conclude in principle in favor of the concentration of existing local authorities into one elected body for ea:h locality to deal with all the public business of that locality. As regards education that would mean the councils of counties and county boroughs. E\·en those who are in favor of an ad hoc body agree that the parish 12 is too small an area for School Board purpose , and that the counties and large borough mu t be taken a the unit . The ame recommendation wa made by the Secondary Education Commission in respect of econdary education, aud as they said, '' it is impossible to dt:ny to the county and county borough councils the character of being already, in a sense, educational authorities'' (page 123). This i indeed another conclusive argument against basing the unity of education on the chool Board. The county and borough council haye been in po ession of the field of secondary and technical education for ten years, they haYe rating powers, they have pent an enormous sum of public money-they cannot be ousted from their po it ion. ir John Gor t said, at Bradford, 1:th ] une, 1 99, ''There was no local body which more nearly approach being an independent local parliament than the town council of a great borough. These town and county councils had men serving uponthem who were as fitted for local admini tration as any body of men in the country." Clothed with the additional functions of poor-law and education they would offer-even more than they do nowpo ition of ufficient dignity and importance to attract men of great ability. Frequently is the town council the training ground for a parliamentary career, but not often does that occur with the school board or the board of guardians. \Vith such bodies we would get finally clear of religious quarrels. A theological di putant may catch the public attention during a chool board contest, but he is not at all likely to be mi taken for an expert on main drains or electric lighting. Knowing that school boards are strictly controlled by the Education Department people do not get up enough enthu iasm to keep out the theologian , but it would be very different with town councils. There are no ·ectarian row at the meeting uf the London Technical Education Board, e\·en when renowiled theologians are present. The only drawback would be that women are eligible for boards of guardian and chool boards but not for town councils. This is an argumentfor reforming the town councils, not for maintaining in exi tence useles or inefficient authorities. There is still one argument to be dealt with. If all local en·ices are to be placed under one local authority, the latter will be o\·erburdened. This cry is raised whene\·er any new municipalization is undertaken; whether it be ga , water, tramways, or whatnot that is to be taken O\'er, the opponent arc a!ways oppre sed by the picture of councillors st:~ggering under a weight of care . Yct we can ee, for instance, Glasgow after having municipalized all it cnicesga , \\'3ter, tramway , electricity, teamboats, art galleric , etc-now calmly going to con ider the municipalization of the drinl· traffic and of the milk upply and the in ·titution of a municipal bank \Vhat i not . een i · that each sen·ice after it i et agoing tends to become automatic, and require only supervi~ion not administration in detail from the rcpn::.entativc authority. The great defect of local admini tration i · that an undue amount of detail work i done bycommittee , work of a imilar nature to that which is done hy the permanent officiab of the imperial civil en·ice. Apart from the incre.t e of e. pt.;tLe c.au ed by the triplication of sirniLtr