35 o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



schools that desired to be inspected and gave to the county councils 

 the power to pay for such inspection, thus bringing the councils into 

 closer connection with the secondary system. The act also provided 

 for the creation of a consultative committee (consisting as to two 

 thirds of persons representing the views of universities and other 

 bodies interested in education) for the purpose of framing a register 

 of teachers throughout the country of all grades and for the general 

 purpose of advising the Board of Education on technical educational 

 matters. This committee is proving a most effective body, and it will 

 soon be difficult for any school of repute to reject official inspection 

 and for any schoolmaster of standing to withhold his name from the 

 official register. The act also gave the Board of Education the capacity 

 to take over and exercise any powers of the charity commissioners or 

 of the board of agriculture relating to education. The vast powers 

 exercised by the charity commissioners over the secondary endowed 

 schools of the country under the endowed schools act of 1869 and 

 the amending acts, were vested last August, by virtue of this provision, 

 in the Board of Education. The result of this step was to make the 

 Board of Education the supreme authority over both primary and 

 secondary education and to bring it into touch with the county coun- 

 cils in relation to all secondary matters. The next obvious step was 

 to replace the school boards by the county councils (and county 

 borough councils) and thus make the local administrative authority 

 an intermediary in the cases of all grades of education between the 

 schools and the Board of Education. This is the great accomplishment, 

 from the educational point of view, of the act of 1902. The school 

 boards in their vain efforts to supply something of the nature of a 

 secondary education were rapidly making confusion worse confounded. 

 By the simple expedient of placing the local secondary authority — the 

 county council — in the place of the school board, the principle of order 

 and development was at once introduced into the national educational 

 system. The supporters of the school boards — men who realized the 

 admirable work that had been done by these boards, but who were unable 

 to grasp the fact that that work could be more efficiently continued by 

 bodies that had the interests of secondary as well as primary education 

 at heart as part of a civic system — opposed the bill with fierce energy, 

 and they were aided by all those who believed that the new bill was 

 unduly helping the elementary denominational or voluntary schools. 

 The government with respect to those schools was in a difficult position. 

 The owners and managers of the schools claimed as of right assistance 

 out of local rates on the ground that they were doing work which if 

 they did not exist would have to be done by new schools built by a 

 school board at great cost. They, however, refused to alter the de- 

 nominational character of these schools. They declared that the con- 



