NA TURE 



97 



THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, i! 



THE MANCHESTER CONFERENCE. 



THE Manchester Conference on the working of the 

 Technical Instruction Act was as important a 

 representative gathering as has taken place for some 

 years to consider an educational question. The Confer- 

 ence was called by the Technical Association, and the 

 Executive Committee and the branch Associations 

 throughout the country were strongly represented. In- 

 vitations were also addressed to the chief local authori- 

 ties and School Boards in large centres, and the principal 

 technical schools and institutions. It says much for the 

 change which has come over public opinion in the last 

 two years on educational matters, that a circular, un- 

 adorned by promises of party speeches by prominent 

 M.P.'s, but merely inviting discussion on the details of 

 the operation of an Education Act, should have sufficed 

 to cram the Mayor's parlour with a body of nearly 300 

 delegates, representing more than sixty local authorities 

 and institutions. 



"Conferences," Mr. Acland said at the outset, "are 

 usually disappointing," and it would be absurd to expect 

 that so large and miscellaneous a gathering would dis- 

 pose satisfactorily, within little more than a couple of 

 hours, of the four difficult questions raised on the agenda 

 sheet. But such progress as was possible was made, and 

 the remorseless bell sounded with impartiality when a 

 speaker's limit of five minutes had been reached. In 

 this way a good many expressions of opinion from many 

 different points of view were compressed into the after- 

 noon, and iew could have gone away without any new 

 ideas suggested by the Conference. That is, if they had 

 previously taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with 

 the provisions of the Act, for no time was wasted in the 

 room in explaining its general scope, though literature in 

 abundance on the subject could be had from the book- 

 stall at the door. 



The subjects discussed were : the relation of the Act 

 to elementary schools ; the mode of its adoption and the 

 preliminary proceedings connected therewith ; the mode 

 in which, and the conditions under which, grants may best 

 be made by local authorities to institutions giving tech- 

 nical instruction, and the principle on which such grants 

 should be apportioned among institutions of different 

 grades ; and the mode of re-organization by which the 

 Science and Art Department may meet the new duties 

 imposed upon it by the Act. The four speakers who 

 introduced these subjects happily represented the four 

 chief " interests " involved — education, politics, manu- 

 factures, and science. 



Without following in detail the order of the discussion, 

 ■we may briefly sum up the impression which it left. 



The chief interest centred in the question of the rela- 

 tion of the Act to public elementary schools. It is no secret 

 that a certain amount of misunderstanding and difficulty 

 has arisen over the interpretation of the sections of the 

 Act which bear on this knotty point. The Act forbids the 

 application of rates raised under it to the instruction of 

 scholars working in the " obligatory or standard subjects" 

 Vol. xh.— No. 1049. 



of the Code. The meaning so far is clear. No scholar 

 of an elementary school at the time working in any of the- 

 standards can take advantage of the Act. But how about 

 ex-seventh standard scholars, or indeed of any children 

 in elementary schools, above the exemption standard, to 

 whom the managers may wish to give technical instruc- 

 tion ? It is well known that, in many Board and some 

 voluntary schools, a large number of children are retained 

 who have passed all the standards, but are receiving 

 science and art instruction, and earning grants from 

 South Kensington. What are the powers of Boards and 

 managers with respect to these children ? One thing 

 is certain — whatever Boards could do before the Act, that 

 at least they can do still. There is no restrictive clause 

 in the Act, which purposely enacts that " nothing in this 

 Act shall be so construed as to interfere with any existing 

 powers of School Boards with respect to the provision of 

 technical and manual instruction." But there has always 

 been some little doubt as to the exact status of School 

 Boards with respect to higher elementary schools, and 

 this the Act does nothing to remove. Sir Henry Roscoe's 

 Bill, if carried, would have placed the whole position of 

 higher elementary instruction on a sound and satisfactory 

 basis. It is a great flaw in the present Act that it leaves 

 matters where they were. It is, however, an ill wind that 

 blows nobody any good, and it may be that certain 

 advantages will, after all, result from this anomalous 

 state of things. Opinions of experts not being unanimous 

 about the meaning of the Act, it is clearly a time for 

 experiments to be made. Liverpool is already moving 

 in the matter, after obtaining Sir Horace Davey's opinion 

 that it is within the power of the School Board to provide 

 technical and manual instruction out of the rates under 

 their general powers, and other School Boards need have 

 little fear in taking a comprehensive view of the Act 

 and applying to the City Councils for their share of the 

 proceeds of the special rate. 



The Conference also discussed the question whether a 

 local authority is bound to distribute any grant which it 

 may make among the different qualified schools which 

 apply for aid, or whether it may take the initiative and 

 adopt the course (in many cases the wisest) of con- 

 centrating its efforts on making one central school 

 efficient. This question, on which some doubt was 

 previously felt owing to the obscurity of the wording of 

 the Act, was satisfactorily cleared up at Manchester. 

 The town clerk of Blackburn threw down the challenge, 

 by declaring that he intended to advise his Council that 

 they had the power to build a technical school and give 

 it all, or the greater part, of the proceeds of the rate. To 

 this General Donnelly replied that there was nothing in 

 this to which he could take exception, so that local 

 authorities have — so far as the Science and Art Depart- 

 ment is concerned — greater liberty of action than some 

 had supposed ; and who can object except the Science 

 and Art Department ? 



But, perhaps, a question of more real importance even 

 than this, is the nature of the qualification entitling a 

 technical school to rate-aid. Here, again, the wording of 

 the Act is not very clear, and it must be confessed that 

 the discussion at the Conference still left it in doubt. In 

 Section I., Sub-section {a), we read : "A Local Authority 

 may, on the request of a School Board for its district or 



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