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THURSDAY, JANUARY 6, 1921. 



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The Cost of Education. 



TliEKH has just been issued the Seventh 

 Report of the Select Committee on National 

 Kxpenditure, a document, including appendices, 

 of twenty-three folio pages, sixteen of which 

 are devoted to the expenditure on public 

 education, a subject which receives caustic criticism. 

 It would appear that the net cost of educa- 

 tion for the year 1920-21 for all forms of 

 education from the public elementary school to 

 the university throughout the I'nited Kingdom is 

 « stimated at the vast sum of g7,20<),54H/., of which 

 <<),o8i,83i/. is derived from taxes and 37,124,717^. 

 from rates. This figure is in striking contrast to 

 that of less than ninety years ago, when the local 

 authorities contributed nothing from the rates and 

 the only grant from the f-ixchequer was one made 

 for the first time in 1H34 of 20,000/. in aid of 

 school buildings and not of their maintenance. 

 This was the measure of our indifference to the 

 ( ause of public education, from which the nation 

 lias suffered irremediable loss; it enabled more 

 progressive nations with a finer insight into things 

 of real value to compete with us in all departments 

 of civilised life and its \aried activities, to our 

 great disadvantage. 



Undoubtedly in these .strenuous times all pos- 

 sible economies in national and local expenditure 

 ought sedulously to be promoted, but it would be 

 a foolish, not to say a disastrous, policy to limit 

 unduly the expenditure in the means and encour- 

 .jigcmcnt «>f public education, especially for the 

 NO. 2671. V'li . 106] 



mass of the" people. It is demonstrable that a 

 large percentage of this mass is susceptible to the 

 greatest advantages which can be offered to it of 

 facilities for the highest available education that 

 the country can give. The Education Act of 1918 

 and the zeal which prompted and sustained its 

 promoters throughout the lengthy debates in 

 Parliament is the subject of deprecation in the 

 Report, chiefly on the ground of the large expense 

 in which the nation would be involved in carrvtng 

 out its provisions at the present difficult time. 

 Surely it is forgotten that expenditure upon educa- 

 tion, wisely directed, is, with this qualification, a 

 truly productive effort which will repay the nation 

 a hundredfold within a generation. 



The strictures in which the Committee indulges 

 indicate a lack of genuine sympathy with the vital 

 claims of the people to the benefit of a longer 

 continued means of education for their children. 

 Their claims go much beyond the demand for the 

 familiar "three R's"; they require that the 

 best fruits of literature and science shall 

 be brought within their reach. The Com- 

 mittee views with something like dismay "an 

 enthusiasm for education " on" the part of the 

 Board of Education, to which Mr. Fisher replies 

 that "a Board of Education which was not en- 

 thusiastic for the promotion of education would 

 not deserve to exist." It makes suggestions having 

 for their object the serious curtailment of expendi- 

 ture under the Education Act of 1918; such, for 

 example, as would involve the withholding of the 

 proposed continuation schools, one of the most 

 valuable features of the Act; the prolongation of 

 the vicious half-time system which mainly prevails 

 in the textile districts of East Lancashire and West 

 ^'orkshire; the stoppage of new developments 

 in the building of schools, both elementary and 

 .secondary, in certain towns and rural areas — this 

 last policy has already tx-en largely adopted by 

 the Board of Education during the last five vears, 

 having regard to the high prices of materials and 

 of labour, yet, it must be admitted, t«) the detri- 

 ment of educational progress — the limitation of 

 means of medical treatment so vital to the welfare 

 of the elementary-schi«)l chiltl ; and finally, among 

 other important developments made possible by 

 the Act, the curtailment of the means of higher 

 education so essential to the progress and well- 

 being of the nation objects which arc set forth 

 so ably in the Report of the Adult Education 

 Committee and by the Workers' Educational 

 .Asstx'iation. 



