216 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



Secretaries for Technical and Secondary Education in 

 Counties and County Boroughs, the Incorporated 

 Association of Head- Masters of Secondary Schools, 

 and other bodies, desired to urge the national question 

 of immediate legislation for secondary education in 

 England. The Report of the late Royal Commission 

 and the recommendations which that Commission had 

 made had been received with remarkable unanimity 

 by the educational public, including all political 

 parties. It was especially with regard to the im- 

 portance of scientific and technical education of the 

 country that action was urged. Little could, however, 

 be hoped for in the way of systematic and advanced 

 technical instruction until the basis of secondary 

 education, such as had long existed in continental 

 countries, had been here established. I then pointed 

 out that the most important recommendations of the 

 Royal Commission were, in the first place, the es- 

 tablishment of local authorities, consisting of not 

 smaller areas than counties and county boroughs, 

 and, in the second place, of a central authority chiefly 

 of an advisory character. 



In reply the Duke said that it was the intention of 

 the Government to deal with the better organisation 

 of our secondary schools ; and there is no doubt that 

 the result of this deputation was to stimulate the Gov- 

 ernment to take steps in the matter which culminated 

 in the Education Act of 1902. 



"Every litttle helps," so I hammered away at 

 the old story when I distributed the prizes at the 

 Royal Technical Institute at Salford in October, 1901, 

 and my speech was, like the utterances of all other 

 educational experts, a plea for a well-considered 

 Secondary Education Bill. The local authorities 

 throughout the country have been erecting large and 



