728 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
Boroughs :— 
1. ‘The centralisation has taken away any local interest, which acted as a 
stimulus, and has checked educational progress by vetoing schemes of instruction 
adapted to the locality.’ 
2. ‘Most decidedly, diminished. The County Councils are composed largely 
of rural members, who try to uplift the community by lowering the education 
rate.’ 
‘Counties having control tends to lack of local interest; a county like that 
in which we are placed is too big a unit; all local interest is gradually being 
killed in higher education, although our local people are keen educationists.’ 
‘Yes. It came into the hands of a body unaccustomed to any problem 
of education except the rate. ... The initiation of movements was thus left 
to the Board of Education. Thus the Board’s power has grown through the 
weakening of Local, Authorities.’ 
“County areas too large; the ideal system would be for each corporate 
town, with the villages that gravitate to it, to be the educational area.’ 
6. ‘I am certain that local interest would be increased considerably if all 
forms of education were in the hands of the Borough Council. I am firmly 
convinced that efficient co-ordination of elementary and higher education cannot 
be obtained unless one Authority is made responsible for the whole.’ 
As a natural sequence to this interrogation I made the following inquiry, 
namely :— 
Question II. 
‘ Would you prefer the Educational Authority to be one elected ad hoc, as in 
the days of the School Boards, rather than the system as at present established ? ’ 
As might be expected, those Directors who considered that the present system 
has caused a decay in local interest are, with some few exceptions, in favour of 
a return to an Authority elected ad hoc. Replies in the affirmative form a large 
proportion of the whole, no less than seventy-two per cent. of the boroughs and 
urban districts being in favour of a return to the old system. In considering 
the answers to both these questions it should be remembered that previous to the 
Act of 1902 counties, as such, had no experience as regards primary education. 
Remarks. 
oe — 
‘We should get rid, by an ad hoc Body, of the present disadvantage of 
having anybody controlling finance without knowledge of requirements.’ 
‘An ad hoc L.E.A. would enable educational reform to be carried out 
more apeer but it is more than doubtful whether such a body would not suffer 
ae repeated changes in policy.’ 
‘Yes; education work requires a different kind of training and aaidity 
Ti County Council work.’ 
4. ‘Not in the Counties, but I think it would be an advantage in the 
Boroughs.’ 
“No; I regard the association of education with other departments of civic 
activity as a very valuable reform, and advantageous to education.’ 
6. ‘No; the present system preserves sanity and a sense of proportion.’ 
“Certainly not; ad hoc election would put control in the hands of 
(i.) persons elected with a view to keeping down the education rate; 
(ii.) faddists.’ 
8. ‘Election ad hoc would too often be fought solely on expenditure.’ 
9. ‘Prefer the present, better opportunity to co-opt those who will not stand 
the racket of an election.’ 
County Boroughs :— 
1. ‘Yes, as you obtain members deeply interested in educational work and 
not regarding it as a burden.’ 
2. ‘Yes, because educational questions would not thus be confused with 
and sometimes subordinated to other local questions—e.g.. whether a Technical 
Institute or a Town Hall should be built first.’ 
