ON THE ‘ FREE-PLACE’” SYSTEM. 43 
The ‘ Free-Place’ System.—Report of the Committee, consisting 
of Mr. C. A. Buckmaster (Chairman), Mr. Dovucuas 
BERRIDGE (Secretary), Mr. C. H. BorHamuery, Dr. LiInian 
J. CLARKE, Professor BARBARA Foxtey, Dr. W. GARNETT, 
Sir R. A. Grecory, Professor H. Bompas Smiru, Dr. H. 
Lioyp Snapz, and Miss C. M. WATERS, appointed to inquire 
into and report upon the Effects of the ‘ Free-Place’ System 
upon Secondary Education. 
I. INTRODUCTION. 
THE Free-place system is a name given to an arrangement by which, 
in return for certain State grants administered by the Board of Educa- 
tion, secondary schools, working in connection with the Board, offer 
a certain number of places in the school, free of all tuition fees, to 
pupils who have had at least two years’ previous education in public 
elementary schools. 
At the present time a school complying with the Board’s regulations 
as to the provision of free places receives approximately 2/. 10s. more 
for each scholar over 11 years of age than a non-complying school. 
This latter class of school represents a surviving ‘ vested interest,’ 
and no additions are made to grants on behalf of those already in it. 
The Board retain power to modify, waive, and interpret their 
regulations dealing with these schools and free places and do so with 
a fair amount of freedom. 
Thus certain secondary schools, in receipt of grants from the 
Board, are not required to provide the full 25 per cent. of free places, 
and some schools which before the introduction of the system were in 
receipt of grants are entirely exempted from this condition, receiving 
less grant in consequence. 
The ostensible object of this grant was to offer facilities for secon- 
dary education to boys and girls whose parents could not afford to pay 
secondary school fees. It was to assist the poor to secure higher 
education for their children. But the determination of the question 
as to who should and who should not be thus helped on the ground of 
poverty was obviously beset with the most serious difficulties, and the 
Gordian knot was cut by assuming that all parents who sent their 
children to the public elementary schools of the country might legiti- 
mately be considered to be in need of assistance in meeting the expense 
of secondary education for their children. A precedent for this 
conclusion already existed; for many years previously the Science and 
Art Department, with the sanction of the Treasury, had extended to 
all children attending elementary schools the classification of ‘ indus- 
trial,’ and had interpreted ‘ industrial’ as equivalent to an income not 
exceeding 150]. a year. The two tests are not, however, identical. 
