50 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.—1918. 
Tenure of Free-Placers and Financial Cowsiderations. 
These two subjects are so frequently reported upon in the same 
connection that it is convenient to consider them together here. The 
chief complaints are:— 
(1) Free-placers are under no obligation to give notice, they can 
‘just stay away’ at will; a fee-paying parent can be sued for a term’s 
fees if a pupil is withdrawn without notice, but this is not possible in 
the case of a free-placer, unless a definite undertaking has been given by 
the parent. 
(2) Free-placers are very frequently withdrawn from schools after 
about two years—i.e. before they have been really able to benefit from 
a secondary education; this is sometimes caused by the parents being 
unable to keep their children at school longer without a maintenance 
grant ; sometimes because the child is only ‘sent to a secondary school 
in order to obtain testimonials’; and sometimes because the child does 
not wish ‘to be bothered’ by having to prepare for examinations. 
(3) Some schools report that they only accept free-placers whose 
parents sign an undertaking to keep them at school until the end of 
the school year in which they become 16; and cases are on record 
where damages have been recovered when such an undertaking has 
been broken. 
(4) The very poor can seldom, if ever, allow their children to accept 
free places without some form of maintenance grant. 
(5) In many schools where there is a games subscription some of 
the free-placers can only pay this if there is a maintenance grant; failing 
this, they are cut off from much of the corporate life of the school. 
(6) It is impossible for children to travel long distances to school 
and to stand the mental and physical strain of life in the secondary 
school unless they have a good meal in the middle of the day; many 
of the free-placers cannot afford this without a maintenance grant, and 
they consequently fail to derive much benefit from their post-elementary 
education. 
(7) Many free places are given to children whose parents can well 
afford to pay the fees: it is reported by many schools that most of their 
fee-paying pupils are those who have tried for but failed to obtain a 
free place; others report that quite well-to-do people send their children 
to elementary schools and then pay for extra coaching to enable them 
to gain free places; while one boarding school was asked to receive as 
a boarder a child who was in the school as a free-placer. 
In connection with this point, one school suggests that it is unfair 
to prevent those parents who have made an effort to send their children 
to secondary schools from receiving the benefit of a free place, the more 
so since such children would as a rule afford better material to build 
upon. 
(8) The rule that no one can be deprived of a free place for an 
offence which would not cause the expulsion of a fee-payer has the effect 
of keeping in school pupils who, because of unsatisfactory character or 
lack of industry or ability, ought not to be educated directly or indirectly 
at public expense. 
