ON THE ‘ FREE-PLACE’” SYSTEM. 51 
The following are the chief alterations suggested by the teachers: 
(1) Free places should at first be awarded for one year only, with 
power of renewal. 
(2) Power should be given to the Governors to withdraw free 
places from those whose reports are frequently bad. 
(3) Free places should only be given to those in need of financial 
assistance. 
(4) The money now wasted upon pupils who are unlikely to benefit 
from a secondary education should be devoted to providing maintenance 
grants to the more deserving. 
(5) When school dinners are provided, the free place should be 
combined with a maintenance grant, paid direct to the school, to cover 
the cost of this. 
(6) Maintenance grants should, when necessary, be made to keep 
former holders of free places at one of the Universities. 
(7) A grant should in all cases be made to cover all games subscrip- 
tions and railway tickets to school matches, &c. 
III. Summary or INFORMATION DERIVED FROM THE OFFICIALS OF 
County anp Boroucu AuTHoRITIES FoR HiagHER EDUCATION. 
Requests for an expression of opinion on the free-place system were 
sent out to the 50 Counties and 75 County Boroughs in England that 
are responsible for the local control of higher education. 
Replies were received from 36 Counties and 45 County Boroughs— 
i.e. from 65 per cent. of the whole number. Quite a number did more 
than answer the five main questions, and supplied full descriptions of 
their schemes and opinions as to their working. These fuller answers 
were most helpful in arriving at a fair judgment of the trend of adminis- 
trative thought. 
- 1. The chief fact that emerges clearly from the returns is that 
County Scholarship Schemes and Free Places tend to merge into one 
system. It will perhaps be well to put clearly here what is historically 
the difference between the two classes, for in many areas the difference 
is purely historic and no longer exists. Before the rule was established 
that grant-earning schools must normally offer each year free places 
to the number of 25 per cent. of the total entrants to the school of the 
previous year, many local education authorities gave scholarships to 
secondary schools to boys and girls at about the age of 12. These 
scholarships sometimes carried more than free education, providing 
travelling expenses, books, and maintenance allowances of varyiny’ 
amounts. They were usually for a period of three or four years, rarely 
longer, and only a few holders, with the help of intermediate scholar- 
ships, stayed the full life of a secondary school up to 18 years of age. 
The Board’s free-place scheme cut across these arrangements. The dis- 
tribution of free places depended on the situation and numbers of the 
secondary school, not on the juvenile population of the district, and 
the period of tenure was ‘up to the school-leaving age.’ Authorities 
therefore had two paths to choose from; they could either turn their 
county scholars into ‘ free-placers’ by extending the period of tenure 
up to the age of 18, adding or subtracting where necessary to make 
