a i 
ON THE ‘ FREE-PLACE’” SYSTEM. 55 
secondary schools over 12 years of age; otherwise the work of such 
schools suffers. 
3. A good mid-day meal is essential for those who have to attend 
school at some distance from their homes; but the average charge for 
this is more than the parents of many free-place holders can afford to 
pay. It should be the duty of the school or the local authority to see 
that no scholar’s education is impaired from this cause. 
4. To make the free-place system fully efficient it is necessary that 
in many cases maintenance grants should be given for the years of 
school life above the age of compulsory attendance at a full-time day 
school. This grant should be of about the value of the average wage 
of the children of the same age in the district; and should be made by 
the local education authority, acting on the advice of the school 
authorities ; and this advice should be given only after careful inquiry 
into the needs of each individual case. If such grants are made it is 
believed that the present temptation to parents to remove promising 
pupils from secondary schools before they have been able to derive 
full benefit from them will be removed. 
5. The strength and efficiency of the free-place system is dependent 
for its success on the provision of greater facilities for the support of 
secondary school children of exceptional ability at the Universities and 
higher technical schools; this can be met only by the provision of 
a larger number of scholarships from. secondary schools, and these 
of greater value than is at present the case. 
Unless supplemented by large school scholarships it is, for example, 
nothing but a mockery to offer a scholarship of 401. or 50]. a year tenable 
at Oxford or Cambridge to a candidate whose home circumstances do 
not permit of a very substantial addition thereto being made. 
6. It should be possible to remove from the free-place list the names 
of pupils who are reported for habitual laziness; such removal to be 
made by the governing body of the school acting upon the report of 
the head-master. 
7. The award of a free place should not be based exclusively upon 
the results of a written examination, but in conjunction with an oral 
examination conducted by the head of the secondary school with the 
aid of one or more persons appointed by the local education authority 
from the contributory schools. 
8. The free-place system should be available for all classes of the 
community; those parents who have made an effort to forward their 
children’s education by paying fees for them whilst young should not 
be prevented, as at present, from gaining the benefit of a free secondary 
education ; the difficulty may probably be best met by ruling that all 
candidates must have been educated for two years in a school inspected 
by the Board of Education and classed by that Board as ‘ efficient.’ 
