222 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
The birth of this Section at Glasgow in 1901 came just between the 
passing of the two Acts which laid the foundation of our present educa- 
tional system. The Board of Education Act of 1899, as its title implied, 
set up a State Department under a Minister for the superintendence of 
matters relating to education in England and Wales. It brought together 
two previously existing departments, namely, the Education Department 
in Whitehall, which since 1870 had been developing and systematising 
elementary education, and the Science and Art Department in South 
Kensington, which independently administered the Government grants 
for schools of art and science and generally promoted what we now call 
technical education. ‘The Act passed with little public notice, for very 
few people outside the service saw it for the prelude that it was. 
It was far otherwise with the Education Act of 1902, the second great 
statutory landmark in the development of our educational system—Forster’s 
Act of 1870 being the first and Mr. Fisher’s Act of 1918 the third and 
latest. ‘The feature of this Act which attracted most attention, giving 
rise to bitter public controversy at the time, was that which enabled the 
voluntary schools, previously only state-aided, to receive assistance from 
local rates. ‘The Church schools were put upon the rates, in return for 
some concessions to public control. Although the old controversy has 
died down, it flames up here and there and now and then as smouldering 
fires will in disconcerting fashion. Many attempts have been made since 
to settle the issue once for all; they have all broken down. I do not 
propose to discuss the consequences of this dual system at any length, 
for the subject was dealt with ably and faithfully in a recent Presidential 
Address to this Section. 
But three things perhaps I may suggest. Firstly, no settlement is 
likely to prove permanent which does not give the local authority the right 
to insist that the best qualified applicants shall be appointed to teach in 
in the non-provided schools, and secondly does not allow of the employ- 
ment of any teacher who holds the State certificate in any public element- 
ary school. And thirdly, the present arrangement occasions serious waste 
of teaching power and of public funds, which last, at any rate, is of great 
moment in the present state of national finances. It is, I think, un- 
fortunate that the recent Act, enabling the closing of schools which are 
educationally unnecessary, is crippled by insistence that duality must be 
maintained as a condition precedent. 
But the fundamental change which the Act of 1902 made was the crea- 
tion of local education authorities charged with responsibility for all 
forms of education in their areas, namely, the councils in the adminis- 
trative counties and the county borough councils. In the county boroughs 
the Act replaced one popularly elected authority by another, though with 
widely extended powers, for in almost all the county boroughs there had 
been school boards responsible for a provision of elementary education 
adequate for the needs of the area, so far as those were not met by the 
voluntary schools. In the county areas, however, the position was very 
different. For though the counties have a long administrative history, 
the popularly elected County Council was a very young body and had 
hardly got into its stride before these new duties were thrust upon. it. 
