226 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
example of misuse of the instrument. ‘'T'wo of the elements in the formula 
under which the grants for purposes of elementary education are assessed 
are the expenditure of the authority on teachers’ salaries, of which fifty 
per cent. is met by grant and administrative expenses, of which the 
Exchequer finds twenty per cent. 
Reorganisation in county areas involves the provision of senior schools 
at nodal points to which the older children of the surrounding district are 
transported. ‘The process is attended by some saving in salaries, and 
within certain limits the larger the school the more economically can it be 
run. Not only so, the larger school can combine variety in the curriculum 
with greater uniformity in the classification of the pupils, and in the end 
should prove the better school. But a larger school means a wider 
gathering ground and a heavier transport cost. Yet the Board appro- 
priate half the saving in teachers’ salaries and leave the authority to bear 
four-fifths of the heavy cost of transport. The effect of the grant regu- 
lations is therefore to dissuade the authorities from plans which are 
nationally economical and educationally desirable and to reinforce the 
understandable preference of the countryside for the small and less 
efficient school near at hand. 
This method of giving grants in proportion to expenditure, and at rates 
varying with the type of service aided, was brought into full operation in 
education by Mr. Fisher’s Act of 1918. Obviously it is designed to 
encourage expansion and to stimulate authorities to the more adequate 
discharge of their duties. The argument that the Board bears part of 
the cost can be very convincing. Though not simple in administration 
it keeps pace with the growth of institutions, and through the provision 
of an overriding minimum grant it recognises the importance of the local 
organisation of schools. Notwithstanding its occasional misuse education 
committees generally approve it, though perhaps some of them who are 
chary of expansion and have no wish to be stimulated still hanker after 
the old method of separate grants on a per capita basis for individual 
institutions. 
In the discussions which are raging round education and everything 
else the method of the percentage grant is challenged on the ground that 
it lends itself to extravagance and involves a meticulous interference with 
the business of the authorities, objections which you will observe tend to 
cancel out, and it is suggested that block grants assessed over an authority’s 
expenditure during a standard year and fixed for a term of years, three, 
five, or even seven, should be given instead. A block grant has none of 
that flexibility which enables the percentage grant to be administered in 
immediate conformity with Governmental policy, out of which no local 
authority can expect to be allowed to contract itself. Nor can I see why 
a central department or sub-department, with a policy of its own, should 
be less disposed to encourage expenditure on the part of a local authority 
under a block system grant, which defers the day of reckoning, than under 
a system which automatically obliges it to share the cost. ‘The last report 
of the Estimates Committee of the House of Commons comes to the 
support of my contention, for the Committee therein publicly censures 
the Board of Control for pressing local authorities to incur unnecessary 
