228 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
intention was that they should be educative, in the one case formulating 
for the first time a conception of the secondary school for the guidance of 
authorities and teachers, in the other suggesting that the function of 
the secondary school passes beyond the education of the single pupil to 
the service of the community. 
The only other set of regulations which require mention before we 
consider the evidence of progress in the development of the secondary 
school system, are the Regulations of 1907, in which the greater part of 
the 1904 Regulations were included, but which were also further pre- 
scriptive in two important respects. In the first place, no new schools 
could be placed upon the grant list unless the representatives of elected 
authorities formed the majority of the governing body. This was no 
doubt intended to be the first step towards bringing all the schools aided 
by Government grants under local popular control. So far, however, as 
the local education authorities are concerned, the effect has not been 
quite what appears to have been expected. ‘The representatives of the 
popularly elected authorities keep up a useful contact between the aiding 
authority and the aided school, but in my experience they count for very 
little in the control which the aiding authority exercises, for they are 
prone to put the interest of the school they serve first, and the authority 
which appoints them receives but secondary consideration—a very 
English and, on the whole, a healthy habit. 
The other prescription of the 1907 regulations was of much more 
consequence. Provision was to be made for the admission in the normal 
case of 25 per cent. of the new pupils in any year from the public 
elementary school, free of all school fees, but in every other respect on 
the same footing as the fee-paying pupils. ‘The percentage stood as an 
obligatory minimum until the new Special Place Regulations took effect 
a month or so ago, but as a permissive figure it has been raised first to 
40 per cent. and three years ago to 50 per cent. 
I shall have something to say in a moment about the practical effect of 
this regulation. The older among us will remember with what doubt 
and hesitation it was received by the schools, for as Sir Robert Morant 
expressed it in another of his early reports, the idea that elementary and 
secondary schools represent not successive stages of education but 
alternative kinds of education, meant for different social classes, was deeply 
rooted. Those doubts vanished long ago: for the free place holder, 
with few exceptions, readily took on the colour of his new school ; on the 
whole he remained longer and stayed the course better than his fee-paying 
fellow. 
Until the Board and the authorities got down to work it had been 
commonly assumed that their task would be in the main to bring the 
existing unorganised and sporadically created secondary schools into an 
efficient ‘system. The field appeared to be full of resources: what was 
necessary, was in the words of the Bryce Commission, ‘ to correlate and 
harmonise the forces and agencies already at work.’ The local authori- 
ties very soon discovered gaps which needed filling, but what was not 
generally foreseen was the tremendous drive for secondary education 
which an awakened public opinion was about to motive. It was, for 
