238 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



the game is to be played are now generally accepted, and the players, in 

 my experience, are observing them in an increasingly friendly and 

 harmonious spirit. We all think and may even speak unkindly about 

 Whitehall from time to time, but on calm reflection cannot but admit 

 that we are treated on the whole with delicacy and consideration. 



There is one aspect of this relationship, however, which is important, 

 and that is the financial one. I shall have something to say a little later 

 on the question of the adequacy or otherwise of exchequer grants so far 

 as Local Education Authorities are concerned. On the wider issue we 

 may rest content with the fact that, whatever arguments may be adduced 

 or principles invoked, so long as there are local administrators they will 

 continue to pursue the laudable object of getting as much money and as 

 little interference from the central authority as they possibly can. But 

 if devolution is to remain a necessity, and granted the continuance both 

 of a democratic system and of the parental interest of the State, there 

 seems no alternative. The really disconcerting problems for the future 

 seem to me to arise from the present nature of the local government 

 bodies themselves. The first difficulty would appear to lie in the unit, 

 i.e. in the size and geographical distribution of local government areas. 

 Recognised authorities, who are mostly foreigners and seem to regard our 

 political institutions with greater enthusiasm than we do ourselves, tend 

 to congratulate us on our ingenuity in adjusting them to meet new social 

 and economic needs as they arise. It would be difficult to detect this 

 evolutionary process at work so far as local government boundaries are 

 concerned. It is true that towns have grown and encroached on county 

 areas and that there has been a distinction in the degree of autonomy 

 conferred on authorities of diff'erent sizes by successive Acts of Parliament, 

 but substantially it remains true that our local government boundaries 

 derive mainly from Saxon times when the problems of modern administra- 

 tion can hardly have been foreseen. 



When the present Local Education Authorities were established by the Act 

 of 1902, there was an opportunity to devise areas with regard to administra- 

 tive convenience rather than historical association, but it is significant 

 that there does not appear to have been any serious suggestion to do 

 other than to allocate the new powers and duties among the existing local 

 units. Consequently we find the control of public education, under the 

 benevolent supervision of the Board of Education, distributed among 

 318 different bodies varying from London with 4,396,821 inhabitants 

 down to Tiverton (Devonshire) with 9,610. 



These Local Education Authorities inherited the property of the School 

 Boards and Technical Instruction Committees, including a number of 

 buildings in various states of repair, and of officials in much the same 

 condition, together with some strange and erhbarrassing residuary legacies, 

 like the Cockerton Judgment and Dual Control. 



It is very much to their credit that within three and a half decades, with 

 a great war intervening, they have not only introduced some kind of order 

 into this confusion but have also built up a great system of secondary 

 education, put the salaries of teachers on a more satisfactory basis, 

 and undertaken the task of reorganising the whole system of so-called 



