240 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



blessed words in the educational vocabulary, it usually involves a com- 

 promise and is never the ideal method of administrative procedure. No 

 departmental chief, I imagine, would set two typists to type the same 

 letter or two office boys to lick the same stamp simply in order that they 

 might have the advantage of co-operating. 



The next problem is concerned with the personnel of the Local Educa- 

 tion Authorities. The personnel is divided into the amateur and the 

 professional elements, or the unpaid and the underpaid as I have heard 

 it expressed. The amateur element is again divided between persons 

 co-opted for their knowledge of and interest in education, and others 

 elected by the people not solely, experience suggests, because they are 

 known to possess either or both of these qualifications. The co-opted 

 members for obvious reasons are generally among the most valuable 

 members of an Education Authority, but the fact that they are not 

 members of the County or Borough Council, and so have no direct re- 

 sponsibility to the electorate, is usually regarded as disqualifying them for 

 occupying really responsible positions, e.g. chairmanships of committees. 



The most serious aspect of the problem to my mind is the steady and 

 even accelerating deterioration in the amateur personnel which has taken 

 place since the War. This is particularly marked in the case of the 

 elected representatives of the people. The reasons are as plain as the 

 fact. The most obvious of course is the gap caused by the War itself 

 in the ranks of those who, if they had survived, would probably have been 

 the first to offer themselves for public service. But this is by no means 

 the whole or even the main explanation. The vast increase in the 

 responsibilities laid upon local authorities by legislation since the same 

 period makes it necessary that any member who is to become really 

 au fait with the business of education should be able to devote a 

 considerable amount of his weekly time to it, whereas before the War 

 it was possible for a person of average intelligence to grasp not 

 only the general lines of policy but also day-to-day happenings by 

 occasional attendance at committee meetings. Outside tendencies have 

 also been at work during the same period to make such extra attention 

 increasingly onerous and difficult ; the business of making a living has 

 also become more strenuous, and people, who might have been able to 

 devote before the War the amount of time which was necessary to grasp 

 the business of administration, now find themselves, so far from being 

 able to give the additional time which the increasing duties demand, in 

 a position to give much less time than before. Consequently local 

 administration is being progressively denuded of persons actively engaged 

 and occupying positions of responsibility in industry and commerce. 



There seems no sign whatever that either of these tendencies is likely 

 to lose its effect. Everything in fact points in the other direction, and 

 the result is already apparent in the increasing tendency of Education 

 Authorities to consist of people who have retired from work, or have never 

 had work, or who are in fact professionals rather than amateurs because, 

 as officials of political or other associations, it is expedient for them to 

 become members of Local Education Authorities from the point of view 

 of promoting the objects which their associations have at heart. It is no 



