successful in imparting in the great towns a considerable measure of elementary education to the mass of the poorer children, had had a bad influence in lowering the standard of secondary education by compelling the strictly secondary schools to come down to the standard of the higher elementary schools. Higher elementary education at its best gave the child some smattering of culture but it ended there and was in no sense a step in the ladder of education. In the rural and urban districts, moreover, the voluntary schools had more than held their own. The board schools of these districts were often badly managed and were less efficient in many cases than the voluntary denominational schools, which, despite financial difficulties, increased in number and efficiency. The fine work done by these schools was considered to justify in 1897 the creation of a special aid-grant to voluntary schools. But even with such help the position of the voluntary system had become precarious. The high standard of elementary education, of accommodation and of teachers imposed by the Board of Education could only with great difficulty be attained with the means at the disposal of the managers of voluntary schools. The subscribers increased their subscriptions, but since as rate payers these subscribers had frequently also to pay a school board for schools competing with their own schools, it was plain that the limit of subscriptions had been nearly reached. It was clearly inequitable that a person should pay to support both a voluntary and a compulsory system, and it was also evident that both systems suffered in efficiency in consequence.
The time, therefore, had been reached when all forms of education required coordination and increased state help. The absence of continuity between the various grades and kinds of education had, by the year 1902, become a serious national danger. I have noticed already some aspects of this discontinuity. It is necessary here to refer to certain other sides of the question. For nearly fifty years the Science and Art Department of South Kensington had distributed under the direction of the Education Department—now the Board of Education—to schools of all kinds a large parliamentary grant in aid of an elaborate scheme of education set forth by the South Kensington officials. The school boards for a considerable period used the rates, quite illegally, for the purpose of teaching science and art in accordance with the South Kensington scheme in order to earn the grants. This scheme provided the elementary schools with a kind of secondary system and thus increased an undesirable competition with the endowed secondary schools. On the other hand these true secondary schools from the year 1890 have received in many instances parliamentary help of another character. By an act of that year the residue of certain customs and excise duties—a very large annual sum[1]—was directed to be dis-
- ↑ Say £1,200,000. The Science and Art grants and these duties amount to more than £1,500,000, so that it can hardly be said that secondary education has, since 1890, been neglected in England.
