House of Lords, Friday, July 17.

The Lord Chancellor took his seat on the woolsack at a quarter-past 4 o'clock.

Petitions.

Lord Carrington presented a petition from women of Spelding in favour of extending the franchise to women who are ratepayer.

Lord Tweeddale presented a petition from the East Lothian Agricultural Club against Section 111 of the Police and Burgh (Scotland) Bill.

Lord Robartes presented a petition from St. Austell, Cornwall favour of the extension of the franchise to women.

The Earl of petitions from inhabitants of Edinburgh and drawing-room meeting at 25, Great King street, Edinburgh, in favour of the extension of the Parliamentary franchise women.

Private Business.

The following Bills were read a third time :—Earl De la Warr's Estate Bill; Shanklin and Chale Railway Bill; Limehouse Subway (Extension of Time) Bill and North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways Extensions, &c.,

Secondary Education in Board Schools.

Lord Norton rose to move for a return of secondary instruction in day schools for boys now being given in London. He said that the return moved for would shows from the sample of boys' schools in London, how the secondary education of England, the deficiency of which was reported by the Commissioners of 1868, was being wrongly undertaken by the public elementary schools, wastefully and injuriously competing, by an extravagant use of public money, with independent schools. They were superseding and overlapping much of the work which was better done from private resources or self-supported in schools for instruction following after elementary preparation. That the public elementary schools, under the Act of 1870, were not intended for secondary instruction was clear from all debates on the subject. The author of the Act, Mr. Forster, lately re-asserted the first intention, and considered that departure from it involved a disregard of the parents' claims to their children's industry, and an unwarranted assumption of general taxation for education of all kinds in this country. The first explanatory circular from the department strictly limited the public undertaking to elementary teaching. The code now showed a wide departure, offering instruction in three schedules of subjects, the first only being called elementary; a second called class subjects, which the revised instructions just issued declared ample to form those habits of observation and reasoning which wore needed for the intelligent conduct of life; but a list besides called specific subjects, which were described as beyond the scheme of ordinary elementary instruction. But the London School Board were eager to go further, and had expressed regret at their delay in embracing page break secondary education altogether, and at provincial towns having preceded them. They said they looked to the coming election to force on this general undertaking. Might it not, on the other hand, give better promise, in foreshadowed schemes of county government, or a possible revision of our national education, relegating each portion of it to its proper province? Public departments were naturally ambitious, and School Boards had drifted into excess from their large command of money and a magnificent idea that to do anything by halves was beneath their dignity. The Government seemed equally liberal in their view, offering to open the Treasury bounties to Wales for three colleges, besides intermediate schools between them and the elementary schools, on the score of Welsh poverty, and a duplicate establishment to Scotland on the score of Scotch superiority. Thus opposite reasons were assigned for the common object of Government undertaking. If the State was to undertake the secondary education of this country it should not be done covertly, and very waste-fully and imperfectly, in elementary schools, but openly and completely by public secondary schools throughout the kingdom. If this was not to be the present attempt should be stopped in time from encroaching on independent undertakings. There were many reasons against a public provision for our secondary education in England. It would be repugnant to general feeling not yet seduced by the public purse. Parents of the middle classes preferred independent education for their children. The Commissioners of 1868 condemned a rate-paid system as injuriously weakening the sense of parental obligation. At a late inauguration of a Day School Company there were high authorities taking this view. Lord Aberdare joined this independent enterprise because he felt sure this country would never submit to a system of middle-clans schools supported by taxes and controlled by the State. Mr. Forster added that we did not look to a rate-paid or tax-helped education for children whose schooling went on beyond the age of 14. Lord Carlingford, then President of the Council, said that what they were dealing with was not what the Education Department had to do with; and others of great practical experience agreed that the ground they were on could not be effectively occupied otherwise in England, and that schemes such as this might be made wide enough for all the needs of the country. The Commissioners of 1868 gave another reason against Government undertaking :—"That it was most undesirable, even if possible, to have such schools moulded in one type. Any attempt at securing the same subjects to be taught, the same method of organization to be followed, the same discipline to be adopted for all our middle-class schools would fail of the highest objects of education." The want of freedom and elasticity and of adaptation to various situations and circumstances; the loss of all advantage from special aptitudes of teachers; the same standards and textbooks imperatively used to meet the code all belonged to an educational system foreign to our national requirements. The cost of such a Government undertaking, even in its present incipient application, whether to a few children in each elementary school or to groups in super-elementary schools, was producing a ratepayers' outcry hazarding the whole cause of national education. If allowed to proceed the present estimate of seven millions a year would have to be doubled : and, if offered freely, trebled. Nor would this be all. When Mr. Mundella took credit to his department for the decrease of crime in the country be forgot all the reformatory and industrial schools outside his department to which it was more attributable. The multiplicity of institutions necessary to a complete State system was another objection of which they were amply warned by the example of the Continent. But the greatest objection to the Government undertaking our secondary education was its adopted mode of payment on results. The London School Board had condemned this method as fatal to education. They took the Treasury payments to general account, and by fixed salaries saved their teachers from the temptation of earning a livelihood by prizes got out of their pupils. (Bear, hear.) The overpressure so absurdly tested by medical cases was an inseparable feature of such a method of payment by an page break ascending scale of prizes earned through crammed up scholars. The Board had inspectors of their own to report on the whole school work. It was payment on results that excluded religious teaching, to which public grants could not be attached. To bring secondary education on such a system would be a national disaster. But could it be otherwise better supplied? Will sufficient independent supply be forthcoming? The Technical Instruction Commissioners, who had just reported, and the Commissioners of 1868 agreed in showing how much was already provided by independent foundations and private establishments. Both also agreed in looking to much unused endowment being made further available. There was, then, only a residue of deficiency to be supplied. To meet this, both suggested more power to towns to rate themselves voluntarily. But the Commissioners of 1868 proposed this only as a last resort, failing all further independent supply; the Technical Commissioners, as a part of an entire public educational undertaking, to which independent supply was only contributory. They assumed such a State system to be the object in view; and their main idea of national education altogether seemed to be making our trade and manufactures meet foreign competition. They were commissioned to report on the instruction of industrial classes in foreign countries for comparison with and suggestions on our own. Their opening text was the formidable display of manufacturing improvements in the Paris Exhibition of 1873; and they took the foreign State system of education as their model. Yet it was remarkable that they traced the Continental technical schools to a dread of British superiority, and concluded that great as had been the progress and keen as was their rivalry, our people still maintained their position at the head of the industrial world. Secondary education they almost exclusively discussed as preparatory to technical instruction. It really was a general education of children from the age of 14 to 18 preparing for industrial employment higher than the manual work for which others left school at 14, which inferior labour they seemed to think a degradation from which all should be delivered. The mental training for special skilled em-ployment was what the spirit of this country would not fail to supply. For this we should rather look to the State standing out of the way than interfering. It had already gone far in impeding much fitter institutions for the purpose. At Liverpool a finely endowed college was being deserted for the cheaper offer of similar instruction at public expense. The Manchester Grammar School dwindled under the competition of a rate-paid rival. That any independent higher schools could compete with the unlimited resources of School Boards for buildings, appliances, and salaries proved the superior attraction of independent teaching. At Leeds the Grammar School adherents had baffled the ambition of the Board. In Birmingham large endowments had completely undertaken middle class education. The Day School Companies, handicapped as they were at starting, had proved successful, popular, and even profitable. But the effort and skill required in the struggle was great. The Government deny that the voluntary schools competed with the State schools. As their scholars could not earn grants after passing once their standards they were let go at the utmost age of 14. Some specific subjects also had been put down on the lower paid list and consequently dropped. Elementary examination had been continued in company with secondary, and much artificial display so abandoned. But all this was only to confess the sham of their invasion on the province of higher instruction; yet it none the less hindered better provision. Let the State provide free exhibitions for poor clever children from its elementary to the secondary schools, which were and would be much more independently provided. If this return gave the evidence he anticipated he would move a resolution on it next session. (Hear, hear.) The noble lord concluded by moving for the return of which he had given notice.

Viscount Cranbrook said that every body was aware of the groat interest which the noble lord had for so long taken in education, both elementary and secondary, and therefore his remarks were listened to with the respect they deserved. He agreed with his noble friend that the elementary system was not meant to give secondary education, and that at present all authorities on educational matters, and also all economical authorities, were equally opposed to giving secondary education at the expense of the country. He however, failed to see how that fact advanced the object which the noble lord had in view, which was, as he understood it, not to go now into the question of secondary education as a State system, but merely to show hew the present system of elementary education was extended beyond the sphere allotted to it until it became secondary education on a large scale. The security that they had in the matter, however, was that when a child had once passed its seventh standard its further education was entirely at its own expense. There were 28,000 departments in the country, and of these only 2,300 took specific subjects, and out of 4,300,000 children on the books of the schools only 33,236 passed in one of the subjects and 12,804 who passed in both. There was no intention on the part of the department to extend secondary education, but rather to check any tendency to do so. He could not conceive that these class subjects and specific subjects, of which English must always be one, could in any degree interfere with elementary education.

Earl Fortescue thought there was some inconsistency in the account given by the noble viscount, for if Latin, French, and algebra were taught, surely there was some tendency to travel towards the education of middle schools. One remarkable feature about this State and rate-aided education was that it was extremely difficult to find out what it costs. He objected to the present amount secondary education given with rate and State add as unjust to th rate payers and tax payers, and as demoralizing to those who took advantage of it.

The motion was then agreed to.