School which is desirable for the healthy activity of the latter. The parents of pupils of the Elementary School will not be so fully represented that the bonds between school and community shall be firmly cemented and their effective co-operation secured.

Of course, it might happen, and often would happen, that the centre was a burgh with an education authority of its own, in which case pupils would pass completely out of the rural conditions of which we have been speaking. But assuming that there are cases, as there certainly are, where the centre would not be sufficiently populous to have a separate authority, which is the type that concerns us in this connection, a real difficulty here arises, and probably there is no solution which will fully meet it. The requirements of Elementary and Secondary are, in this particular case, partly inconsistent with one another. On the one hand you require close personal interest and contact between constituency and school; on the other you require an authority, free from local preferences and prejudices, which will take a fair view of the total requirement of a wide area

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and will place its Secondary School or Schools at the natural and convenient points, which will not regard the clamour of each unit which regards its own locality as the one and only natural centre, but will judge impartially in view of all the facts of the case, which, indeed, it alone will be able fully to appreciate. Extent of area, sparseness of population, difficulty of communication introduce elements unknown in the city no method of management is wholly free from objection.

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The two chief methods suggested, presumably the only two possible, are (a) separate authorities for Elementary and Secondary; (b) one authority for both. At these we will glance separately. (a) The first ensures local interest. It keeps the wants and wishes of the community in full view of the school. Public opinion is brought to bear on education. The community is made to feel the responsibility of the burden of education. Direct representation is given on the governing body to those who have to defray the cost of the education. in so far as this is a local charge.

On the other hand, no continuity of educa

tional effort is secured the path from the Elementary School leads nowhere. Secondary Education is left in great measure out of its count. There is no co-operation of authority with authority, not perhaps from any disinclination to co-operate, but because of the inherent difficulty of united harmonious action among the ten or twenty or thirty authorities for Elementary Education operating within the district which might support a single Secondary School. The divided control of Elementary Education may be quite good for it, and would satisfy us if there was nothing to come after. But it altogether fails to provide for Secondary Education, and not only so, but renders complete provision for it impossible, unless the separate authority for Secondary Education have some control over the bodies administering Elementary Schools. Such an arrangement, however, is precluded by the assumption of the independence of each authority in its own sphere. The local dilemma seems insoluble. In fact, the only method of procuring efficient Secondary management with two co-ordinate authorities is to render one subject to the other! Truly a reductio ad absurdum.

(b) The single authority is thus the only practicable means for Secondary Education; but for Elementary it is in some respects not ideal. It does not come sufficiently close to each Elementary School; public opinion loses something of its force; the taxpayer has not the same interest in the school as when he can make his voice heard and his influence felt in the smaller local body. All this is worth considering; a balance must be struck between advantages and disadvantages. The question really is, to which of the alternatives are the objections less numerous and less fatal? Our view will be coloured a good deal by the amount of importance we attach to Elementary and to Secondary respectively.

Too much stress may easily be laid on the element of local interest. There does not seem any reason why in the larger body it should be destroyed or even materially suffer. Each unit of area, say the parish, cannot, under a system of single management, have, as it at present has on the School Board, five or more representatives on a joint-authority for a district, but it will have representation, and

ought to have adequate representation. No ratepayer will be precluded from raising his voice if he feel aggrieved, or expressing through his representative his complaints against the established order. There is no reason why an authority, representative of a large area, should not be in close touch with all the educational interests of the area. No difficulty is experienced in cities where the interests, though locally, of course, much less extended, are as diverse, and where the constituency is, when counted by heads, far more numerous. A careful scheme of representation is required for the wider area, and some adjustment of rating areas, but there is no inherent disability in a single authority over a comparatively large area exercising due supervision and making its influence felt throughout all its borders: The example of the County Council in local government is a case quite in point the wideness of the area is no barrier to close touch with the constituency.

The difficulties incident to a dual administration are in themselves so great, even where each is thoroughly efficient within its own sphere, as to require strong justification. Then