there is the great additional expense of maintaining separate administrations. The risk of friction and the possibility of deadlock, if the authorities are invested with co-equal powers, all tell in the same direction-strongly against dual control. If we have two authorities the one will have simply Elementary Education and nothing more; the other must have certain powers over sections and departments of Elementary Schools, which must continue to do Secondary work, and will regulate this work so as to make it part of the system up to which it leads; the Elementary authority must, fron the nature of the case, become to some extent the subordinate.

If we have one authority there is simplicity, there is economy-two stages of Education, in themselves inseparable in actual working in the schools of a rural area, are combined into one harmonious whole in which neither is neglected and neither is unduly pampered. Order and efficiency and system become possible. The one weak point, the close local touch, may be remedied by efficient representation or by other means to be indicated in the sequel.

Although much more might be said upon the question of single versus dual control, it may be thought by some that the matter has been excessively elaborated even as it is. Undoubtedly the prevalent feeling is strongly in favour of a single governing body, and the opinion rests on solid grounds. It is not so much that it fulfils all the desirable conditions as that it presents far fewer difficulties than the other method, and is, indeed, the only one that gives any assurance of our attaining a moderately simple and, at the same time, popular and efficient system of administration. For Secondary Education it is the sole hope of salvation.

We will now proceed to examine the constitution of the proposed body, and here the first question will naturally be whether we possess the groundwork for the reorganisation. Is the School Board in fact fitted to be the new authority? Or, failing that, can the Burgh or County Committee supply the required basis?

CHAPTER IV.

THE SCHOOL BOARD.

ONE principle of educational reform, as of all legislative interference, is that there be the minimum of change necessary to effect the purpose in view. Historical continuity should, as far as possible, be preserved, traditions should be respected, the stages in the evolution should arise by natural sequence each from its antecedent. Only when a building has become utterly useless must it be demolished to make room for a new one. Renewal and reconstruction are safer and more economical than a new erection, especially if the old foundation has been securely laid.

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This we shall apply to the case in hand. The desire is not to clean the slate and to establish a brand-new ideal system, which is a very easy matter--on paper-but to modify existing forms to suit the altered conditions

and new demands, and to preserve rather than to destroy the old. Accordingly, we must examine existing agencies for educational administration to see whether they are capable of reform in the direction required before we think of abolishing them and replacing them by new ones. The loss involved in the establishment of a system wholly new is so great as to justify toleration even of some defects in the old.

The first and chief existing agency is, of course, the School Board. The present generation is so familiar with this body that it regards it as part of the long established order of things like the Parish School itself. But it is by no means so. Any one of forty-five or fifty years of age, especially if engaged in scholastic pursuits or interested in educational progress, has the whole history of the School Board spread out before his mental vision. The School Board is almost a youthful body, not much more than thirty years of age. Yet we are not quite sure about it, whether it is in the vigour of manhood or the decadence of senility. taken place regarding its work.

Much debate has
Has it been a

success or a failure? Is it to be abolished or rejuvenated? People who ought to be able to judge return the most diverse answers to these questions. Other causes than intelligent zeal for Education have often much to do with the answer; but even without any prejudice or malice it is possible quite truthfully to render varying accounts of the School Board system.

For what do we mean by School Board? On what School Board or kind of School Board is judgment passed? Is it of the petty body we speak which represents an area with 100 inhabitants, administering for Elementary Education alone a revenue of £150 or less per annum? or of the great bodies, educational parliaments, entrusted with educational interests, through all the various grades, of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, with funds counted annually also by hundreds of thousands of pounds? There are School Boards and School Boards. Between the extremes there are all degrees of variation: bodies of varying number from five to fifteen; bodies of varying capacity through all grades of efficiency-and inefficiency; bodies dignified and bodies un