CHAPTER V.

BURGH AND COUNTY COUNCILS AND COMMITTEES.

WITHIN the last dozen years or so a new agency has been in the field, the Burgh and the County as such, on which a few words must be said.

We have agreed that historical continuity should be maintained, so far as possible, that a reconstruction involving smallest change is best. We have cursorily examined the School Board and reached certain conclusions regarding it. We must now see what is to be made of the Burgh and County agencies, whether they are to be swept away or whether they can be embraced in a new system and be built into the reconstructed fabric.

We will first consider the case of the Burgh. Here there are the Town Council administering, either for Technical Instruction or relief of rates, the Residue Grant, and the Burgh Committee on

Secondary Education with its Equivalent Grant for distribution among the Secondary Schools.

The Town Councils of Scotland have not in any case set up a separate agency for the administration of the Residue Grant, and this, it may be remarked in passing, differentiates the case of the Scotch Burghs from that of the English cities and County Burghs, many of which possess active and powerful agencies of this kind. Nor have the Scotch Burghs adopted any uniform method of administration. They have usually availed themselves of educational agencies already in existence, and have made grants to various institutions-Schools, Technical Colleges, Schools of Domestic Economy, Libraries, etc., within their area; but they have shown an aloofness from the School Board and a jealousy of the other rating body in their area which have prevented to some extent the consolidation of educational resources and their operation through a single channel.

The Town Councils have withal never been indifferent to educational interests, and most of them still possess certain rights and powers in regard to it. But the truth must be allowed

that municipal authorities in large cities have far too many other interests to attend to without Education. The municipalisation of various public utilities, which is increasing by leaps and bounds, will render it more and more impossible in future. Municipal finances become a source of anxiety to thoughtful public men, and Town Councils cannot now be expected to finance in any effective way or to manage Education. Their benevolent interest should be enlisted and maintained; but, apart from this. they must be relieved, among other things, of the responsibility of distributing the Residue Grant, which will have to be entrusted to the new Burgh governing body for Education. It will be subject for deliberation whether the Councils shall, to begin with, have some separate representation on these bodies as an acknowledgment of their contribution toward the cause of Education.

The other body in the Burgh is the Burgh Committee, which distributes the Equivalent Grant for Secondary Education. It is confined to the very large Burghs, which for this purpose are six in number. The limits within

which the Burgh Committee has been allowed. to operate have shorn it of power. It receives its grants from the Government Department, it has merely to distribute them, and its scheme of distribution has to be sanctioned, and certain of its grants, it may be, "specially sanctioned by that Department. A comparison of the schemes of the six Burgh Committees shows that the bulk of the grant is handed over to Secondary Schools or departments already in existence, with the management of which the Committee has no concern. The grant is made either simpliciter or with an attached condition as to the reservation of a certain number of free places for deserving pupils. In one or two cases the benefit to poor scholars takes the form of bursaries, and there are likewise moderate allowances for travelling expenses, books, apparatus, etc. The chief point to be observed is that the Burgh Committee has found its area covered by the School Board or Endowed School Governors, and has wisely refrained from attempting to interfere with their management of schools. But a further fact is of importance, viz., that even in the largest Burghs an appreciable proportion of the grant goes to

schools not distinctly Secondary, i.e., to advanced departments of Public Schools. This is largely the case in Govan and Leith, and to a less extent in Glasgow and Dundee. Another proof this, if further proof were needed, of the inextricable blending of Elementary and Secondary in actual practice in our educational institutions.

In the Burgh one finds little encouragement in the sphere either of Technical or of purely Secondary Education for supplanting the School Board by the Town Council or Burgh Committee, so far as past experience can be our guide in educational reorganisation. The Town Council has already far too much on hand to allow it to deal either directly or indirectly with the administration of Education. Its members are probably quite as competent to do so as School Board members, but there is a limit to the time that they can devote to public business, and that limit has already been reached, if not passed. To hand over Education to the Town Councils would be to render the municipal machinery still more top-heavy, and simply to court failure.

The matter is not one of fitness