An Educational Advance The circular to local Education Authorities issued
by the Board of Education on Monday marks a strikingly progressive attitude on the part of Mr. Oliver Stanley and his colleagues. And it is to be observed that the advances foreshadowed are all such as involve only departmental action and not legislation like that required for the raising of the school age. The new steps may be compared with advantage with the programme drawn up by Lord Astor and a number of educational experts a few weeks ago. Less is to be done in the matter of nursery schools than Lord Astor and his colleagues desired. The new provi- sions are, indeed, mainly financial, taking the form of the abolition of all restrictions on the number of free places available in secondary schools, and the grant of larger scholarships for boys proceeding to the University. The former provision carried to an extreme, as it conceivably might be in some areas, would mean that every vacant place in the local secondary school could be filled by chil- dren whose parents could afford no fees, to the exclusion of paying pupils for whom this form of education is badly. needed. No doubt this is only a theoretical danger, but it may easily happen that the character of some secondary schools will be completely. changed for better or worse in places where full advantage is taken of the removal of the restriction of free places to fifty per cent.
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