ENDOWED SCHOOLS AND THE POOR.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN was not peculiarly fortunate in the facts of the case which he selected for the text of his attack on the Charity Commissioners, in his speech at Hull the other day. According to him, this felonious body were bent on diverting " a great endowment, left for the poor of a parish in Wiltshire (which might now be used to promote
their happiness and welfare) in order to create a school of secondary education for the middle-class in a neigh- bouring town." It appears from questions asked in the House of Commons on Monday that the charity referred to was AldermaU Dauntsey's bequest of some property in the City of London, made in the reign of Henry VIII., to the Mercers' Company. The gift was for the erection of a school and alms- houses, and the payment of a schoolmaster and " bedesmen" and women in West Lavington. The original value of the property shortly after the bequest was some £48, and the original pay- ments to charitable objects prescribed by the will swallowed up rather more than half, and repairs and other outgoings in respect of the school and almshouses, which were also to come out of the fund, would probably have taken a good slice of the remainder. The rental of the trust property had by 1633 grown so largely, while the payments to the schools and alms- houses had hardly grown at all, that the then heiress of the founder and her husband filed a bill in Chancery against the Company to assert the right of the charity to a larger slice
of the income. Unfortunately, the matter was com- promised, the Company quadrupling its payment, bringing it up to £60 in all, and £100 down to rebuild the school ; the Company—" they maintaining the said charitable uses in such proportion" as they were then advanced to—" to be for ever freely exonerated " in respect of any further increase or advancement,—Sir John and Lady Danvers, nevertheless, "hoping that if any extraordinary improvements should be there- after made of the said messuages and lands, the said Company, out of their respect to charity and justice, would not fail to enlarge the said allowance." The Company's respect for charity and justice did not enlarge the said allowance till 1803, when the rental had grown to £600 a year, when they kindly in- creased the charitable payments to £221 a year, considerably less than the original proportion—and, apparently, than the "due proportion" prescribed by the Chancery decree. Proceedings by the Attorney-General, however, in 1853, to have the whole of the property declared to be trust property proved a failure, and the petition was dismissed with costs. The Company, however, in 1856 (the Charity Commission having been lately established), spent a good deal of money on the School and Almshouses ; but they claimed that all money spent above £60 a-year was a matter of grace, and they could point to decrees of the Court of Chancery more or less in their favour. In 1880, soon after the proceedings under the Endowed Schools Acts were instituted by the Charity Com- missioners, the annual amount spent on the school was about £600, and that on the Almshouses about £200. After pro- tracted negotiations, the Company have agreed to give £30,000, representing about one-third of the income of the property, to augment the school endowment. If right were done, no doubt the whole of the trust property ought to be appropriated to charity, and more particularly to educational uses ; but with two quasi-adverse decisions of the Court staring them in the face, the Commissioners were glad to accept what they could get for education in Wiltshire, and leave the rest for the City Guilds Commission to deal with. Of this money, they propose to apply £14,000 to an elementary school in West Lavington, and the rest for secondary educa- tion in the district, the site for the secondary school not yet being fixed. And 110 doubt due provision will be made by
scholarships for the entrance of boys from the elementary school into the secondary school. So that the Commissioners, so far from having "robbed the poor," are giving the money to the poor directly,—first, in the almshouses, which the Company are to keep up as before ; and next, in the elementary schooL
Probably, indeed, the money given to the elementary school is money wasted. In 1869 the school was reported by the Commission which preceded the passing of the Endowed Schools Acts as a hindrance, not a help. The master, being absolutely irresponsible, did nothing ; and at the special request of the Lord of the Manor the school was so managed as not to interfere with any demand for the scholars' labour, and so was rendered utterly inefficient by non-attendance. Its con- tinued inefficiency was the cause of the present scheme of the Commissioners. The school will, no doubt, be better managed and rendered more efficient now that a local governing body, containing parish representatives, is to be appointed. But the endowment, though nominally given to the poor, is really given to the rich. If there were no endowed school there, either there would have to be a voluntary school or a board school. In the first case, Lord Churchill and the other landowners of the parish would have to pay a voluntary rate, supplemented by the Government grant ; in the second case, every one would have to pay a compulsory rate, supple- mented by the Government grant. The only merit of the Commissioners' scheme is that there is to be an upper depart- ment to the school, in which the fees are to be 6d. to 9d. a week, and £2 scholarships are to be given. This may redeem the school from being a purely elementary school, and, there- fore, a pure waste of money. But, in truth, the whole money would be far better spent in establishing a good secondary school.
We have dealt with this case at length, partly because Mr. Chamberlain, led into the trap by Mr. Jesse Collings, has shown himself so completely at sea as regards the facts, but more because it requires to be insisted upon that the least useful way in which money can be spent at the present moment for the poor, is in establishing elementary schools. While the State insists, as, thanks in no small degree to Mr. Chamberlain and the Birmingham school, it began to insist in 1870, and is likely to insist till the millennium, on compulsory elementary education, and while it contributes to the support of elementary schools by grants or rates, or so long as, according to Mr. Chamberlain's wishes, it wholly supports them, so long will it be mere waste of money to spend charity money on elementary schools. The cry for the application of all endow- ments to elementary education is a cry not in favour of the poor, but of the rich. If there were no endowments, the money still has to be forthcoming in one shape or other, and it comes mainly from the rich.
But if the money is devoted to the establishment of secondary education, in accordance with the principles laid down in the Endowed Schools Acts, and the policy mainly pursued since the Education Act by the Charity Commissioners, and the recent recommendations of the Royal Commission on Technical Education, then there is some hope that the nation at large, and especially the "poorer sort," will really reap a benefit. At present, the cost of secondary education, both in time and money, places it out of reach of the children of the working classes. A very large proportion of the endowments given or applied to secondary education were never really in- tended for the poor at all. In the West Lavington case, the absence of all reference to poor scholars is particularly marked. The school was to be a Grammar School, but Grammar Schools where Bishops and Chancellors were bred never were, and never could be under the old system, open to the ordinary children of the working-classes. Here and there a clever lad was picked from the gutter and sent by a rich patron to a Grammar School, and became an Archbishop or a Chief Justice. But the great bulk of the labouring classes had neither the time nor the inclination, nor, above all, the preliminary training to fit them for the Grammar Schools. It was against the Founder's in- tentions that the West Lavington School was allowed to sink into a bad elementary school, so as to save the rates payable by the Duke of Marlborough, his family, and his tenants, and to keep a whole population in ignorance and stagnation. If Mr. Chamberlain had his way, apparently, either this system would go on, or the money would be applied in almshouses or doles or other demoralising ways of " promoting the welfare" of the poor by making them improvident or idle. It is far better to promote their welfare by setting up a good secondary school to which they can get access, through charity indeed, but still, thanks to the system of competition, through charity that does not demoralise, being earned by their own exertions. Granted that prize fellowships of unlimited tenure are a gross abuse, and constitute a charity which demoralises more than an almshouse, and perhaps as much as doles, yet the case of prize scholarships during the limited period of school age is quite different. Given a good secondary school, you want two classes of scholarships, one of partial remission of fees for the benefit of the poorer and cleverer children of the middle class ; another consisting of total remission of fees, and a small stipend besides, for the benefit of the cleverer children of the working-classes. If these latter scholar- ships are confined for competition to scholars at the public elementary schools, as is now done by the Charity Commission schemes, you- get the real ladder of education. You take a considerable proportion of the most intellectually deserving of the working-classes on from the elementary school to the higher education, and, what is also no slight thing, to the better company, in point of manners and language, if not of morals, of the Grammar School, while the scholarships thence take them to the Universities or the University Colleges now springing up in all large towns. We may look for- ward to a time when secondary education shall be brought into system, and subsidised, as elementary education now is, by the State. But it is a complete delusion to suppose that, as matters now stand, the working-classes, as a whole, can receive secondary education, except by a system of wholesale stipends for which there are no funds available. Nor, until secondary education is made a good deal more technical than it now is, would it be a boon to them if the stipends were forthcoming. And, moreover, as things now stand, if the Grammar Schools were swamped with a wholesale inundation of the working-classes, the richer classes would leave them and refound their Etons and Winchesters as they have founded Marlborough, and Cheltenham, and Clifton for themselves; and secondary education would be dissevered from the good manners and the high tone which are at least supposed and intended to be their necessary accompaniments. All that can practically be done is to encourage the rich to find the build- ings, as the Commission hopes to do in Wiltshire, to aid the school at starting with the endowment, and when it is started, to open it quite as widely as there is a demand for, to the cleverer and more industrious section of " the poor," by a system of scholarships. All this is perfectly compatible, when the endowment consists of land, with extending Mr. Collings's admirable Allotments Extension Act by letting out charity lands in the country in small allotments, and in towns for workmen's dwellings. But as for any direct application of endowments, either in doles or in elementary schools, benefiting the poor, it might just as well be contended that they would be benefited by an indiscriminate system of outdoor relief, or by a reduction of the land-tax.
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