The Problem of the Family

V.—School

THE main cost of a family comes when the children reach school age. This cost has never been so high, proportionately to average incomes, as to-day. The charges of our Public Schools have risen sharply and of necessity. Most professional men desire to send their sons to Public Schools, being convinced that here their characters are developed, even if sometimes their education suffers. The young married man, earning an average income in his profession, who looks ahead, realizes that unless he has the most extraordinary good fortune it will be impossible for him to meet, the Public School charges of more than two children at the same time, and then only with the utmost economy and self denial. He would rather have two children, who can be given a fair start in life, than six who must muddle through. Here is one of the main causes of the limitation of middle- class families.

The rise in costs has been inevitable. The Public Schools that do not receive assistance from national funds have been hit, just as the private householder has been hit. Servants cost more, food costs more, taxation is more. The standard of living has risen, and the modern parent will not permit the primitive sanitation and fifth- rate dietary that ruled in some of our great foundations not many years ago. The salaries of assistant masters have been substantially raised, and not before it was time. The scope of Public School education has been widened, and this again costs money. Good education is, and must be, costly. These are elementary facts, but they are facts that people sometimes overlook.

It is generally taken for granted that much of the increased cost is due to the greater demands of the modern boy, and his greater love of luxury. Here, however, I find wide differences of opinion. Some heads openly deplore the way boys are " spoiled " by too much pocket money and too much luxury from home. Others deny there is any change for the worse. The head-master of one of the most famous and expensive schools in England declares it is very difficult to say how far there has been an increase in the expenditure or demands of the post-War generation of boys. " I should doubt if it would be possible to prove any marked change in the general average." This is still more strongly expressed by the Head-Master of Charterhouse. " There is nothing to show that there has been an increase in the demands and requirements of the new generation." Mr. Wynne, the Head-Master of Blundell's, also stands up for the boy of to-day. "My experience of the present-day boy is that he wants better things, not more things, than the pre-War boy. He is more grown up in his tastes, and less easily satisfied with things which passed muster ten or fifteen years ago. On the whole, he is less extrava- gant and freer from fads than his predecessors were." The greatest danger here comes, not from the boys, but from a minority of parents who have more money than sense, and who ostentatiously give their boys more than other parents can afford. One head-master writes very frankly about such folk :- " I should not say the son of the professional man ever felt uncomfortable because he could not have as much pocket money as others, but there is no question that the authorities always have to fight the tendency of the indiscreet rich parent who raises standards artificially in such ways as these, excessive entertaining when visiting the School, excessive pocket money, unnecessary presents to young boys such as motor bicycles and the new craze for a second expensive holiday from home in the Swiss Alps. "

The general increase in school fees has been between 30 and 50 per cent. In the West of England, the general rise has been 48 per cent. Most of this has been absorbed in better salaries and pensions for assistant masters, and in increased outlay on improvements.

Let us take a few schools, in different groups, as typical of the whole. At Eton, the average cost for Oppidans in 1914 was £179 10s. To-day, with an inclusive fee for extras, it is £210. Winchester's charges have risen from £140 to £210. At Charterhouse, the average total before the War, including all extras and supplies purchased at school, was £150 ; it is now £210. At Rugby, the average in 1918 was /155 ; it is now about £205.

In schools where the scale of fees runs lower, the proportionate increase is usually higher. At Lancing, the inclusive fee in 1913 was 90 guineas. It is now £156. At Malvern, the rise has been about 48 per cent. At Blundell's School, the actual increase is about one-third. At Tonlnidge School, the average cost for boarders has risen from £111 to £141. At Durham School, the fees have risen from 85 guineas to 101 guineas.

In the big Public Schools hi our cities where most of the boys are day pupils, fees have been often almost doubled. To take a typical example, at Dulwich College fees were a few years ago £24 a year. Now they are £45. Extras, such as the O.T.C., are apt to tell in the big day schools. In most of the girls' day schools, fees are practically double what they were before the War. This is largelY due to the fact that women teachers, who formerly were notoriously underpaid, are now receiving more decent salaries.

Most head-masters of great Public Schools are conscious of a danger that the growing exclusion of the sons of professional men and their replacement by the children of the new rich may, in the end, affect the moral of the schools themselves.

" It has been our settled policy here," writes the Head-Master of Charterhouse, " to keep the increase down to the minimum necessary, so as not to exclude sons of the professional classes who are, generally speaking, the most desirable clientele. To raise the fees beyond a certain point in a school like this .would not seriously diminish the number of applicants for places, but it tends to alter the type, and not for the better."

Wellington College is one of the schools that has ever made a point of providing for the sons of officers, a class that feels the pressure of life to-day very acutely. Mr. F. B. Malim, the Head-Master of Wellington, writes :- "Education in a boarding school is now desperately dear. I don't think it is dear considering what you get, but there is not much chance of the price going down, unless parents are content to accept a lower standard of comfort and luxury. Even as things are, it is supplied below cost price : e.g., it has cost £300,000 to build and equip Wellington No interest is paid on this capital outlay which would be, at 4%, £12,000 a year, or an increase of fees by £20 a year for 600 boys. Wellington has not put up its fees so much as some schools. Our ' Foundations ' still pay, as they did before the War, £10 per annum. They are, as you probably know, sons of dead officers. An inclusive figure of fees, extras, books, games, Sac., for a boy in College would be 1914--£145, 1926—£175. The professional man living in a town has the alternative of the very good education now provided in maintained or aided schools. But the clergyman. doctor, soldier, &c., not living in a town is still obliged to send his boy as a boarder, and I do not see much prospect of the cost coming down."

What can be done to help to keep charges down ? State aid can be ruled out. The State would not give it, and the schools do not want it. There are good schemes of insurance which distribute and so help to lighten the burden. Special organizations help special classes, like the sons of officers and of the clergy.

Help must come from the revival of the " pious founder." It has gone out of fashion for rich men to add to the endowments of schools in this country, although this is still a favourite form of benevolence in America. Let the fashion be revived here. My own belief—from which teachers generally dissent—is that such benefactions had better take the form, not of scholarships, but of gifts that benefit the whole school, either by extending the field of its studies or by extending or improving its houses or equipment. - The head of a school noted as a training ground for mpire administrators, writes " It seems to me that there are only two things which might enable us to reduce the cost to parents—(a) State aid ; (b) Big benefactions. State aid would mean State control and also the ion of a considerable percentage of free place scholars ; he cost of the latter would almost certainly far outweigh a State ant, so that I think we are thrown back on the big benefactor."

The head-master of one of the more recent foundations rites to me, in detail :— " The cost of Public School education has necessarily risen very onsiderably as a result of the War. This is due partly, but I do not Kink to any very large degree,_ to the increase in the cost of living, nd partly to the more exacting demands which are being made or each generation of boys. Most of these demands, e.g., for tter, and better cooked food, for more skilful medical attendance, d a greater regard for health, for airier classrooms, for more space, th indoors and out, are admirable, and were long overdue. the same time the curriculum has been extended so as to include aro subjects, in order to satisfy the requirements of parents, and oew, subject, particularly scientific subjects, means a certain mint of extra expense. School materials, and particularly hoot books, which are a great deal more expensive than they used • be, mean a considerable increase in the cost of each boy's ucation, while for a boy who does well in games and wins a variety f school colours, the exorbitant prices that have to be paid for 144"8, die., joined with the increased cost owing to travelling 'Tenses of away matches, makes a substantial addition to the hoed bills. Slit of course the thing which has Most increased these is- tbe crease. again long overdue, and in many schools not yet a big _ugh increase, in the masters' salaries.

-t am sorry to say that the result of all this is that the professional ses Who really made these Public Schools are often prohibited by financial considerations from sending their boys, and those places are being taken by sons of men who have made money rapidly during the War period. I do not personally regret that these latter should come to us, so long as their ability is adequate. in fact I welcome them, both for their own sake, and for the sake of the School, but I do regret that the former should be squeezed out. I don't see how the cost of Public School education is to be reduced, and the true solution of the matter seems to me to be, as has been said more than once, that the pious founder should be refound. I believe that in America vast sums are given to education by wealthy men, mainly with the view of avoiding super-tax ! This is perhaps not a very worthy motive, but whatever the motive, the money is wanted badly by a great many schools in this country, whose freedom from the public purse is one of their possessions most valuable both to themselves and to the educational life of the country. The money would naturally be used for scholarships."

Many head-masters protest against the parental idea that the rise in fees means scholastic profiteering. Mr. J. E. Barton, the Head-Master of Bristol Grammar School, comes to the defence of his colleagues. " I cannot, of course, speak at first hand, to the state of things in Public Schools, but I can say as a parent—my own boy was at Wellington—that it is astonishing to me on how comparatively small an increase of fee some of the less plutocratic schools are able to keep on, with a gain, rather than a loss of efficiency."

Mr. W. IL Ferguson, the Head-Master of Hadley, says :— " I do not see how the burden of educational expenses can be lightened for those who demand the advantages of a Boarding School, for, in addition to cost of food and fuel, a school now has to find means to pay far heavier taxation and rates, far higher wages all round and largely increased salaries, including part, if not the whole of, the contribution to a Pension Scheme for masters and servants. Here certainly, without loss of efficiency in teaching power and service, we could only cheapen the cost to parents by standing still in the matter of improvements, and that would be

a disaster for all concerned." •

The cost of our 'Public Schools:is, not likely to fall. The averagg parent of the professional classes is less and less able to meet it. Is there no way out ? Is the new secondary school a satisfactory substitute for the Public School ?

F. A. MACKENZIE.