EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION Two Lectures delivered before the University of Birmingham in February, 1921 BY Sir GRAHAM BALFOUR UNIV. OF OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION I PUBLIC AUTHORITIES-THEIR HISTORY EDUCATIONAL Administration is one of those subsidiary services which are in themselves without value except in so far as they secure the success of their object. Learning and teaching are the first and chief acts of education, but even in their simplest form they involve the beginnings of administration, which in the earliest stage devolves solely upon the teacher. Even the Irish 'hedge-school' involved, I suppose, the selection of a hedge, and when it comes to the provision of a book and a pencil, we are face to face with the supply of school materials. In private schools even to-day the whole administration is in the hands of the head master, but when the acceptance of education is made a duty obligatory, on every child in the state there arises the need for setting the teachers free to practise their art and for giving the work of educational administration to be carried out by officials upon a correspondingly extensive scale. The growth of almost any English institution proceeds by a series of accretions, largely independent of consistency, but adopted for utility and tested by practical experience. This certainly holds good with the educational administration of England, which can hardly be understood without a brief historical survey of the last 470598 eighty years. By this we shall see why English education is dealt with by the authorities central and local, and not by independent commissioners or philosophically constructed bureaux as in America or on the Continent of Europe. It is almost incredible that ninety years ago there were in England neither central nor local public education authorities, unless we reckon the governors of endowed schools and the governing bodies of the universities and colleges. In 1830 there were in existence a number of educational trusts, many of which were greatly neglected or abused: by 1837, the total number of these reported upon by Lord Brougham's Commission was 28,840, of an aggregate capital value of about a million and a quarter pounds. The only controlling authority over these trusts was the Court of Chancery, which was a byword for procrastination. There were no parliamentary or other public grants for education, and no official body, except the Treasury, to receive them if they should be made. First as to the Central Authority. In 1833, the year after the Reform Bill, the first grant, which amounted to £30,000 'for the purposes of education', was made by the House of Commons. It was stoutly opposed in the House by William Cobbett and Joseph Hume, two prominent Radicals of the day, but was carried by 76 votes to 52. By the Appropriation Act it was paid to the Treasury 'for the erection of school houses in Great Britain', and by the Treasury was handed over to the two large voluntary societies founded in 1811 and 1808, the National Society and the British and Foreign School Society. Not to enter too precisely into details, approximately the same amounts and same general method of disposal were continued for six years, but in 1839 came the crisis. The Government determined to set up an official body dealing with education, but evidently saw that there was no chance of carrying such a measure through Parliament. Accordingly, in April the Queen issued an Order in Council appointing a special committee of the Privy Council to administer the money voted by the Commons. But so unpopular was this step that the House of Lords by a two-thirds majority resolved to present an address of protest, and a like proposal in the Commons was only lost by five votes The annual grant of £30,000 in the Commons was subsequently carried only by two' votes. So nearly did the first beginnings of state education in England come to shipwreck, even after six years' experience. The new Committee of Council (for which there existed a precedent in that Committee which became the Board of Trade) consisted of the Lord President of the Council, the Lord Privy Seal, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Home Secretary, and the Master of the Mint. They proceeded to appoint Dr. Kay (afterwards Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth) as Secretary, and before the end of the year the appointment of the first two H.M. Inspectors was sanctioned. The State Central Administrative Establishment with expert advisers was now an accomplished fact. No Act, however, dealing directly with education was placed upon the Statute Book until 1856, when the Education Department' was founded under this title, and to the 'Educational Establishment of the Privy Council' was added 'The Establishment for the Encouragement of Science and Art', founded in 1836 by the Committee which had since become the Board of Trade. The old Committee of Council on Education |