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14
Finances and
School Board
Expenditure.
In April last the Board caused the following Memorial to be
addressed to Her Majesty's Government praying for an inquiry into
the policy and expenditure of the School Board for London: —
"To the Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone, First Lord
of the Treasury and Prime Minister.
The Memorial of the Board of Works for the Saint Saviours District
sheweth as follows:—
"Your Memorialists are the "Rating Authority" for the St.
Saviours District, Southwark, in the County of Surrey, within the
meaning of "The Elementary Education Act, 1870"; and, as such,
are charged with the duty of levying and raising the amounts required
by the School Board for London, in respect of the said District.
"The demands made by the School Board from the date of their
establishment to the present time have steadily and enormously increased,
the aggregate sum demanded of the rating authorities for the year ending
Lady-day, 1885, being little short of a million of pounds sterling, of
which sum your Memorialists, by precept dated the 21st February last, are
called upon to contribute £10,261 16s. 0d., being at the rate of 8½d.
in the pound on the rateable value, notwithstanding the assurances given
by Mr. Forster, M.P. and others at the time when the Education Act
was being promoted in Parliament, that the rate would not exceed 3d.
in the pound, and upon the faith of which assurances the Act was
passed.
"Your Memorialists submit that the School Board was established
for the purpose of providing, as set forth in the fifth section of the Act,
in every school district "a sufficient amount of accommodation in public
elementary schools for all the children resident in such
district for whose elementary education efficient and suitable provision
is not otherwise made," in other words, for the purpose of supplementing
the existing schools, not of supplanting them; and that it is contrary
to the spirit and intention of the Act to seek to impart, as the School
Board are doing, a high-class education for which the children are in
many instances unfitted, necessitating the employment of highly-trained
and highly-paid teachers at the expense of the ratepayers.
"Your Memorialists observe with regret that, after making every
allowance for the greater cost of sites in London, the average outlay for
the education of the children taught in the schools of the School Board