396
26
RATIO OF EXPENDITURE TO REVENUE.
90. The following table gives the net expenditure on education, and the pro- portion it bears to the Revenue of the Colony (excluding Sales of Land) in the past ten years :—
Net Expenditure
on Education.
Percentage of Total Revenue.
Year.
1892,.
1893,
1894,
+
1895,
1896,
1897.
2
1898,
1899.....
1900,..
1901
.$74,486
3.29
65,531
3.22
67,372
2.07
47,021
2.37
66,079
2.52
58,906
2.18
1.66
1.24
1.90
1.73 (Estimated.)
- 50,138
47,135.. 50,035 60,663
The percentage of the total Revenue spent on education has always been small and is still decreasing.
91. Adding $34,912, the estimated cost of the proposed increases, to the expen- diture on education for the past year, a total of $95,575 is obtained, a sum less than 23 per cent. on the estimated revenue of 1902 ($4,105,965).
SCHOOL FEES.
92. Where reimbursements by school fees have been counted on in the foregoing calculations, the estimates have been very cautiously made. On this subject the Committee are in agreement with the Indian Education Commission of 1882, section 354 of whose report runs as follows:-
"Policy of the Department in regard to Fees. The advisability of "raising the rates of fees to the highest point consistent with the con- "tinued spread of education has been repeatedly acknowledged. It is, "if not only, yet chiefly, by this means that Government institutions "of the higher class will be enabled to approach the self-supporting stage, a result to which many educational Despatches look for- “ward; and also that privately-managed institutions will attain "to greater efficiency and success.
The policy which
"
we recommend has its natural and necessary limits in the fact that any increase in fees beyond the capacity of the people to pay them will result in a loss of pupils and thus defeat the object "it is intended to secure. *
* We recommend that it be an
(4
6.
**
"instruction to the Departments of the various Provinces to aim at raising fees gradually, cautiously, and with due regard to necessary exemptions up to the highest amount that will not check the spread of education, especially in colleges, secondary schools, and primary “schools in towns where the value of education is understood.”
65
*
Again, in section 194, Recommendations as to Fees, the Commis- sioners write:-"We think it generally desirable that even in primary "schools fees should be raised as far as is consistent with the spread "of education.
The whole educational fund is inade- "quate to the supply of schools for every group of villages, and "those who enjoy the advantage of a school should contribute towards "its cost so as to promote the establishment of similar institutions "elsewhere. But we do not overlook the wants of the struggling
poor, or of exceptionally backward races and tracts.'
(4
The proper policy of the Government towards its poorest subjects is set forth in section 204 of the same report :--
Poor Classes.-
*
***
A poor law is unknown in India,
"The rules of caste enjoin the performance of those charitable duties, "by the performance of which the relief of the destitute is dis-