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a mission or the salaries of those who are responsible for organizing, recruiting, and other kinds of adininistrative work, towards which no contribution is given. A generous system of grants may enak a private agency to extend its educational work and to increase the number of its unaided schools which in turn will laboriously be raised to a grant-earning stage. It would be well, however, to postulate generally that Government grants are not intended to enable any educational body to reduce its educational expenditure within the area to which such grants apply, or to transfer its And educational funds to any other object or to any other area. it may reasonably be required of such bodies, as a condition of grants-in-aid for educational purposes, that they should maintain accounts of educational expenditure in such a form that they can conveniently be summarized and checked, and that these accounts should be open
to inspection by officers of the Education Department.
Classification of Grants.
(7) Grants-in-aid may be considered under two main heads: (a) recurring towards maintenance charges, and (b) non-recurring towards capital expenditure on building and initial equipment.
Maintenance Grants. Periods of Sanction and Educational
Programmes.
(8) If recurring grants can be sanctioned for a definite period of three or more years, it gives a sense of financial stability and encourages the managers to look ahead and frame programmes for development. The amount of grant payable each year of such a period will vary, due allowance being made for expansion, incre- mental salaries, and so on. It is obvious that it may sometimes be difficult for a Government to commit itself for some years in advance to any specified expenditure on grants-in-aid, more par- ticularly when the Budget has to be submitted annually for the approval of a representative assembly. But the absence of a guarantee may impede progress. It is very difficult for missions, for instance, to make necessary recruiting arrangements or to stimulate their home subscribers to further efforts. If educational programmes are discussed beforehand with non-official members of the assembly, and if the educational importance of meeting commitments is emphasized, a reasonable measure of security can be assured.
Need for Elasticity.
(9) While the establishment of general principles for the assess- ment of maintenance grants is clearly desirable, provision should also be made for reasonable elasticity in the application of these principles. For instance, additional help may well be justified
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where a managing body is particularly asked to undertake certain work, or where the work is particularly expensive, owing to the ture of the locality or the kind of pupils, or where, for purely temporary reasons, an agency that has done good work is finan- cially embarrassed. Such elasticity should be secured by a sepa- rate clause in all grants-in-aid codes.
Basis of Calculation. Capitation and Results Grants.
(10) Recurring grants have, in the past, been based either on expenditure or on attendance, or on results, and sometimes on all these three factors in combination. The chief merit of capitation and results grants is the encouragement they offer to the enrolment of pupils and to their proper instruction. It may, however, be assumed that educational bodies which come up to the standard contemplated in paragraph 5 of this Memorandum require no such kind of stimulant or reward. Both kinds of grant are open to the objection that they take inadequate account of expenditure, which, though it secures a good educational atmosphere, does not solely depend on statistics of attendance or on particular methods of study. Moreover, both attendance and results depend to some extent on local conditions not controlled by the management. A desire to improve attendance and results for grant purposes often encourages methods which are educationally unsound. Nor does it seem necessary explicitly to include attendance or results in the items considered for grant assessment. Indirectly, numbers will be considered, in so far as they affect expenditure. It is to be remembered that expenditure on a school of 150 boys, with five classes, is not necessarily more than expenditure on an equally well organized school of 75 boys and the same number of classes.
Efficiency Grants.
(11) In many areas efficiency grants are given in addition to ordinary maintenance grants. It is very difficult, however, for an inspecting officer to determine whether a school deserves a special grant. Standards of efficiency and modes of assessing it vary. There is an inevitable tendency to decide in accordance with examina- tion results, which, if pressed to an extreme, is wrong educationally and may be unfair. Moreover, in so far as efficiency depends on expenditure, the management in any system of grants based on expenditure will receive all the help that is justified by their efforts after efficiency. To give an extra grant seems to imply that the ordinary grant is not such as to justify an expectation that the school will be in all respects efficient, which is inconsistent with the principles suggested in paragraph 4 above. Advocates of effi- ciency grants, on the other hand, urge that they are popular with managing bodies and educationally effective since they stimulate staff and pupils alike to improve by their efforts the financial posi- tion of the school. While expert opinion is decidedly against the
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