CO129-591-3 Education Department- revised grant code 24-10-1945 - 11-12-1945 — Page 89

the reminder.

This might be more efficient but would be vastly

more expensive to Government.

And, once again, there is no way of countering this, even with increased Government control, save by the offering of a substantial Capitation Grant -- which is equivalent to abandoning the "Difference" principle, the kernel of the Government scheme and falling back on a modification of the Grant Schools proposals.

(c) Teachers' Salaries.

In a similar way, with the Government proposals the tendency will naturally be for Managers of Schools to screw up salaries as high as possible, (since Government is going to pay them), and this must naturally lead to strict Government supervision of salaries; whereas in the Grant Schools scheme, adequate ataff salaries are safeguarded, yet it remains to the interest of the Grant schools to save taxpayers' money by running their schools as economically as is consistent with efficiency.

Government Proposals More Expensive.

It is in the light of such considerations that we venture to believe that in the long run for clearly, each of those factors will produce its effect but slowly ), the Government scheme will make considerably more demands on the taxpayers' pocket than our proposals. At present, the actual cost of the Government scheme will, we believe, differ little from that of the Grant School scheme though either of these two schemes now being considered will entail greatly increased expenditure on education compared with the present educational budget. But in the long run the invisible elements which we have noted will, we believe, begin to tell, and will ultimately introduce the usual increased cost of government concerns over private enterprise.

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Two Objections answered.

It may be objected against us at this point that, which we have professed ourselves satisfied with the proposed financial conditions, all our objections to the Government scheme seem to be based on finance. But to object thus is to miss the whole point of our criticism of the Government scheme. We are objecting, not on financial grounds for we recognise the generosity of the Government proposals) but against the increased interference and control whichGovernment's efforts to safeguard itself and to save taxpayers' money must entail. We cannot, in a word, see how any stem by which every item of a school's Income and Expenditure must necessarily be controlled by Government can possibly safeguard the " utmost elasticity in school management" guaranteed to us by His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies.

Now should it be objected against us that in what has been written above is revealed a very low standard of public spirit against the Grant Schools. On the contrary: we are ourselves concerned to point out, before it is passed, the flaws and defects of a faulty law. It is both bad statemanship and bad psychology to pass an imperfect law, which depends for its good interpretation not only on the varying sensitiveness of human conscience but on the equally varying personality of the Director of Education, and then be surprised or disappointed by its interpretation in practice is not all that was intended by the legislator.