EDUCATIONAL 
 ADMINISTRATION 
 
 'Two Lectures delivered before the University 
 of Birmingham in February^ ig2i 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR GRAHAM BALFOUR 
 
 Director of Education for Staffordshire 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 
 1921 
 
EDUCATIONAL 
 ADMINISTRATION 
 
 Two Lectures delivered before the Vniversity 
 of Birmingham in February^ 1^21 
 
 BY 
 
 Sir GRAHAM BALFOUR 
 
 Director of Education for Staffordshire 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 
 1921 
 

 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK 
 
 TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY 
 
 HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 , , ; V PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY 
 
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 con- 
 sistency, but adopted for utility and tested by practical 
 experience. This certainly holds good with the educa- 
 tional administration of England, which can hardly be 
 understood without a brief historical survey of the last 
 
 A 2 
 
 4705S8 
 
• • 
 
 >^:[4^:L.fe6uCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 eighty years. By this we shall see why English educa- 
 tion is dealt with by the authorities central and local, 
 and not by independent commissioners or philosophi- 
 cally 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 educa- 
 tion 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 educa- 
 tional 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 parlia- 
 mentary 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 ;^3o,ooo ' 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 181 1 and 1808, 
 the National Society and the British and Foreign School 
 Society. Not to enter too precisely into details, approxi- 
 mately the same amounts and same general method of 
 
PUBLIC AUTHORITIES 5 
 
 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 com- 
 mittee 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 ;^3o,ooo in the Commons was sub- 
 sequently 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 Secretar}^, 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, deahng 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 En- 
 couragement of Science and Art', founded in 1836 b}^ 
 the Committee which had since become the Board of 
 Trade. The old Committee of Council on Education 
 
6 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 continued in existence for another forty years, in nominal 
 charge of the Education Department, but by the new 
 Act the Committee received in 1856 a Vice-President 
 who was henceforth definitely responsible in the House 
 of Commons for the work of the Department. 
 
 It was not until 1899 that an Act was passed sub- 
 stituting for the Committee of Council a Board of 
 Education consisting of a President of its own, the 
 Lord President of Council, the Principal Secretaries 
 of State, the First Lord of the Treasury, and the Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer. There is also a Parliamentary 
 Secretar}^ Exactly what benefit was secured by sub- 
 stituting a Board for a Committee, I have never — as the 
 Irish preacher said — * been able to understand or even 
 to explain ', since both bodies were mere parliamentary 
 figments and had no living existence. 
 
 It is not known whether this Board of Education has 
 ever met, but it is on record that its predecessor, the 
 Committee of Council, did hold at least one meeting 
 in circumstances described by Lord George Hamilton, 
 who was at the time its Vice-President In 1879 Sir 
 Stafford Northcote, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 induced the Duke of Richmond, then President of the 
 Council, to agree to cutting down the Vice-President's 
 Education Estimates without consulting either the Vice- 
 President or Sir Francis Sandford, the Permanent 
 Secretary of the Board. Lord George went to the 
 Prime Minister, Lord Beaconsfield, and made his 
 protest. * He hstened intently, and after a minute's 
 reflection said, " Is there not a thing that you call the 
 Committee of Council upon Education ? " " Yes," I said, 
 '' there is." " Am I on it ? " '' Yes." '' Very well then, tell 
 the Lord President I wish it to be summoned at once." 
 It was summoned, and I should think for the first and 
 
CENTRAL AUTHORITIES 7 
 
 last time in its existence all the official members of this 
 heterogeneous body met. We sat in a semicircle, Lord 
 Beaconsfield in the centre and I at the extreme outside. 
 " I understand", said Lord Beaconsfield, '' that the Vice- 
 President has a statement to make to us/' I then 
 proceeded to state my case as best I could, letting down 
 the Lord President and the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 as much as possible. When I had finished there was 
 a dead silence, whereupon Lord Beaconsfield remarked, 
 '' I move that the Committee of Council upon Education 
 do agree with the Vice-President". There was not 
 a word of opposition to this motion, both the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer and the Lord President looking rather 
 foolish.' Such was the only recorded meeting of the 
 body which for sixty years nominally directed English 
 national education. 
 
 The most recent precedent, or at any rate the closest 
 analogy for the establishment of a Board was in the 
 case of Agriculture in 1889, a Board which has since 
 acquired the up-to-date title of Ministry : it remains to 
 be seen whether the same honour will be bestowed on 
 education and what difference, if any, it will produce. 
 At any rate, whatever other effects may have been 
 produced by the Board of Education Act in 1899, it 
 rendered possible the policy which has been followed 
 ever since 1905 of having the chief official representative 
 of national education in the House of Commons. At 
 first this change seemed only to have substituted for 
 a mere figurehead some active politician with less 
 interest in education than in his own promotion to some 
 more popular office, but in 1917 the opportunity of 
 education came at last, and the nation secured an able 
 and enlightened expert who turned out to be a born 
 parliamentarian. Some of us who have claimed that 
 
8 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 a really good university career fits a man for any known 
 post have been somewhat dismayed to see the application 
 of this theory by the Cabinet in the ubiquitous employ- 
 ment of Mr. Fisher, and questioned within ourselves 
 whether the heaven-sent Minister of Education, who is 
 set to understudy half the Cabinet, is being utilized to 
 the best advantage of the nation. 
 
 To sum up this remarkable history. 
 
 Less than forty years before the decade which saw 
 the institution of a universal compulsory system of 
 education throughout the country, the system of State 
 aid was smuggled in by a money grant, and it was left 
 to the Treasury to let out the public business to two 
 voluntary societies. Even then, after six years of useful 
 work, the House of Commons as nearly as possible 
 dropped the new-born department, while the Lords tried 
 to kill it. It was only the firmness and courage of the 
 Ministry which secured its continuance and its elevation 
 into a State Department by a method which appears 
 altogether unconstitutional. The most surprising thing 
 is that the earliest opposition came not in the years of 
 reaction after the French Revolution, but partly from 
 advanced thinkers and in the first flush of the advance 
 of the Reform Bill. 
 
 Till 1856 there was nominally no Education Depart- 
 ment, and after that until the end of the century the 
 sleeping Committee of Council remained, and was even 
 then only replaced by the equally inactive Board of 
 Education. 
 
 With Parliament rests the credit of having passed the 
 various Education Statutes of the second half of the 
 century as they were needed, but the actual progress 
 was made by the steady administration of the officials to 
 which we must in due course turji our attention. 
 
LOCAL AUTHORITIES 
 
 LOCAL AUTHORITIES— THEIR 
 HISTORY 
 
 But first we must consider the original local authori- 
 ties in education. Local administrators of education,' 
 other than trustees, a hundred years ago there were 
 none. Indeed, it is very curious how imperceptibly 
 that important figure of the latter half of the nineteenth 
 century, the School Manager, steals into existence. In 
 such extracts from the minutes of the Committee of 
 Council as I have been able to consult, I find no refer- 
 ence to him before the end of 1843, while four years 
 later the ' management clauses ' of the Committee were 
 the chief battleground between the central authority 
 and those who had local control of the schools as well 
 as, in most cases, the privilege of paymg for them. In 
 the forties it is interesting to notice that all grants to 
 teachers were made by Post Office orders, payable 
 personally to them, and it was not until the Revised 
 Code of 1861 that payments in respect of teachers were 
 made directly to the Managers. Thus the teachers, 
 who had been on the verge of being civil servants so 
 far as central payments were concerned, were then 
 placed definitely under the local employer who appointed 
 them. 
 
 School Boards were introduced by the Education Act 
 of 1870. They were the first elected public local edu- 
 cation authorities: on them fell the duty of making 
 good the enormous deficiencies in the cities and towns 
 left by the voluntary system. Both Voluntary Managers 
 and School Boards bore the burden and heat of the day. 
 To them is due the credit for much of our present 
 
 A3 
 
lo EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 English education, and to them we who are administer- 
 ing it can never be sufficiently grateful. The School 
 Boards were the first bodies on whom was placed the 
 legal obligation of providing and maintaining elementary 
 school accommodation for the needs of whole districts 
 and of obtaining the necessary amount from the rates. 
 Here the chief points to notice about them are that their 
 adoption was voluntary, that their members were elected 
 ad hoc for the purpose of managing their elementary 
 schools and for nothing else, and that the election was 
 by cumulative vote. 
 
 The Local Government Act, 1888, possessed an im- 
 portance for English education foreseen by few, in 
 providing the machinery for its future administration by 
 the creation of County and County Borough Councils; 
 but already in the following year the next step was 
 taken by the Technical Instruction Act, 1889, entrusting 
 to the new or newly-named authorities what proved 
 powers for higher education ; and yet again, a year later 
 the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act, 1890, 
 furnished these authorities with an unexpected income. 
 In this way the new local authorities began to administer 
 higher education on a small scale, and were not at once 
 overwhelmed by the large mass of elementary education, 
 which was withheld from their charge until 1902. In 
 1902 came the Education Act, the greatness of which 
 may best be judged by the fact that it made the Act of 
 1918 possible : two measures of which probably no one 
 living can hope to see the final result. It linked up the 
 whole system of public education with tKe general 
 democratic system of local government, and in spite of 
 other objections, it has taken deep root in the principles 
 of government upon which it is based. It is perhaps 
 worth noticing that it was eighty years from the very 
 
LOCAL AUTHORITIES ii 
 
 beginning of any official system of education in England 
 before the first statute was enacted which bore the title 
 of Education Act. Elementary Education Acts eight or 
 ten there were, Board of Education Act, Endowed 
 School Acts, Technical Instruction Acts, and Acts 
 dealing with education in various aspects, but until 1902 
 no general Act with the plain and comprehensive title 
 of Education Act, such as was passed for Scotland in 
 1872. 
 
 These at any rate were the legislative origins and 
 transformations of the central and local education 
 authorities of the England of to-day. But great as the 
 progress has been towards unification and the establish- 
 ment of one central controlling authority, there is still 
 much simplification to be done. The powers of the 
 Charity Commission over educational endowments have 
 been transferred to the Board of Education, but the 
 Home Office still exercises a very close control over 
 Reformatories and Industrial Schools : the Ministry of 
 Agriculture has made a wholly unnecessary differentia- 
 tion of agricultural education as a thing apart, and the 
 Ministry of Health, as successor to the Local Govern- 
 ment Board, controls Poor Law Schools and regulates 
 the loans of local education authorities, while on the 
 other hand, the medical service of schools is only linked 
 to the general work of Public Health by a personal 
 connexion. 
 
 Apart from any general scheme for the devolution of 
 domestic self-government to Scotland and Wales, and 
 possibly to provinces of England, it is not probable that 
 any interference will take place with the system by 
 which the local charge of education is entrusted to the 
 boroughs and counties of England. Even were such 
 a sweeping change introduced there would still be 
 
 A4 
 
12 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 needed the dual control of central and local bodies for 
 education in each province : such is the independence 
 of English feeling and the extraordinary differentiation 
 between adjoining areas on the one hand, and such the 
 need on the other for the establishing of a national 
 standard to which the laggards must, in the national 
 interests, conform. For, unfortunately, the splendid 
 independence of England has always claimed the local 
 right to be incompetent, no less than the right to be free. 
 
 CENTRAL AUTHORITIES— BOARD OF 
 EDUCATION 
 
 The position of the Ministers of Education seems to 
 have differed Httle,' if at all, from that of the Ministers 
 of other Departments, except that (if they had minded) 
 it was rather more uncomfortable. Their duties were at 
 once controversial and wearisome. For the administra- 
 tion of education, much more than education itself, seems 
 to have had the power of raising in the breasts of poli- 
 ticians of all parties, more anger, hatred, and uncharitable- 
 ness than any other subject. T. H. Green once said 
 that 'the two 'questions of our time which compete with 
 each other in a reputation for dullness are about the 
 most important that we can discuss. One is the organi- 
 zation of charity, the other the organization of schools.' 
 The subject was full of tedious technicalities, and at the 
 end of the last century a jargon had grown up which, 
 like the slang of the day, has since varied but not dis- 
 appeared. The Duke of Devonshire's question, ^What 
 is an ex-P.T. ?' has become historical, though it is now 
 understood as a condemnation not of the Minister but 
 of the pedant. And the distaste excited in the breast of 
 
CENTRAL AUTHORITIES 13 
 
 successive Ministers may be illustrated by the authentic 
 cri dit coeur from one newly appointed, addressed to an 
 
 old friend, calling on him, * I say, , I never took on 
 
 such a job as this before/ 
 
 But to take Education Ministers as a whole, Presidents, 
 Vice-Presidents, and other Parliamentary representatives 
 of the Committee, the Department, and the Board in the 
 past are but little known and less remembered. I have 
 never seen a complete list of them, and doubt whether 
 one has ever been pubhshed. 
 
 Sir Arthur H. D. Acland made his mark in the early 
 nineties : Bob Lowe — Lord Sherbrooke— somewhat 
 unjustly is known only as the infamous author of the 
 ' Revised Code ' of 1861, which inaugurated the bad 
 years of payment by results : Lord Harrowby, who is 
 well known to Staffordshire as the first and ideal Chair- 
 man of its County Council, was always identified, as 
 Lord Sandon, with the Elementary Education Act, 1876. 
 The Acts of 1870 and 1918 will be inseparably connected 
 with the names of Forster and Fisher, and if the Educa- 
 tion Act of 1902 is not similarly coupled with the name 
 of the then Leader of the House of Commons, w^ho, 
 contrary to precedent, took charge of it,' that will be 
 only because the name of Mr. Balfour has so many 
 other associations of even greater distinction. 
 
 But take them all in all, parliamentary connexion 
 with education has conferred little prestige upon most 
 of its representatives. The reason for this probably is 
 that nearly all of them had little expert knowledge of, 
 and less affection for, their subject before they took it 
 in charge, while the subject itself is not easily made 
 attractive to the House of Commons. The saying has 
 become almost proverbial that 'the most valuable 
 Minister is one who knows nothing about his department 
 
14 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 when appointed'. But this paradox is probably less true 
 of education than of any other branch, possibly for 
 the reason that every educated or semi-educated critic 
 regards himself on the basis of his own experience as 
 an authority on education. Whether or not there is 
 anything in this contention in favour of the expert as 
 Minister, at any rate it is not contradicted by the names 
 most likely to be remembered. How much initiative or 
 driving power any individual may have shown remains 
 a secret between him and the permanent officials. When 
 we come to the permanent officials, we are confronted 
 by another difficulty — the silence of the Civil Service, 
 which is respected not least by the servants of the Board 
 of Education. 
 
 There have been seven Permanent Secretaries — Kay- 
 Shuttleworth, Lingen, Sandford, Cumin, Kekewich, 
 Morant, Selby-Bigge. Of these the first retired early, 
 three of the others went on to other high public service, 
 one died in office, and the other two survive. Seven in 
 eighty years: this is an average of over eleven years 
 each, and it is characteristic that Lord Lingen, who held 
 the post longest — for twenty years — and then went to 
 be Secretary 'of the Treasury, is the one most shadowy 
 to us, the man of whom least seems to be known. Of 
 the first three occupants, however, and their respective 
 shares in building up the work, I at any rate know so 
 little that it is better to say nothing more than that they 
 jointly left a tradition of highmindedness and ability not 
 surpassed by any Government Office of their day. Of 
 the two survivors. Sir George Kekewich has just 
 published his reminiscences, which furnish an account 
 of what he chiefly wishes to be remembered. Sir 
 Amherst Selby-Bigge still retains the office, which he 
 held during the years of the inception and passing of 
 
CENTRAL AUTHORITIES 15 
 
 the 1918 Act, and it will be a grave loss to Education if 
 he does not remain in authority until its administration 
 is well established. 
 
 But of one Secretary, unfortunately for our country, 
 it is now possible to speak without restraint, and with 
 that fuller knowledge which does not come to us until 
 after a man's death. Not only is our knowledge of 
 Robert Morant, of his aims and his work for education, 
 increased, but our tongues are unloosed. * Death hath 
 this also that it openeth the gate to good Fame and 
 extinguisheth Envy. Exstindus amabitur idem! In 
 person and experience one of the most striking figures 
 of our time, he may be said to have spent four lives in 
 the public service. But here we notice him as the 
 official who had most to do with passing the Educa- 
 tion Act of 1902, and then administered it for eight 
 stormy years. He was strong, he was wise, he was 
 resourceful, he was fearless, and he saw far ahead. The 
 man who brought into work the Education Act and the 
 National Insurance Act would not have failed with the 
 Ministry of Health. He was unquestionably the great- 
 est administrator the Board of Education has known. 
 From the notices at the time of his death last year I take 
 three paragraphs : 
 
 * Impossibilities were done, because a man was in 
 charge who had an indomitable spirit, an infectious 
 energy, and a singular capacity for gathering round him 
 a team of younger men whose standard was efficiency. 
 
 'The function of the official was to him that of 
 enabling other men to do real work with the utmost 
 scope for initiative and individuality. 
 
 ' His task was to weave related units into a harmonious 
 system. Characteristically he approached it piecemeal, 
 taking up first one end of the tangle and then another 
 and treating each type of institution as a problem by 
 itself to be solved, or at least put in the way of a solution, 
 
i6 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 before he passed on. He was the greatest of oppor- 
 tunists, moving by instinct rather than by calculation to 
 a goal of unit}^ of which he certainly had an intuitive 
 perception, but of which he always declined to commit 
 himself to a logical definition. He thought logic rather 
 dangerous in public administration. His method was 
 the tentative one of natural growth in itself — the elan 
 vital of evolution.' 
 
 He was a tireless worker, who often laboured on 
 undisturbed through the small hours of the morning, 
 and he established in his department a tradition of hard 
 work which once for all made ridiculous the old jokes 
 about the Civil Service ' playing like the fountains in 
 Trafalgar Square from 12 to 4'. As well apply the old 
 ribaldry about the Volunteers of 1859 to the Territorials 
 of the Great War. 
 
 Progress in the methods of dealing with education 
 has been gradual and progressive, but is with difficulty 
 associated with any one name. 
 
 In the first decade of this century the Board separated 
 the administration of secondary and of technical schools, 
 the staff of the Endowed Schools Department of the 
 Charity Commission being transferred for this purpose ; 
 the inspection of science schools and art schools was 
 likewise divided ; the Medical Department was started ; 
 the Universities Department (including Training of 
 Teachers) materialized, while Wales has steadily tended 
 towards complete separation. These developments have 
 materially increased the staff of the Board, but not at 
 all out of proportion to the work done and the growth 
 of population. Between 1883 and the present time the 
 population must have increased by 50 per cent., while 
 the increase of Elementary H.M. Inspectors in England 
 and Wales (apart from women inspectors) is only 15 per 
 cent. The general policy of the Board tends steadily 
 
CENTRAL AUTHORITIES 17 
 
 more to education and less to mere administration than 
 in former days. The encouragement of improved 
 methods in schools, beginning in the nineties, reached 
 a further stage in the Suggestions for Teachers which 
 are now an established declaration of its programme. 
 
 To turn to smaller matters — as Morant said, no detail 
 in administration is ever insignificant, and even if 
 regularity and accuracy are humble virtues I should 
 like to testify that I can hardly remember any letter 
 having been lost by the Board, or any failure to reply 
 to a letter. But far beyond this is the maintenance of 
 a high tradition of correspondence. One of the most 
 wonderful things about the Board to my mind is the 
 way in which, if the}^ do not suffer fools gladly, they at 
 least answer provoking correspondents politely and with- 
 out repartee. Among the many sharp-witted servants of 
 the Board there must have been some for whom the 
 temptation to sarcasm and epigram must have been 
 almost irresistible, and yet somehow or other the answer 
 has in my experience always been of the kind that 
 turneth away wrath. 
 
 No change during the last twenty and especially 
 during the last ten years has been greater than in the 
 attitude of their staff to local officials. I remember in my 
 early days as a Director of Education being in the Board 
 one day and thinking that it would be in the interests 
 of Staffordshire education if I could have a few minutes' 
 talk on rather general points with the high official in 
 general charge of our schools. I was admitted to the 
 great man's presence and received with the dignified 
 courtesy of one ill at ease and honestly puzzled as to 
 what on earth I wanted. Whatever I may have wanted, 
 all that I got was an assurance that if I would make 
 a written application to him specifying the exact point 
 
 A5 
 
i8 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 on which I required information, he would be very glad 
 to make an appointment. A few months later I was 
 discussing the Area in general and receiving all the 
 advice and help I wanted from a less inflexible successor 
 who appreciated his opportunity and my needs. Nor 
 have I failed ever since to receive the same consideration, 
 not in the least that I had any special influence or intro- 
 duction, but when two people are keen on the same 
 work, I have never found that they discover any 
 reluctance in discussing its possibilities. 
 
 This is only typical of the general willingness of the 
 chief officers of the Board to receive both deputations 
 and individuals. In former days such readiness was 
 supposed to be reserved for those who could bring the 
 power of special organizations to bear : has it not been 
 written of those times that ' Satan trembles when he 
 sees the weakest of the N.U.T.'s'? But now the 
 doors readily open to great and small, and within the 
 last five years the practice has been established of 
 placing at any rate two or three local officials upon 
 various Special Departmental Committees of the Board. 
 And never before has there been such a general over- 
 hauling of the amount and methods of instruction in 
 Higher Education as was and is being carried out by 
 the important Committees on Science, Modern Subjects, 
 English and Classics, on all of which local officials were 
 included. 
 
 The chief method of control by the Board over local 
 authorities has been by the method of grants. ' If you 
 do this, half the expenditure wall be met by the Board 
 If you do not do that, the Board will not be able to pay 
 your grant in full.' These inducements and threats, 
 explained and supported by codes and regulations, are 
 practially all the coercion which the State can use, but 
 
CENTRAL AUTHORITIES 39 
 
 once a local authority has begun to rely upon the 
 regular receipt of such subsidies, it has seldom had 
 the strength to reject them. It is difficult to see what 
 other form of penalty is available. Nothing could be 
 more simple than to withhold a grant; anything less 
 negative would have a positive air of tyranny which 
 would give the recalcitrant a better chance of undeserved 
 redress from the House of Commons. A grant ought 
 to be given on simple conditions which are clearly 
 understood, and which cannot be evaded. There ought 
 to be no doubt about the amount earned and no delay 
 from one financial year to another in payment. In 
 criticizing Grant Regulations it is only fair to remember 
 that experience has shown that there are authorities 
 against whom it is necessary to erect an unclimbable 
 iron fence, and when that is needed, it is not reasonable 
 to complain of the number of iron spikes upon it. 
 
 The Deficiency Grant has attracted so much attention 
 of late that I must not leave it without a further word. 
 Though well known to the Ministries of Agriculture 
 and of Health, and first reaching Education in grants 
 for medical inspection, it made its first public appearance 
 in Education proper in the Act of 1918, which laid 
 down that the total grants to each local education 
 authority in both higher and elementary education 
 ' shall be not less than one half of the net expenditure 
 of the authority recognized by the Board of Education 
 as expenditure in aid of which parliamentary grants 
 should be made to the authority '. 
 
 The chief difficulty with regard to it seems to be that 
 the Deficiency Grant does not fulfil the conditions I 
 have laid down. It is simple and clear enough — pound 
 for pound— but there seemed to be, at the end of nearly 
 two years, great doubt about the amount earned for 
 
 a6 
 
20 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 Higher Education 1920-1, and even that for 1919-20, 
 which had not yet been finall}' paid. Consequently, the 
 grant is certainly difficult of estimation, until its orbit 
 can be calculated from actual experience. Nor is it yet 
 known whether an authority will be able to learn for 
 what part of its original estimate or claim the Deficiency 
 Grant may in practice have been withheld. Already it is 
 offered to us in Higher Education as a substitute for 
 all substantive grants, and perhaps experience will bring 
 the necessary element of certainty. 
 
 LOCAL AUTHORITIES-COUNCILS AND 
 EDUCATION COMMITTEES 
 
 We now turn to the Local Education Authorities, the 
 County and Borough Councils and their executive 
 bodies for education, the Education Committees of the 
 Act of 1902. 
 
 As we all know, that Statute required the Council 
 in each County and County Borough to estabhsh an 
 Education Committee for deahng with Higher and 
 Elementary Education, on which the Council shall 
 appoint a majority of the members, but in which per- 
 sons with experience in education and women must be 
 included. The Committee has to be appointed in 
 accordance with a Scheme made by the Council and 
 approved by the Board of Education, but considerable 
 latitude has been allowed to the various Councils in 
 carrying out their own ideas. All matters relating to 
 education must stand referred to the Education Com- 
 mittee by the Council, who must consider their report 
 before taking action, but the delegation of powers by 
 the Councils to the Committees differed very consider- 
 ably, especially among the County Boroughs. 
 
LOCAL AUTHORITIES 3i 
 
 The points I have mentioned are common to Counties 
 and County Boroughs, but both in the controlling 
 Statute and still more in actual practice there are points 
 of divergence. There is only one matter (so far as 
 I know) in which the Act assimilates the practice of 
 Boroughs to that of the Counties — the audit of education 
 accounts by the Government Auditor instead of by the 
 auditors appointed by the Boroughs themselves for all 
 their other public accounts. 
 
 Of the differences between County Boroughs and 
 Counties in educational administration, a few are under 
 statute, but most, as we shall see, arise from difference 
 of conditions. Under the Act of 1902 Counties have 
 to appoint (in conjunction with the local authority) 
 Managers for the Council Schools, whether singly or 
 in groups, while certain limitations were imposed on 
 Counties with regard to rates, though these have mostly 
 been rendered optional or removed. For capital expen- 
 diture or rent in elementary education Counties had 
 to charge not less than half or more than three-quarters 
 of the amount on the parishes specially served. This 
 has now become permissive, and in Staffordshire no 
 such charge is made either for elementary or higher 
 education. The County rate for higher education might 
 not formerly, without special permission of the Local 
 Government Board, exceed twopence in the pound, but 
 this limit has been removed, though the similar penny 
 limit for urban districts still survives as a necessary part 
 of their subordination to the local authority for higher 
 education. 
 
 But the chief determining factor in the administration 
 of local education authorities is the size and homogeneity 
 of their Areas. In a County Borough all parts of the 
 area are readily accessible, and it is comparatively 
 
22 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 easy for members of the Education Committee to attend 
 meetings on most days in the week : at any rate, they 
 have not to set apart one da}^ in seven for a pilgrimage. 
 Even where the County Town is central and the railway 
 system conveniently arranged, the outside ring of the 
 County area may be thirty miles away, and those mem- 
 bers of the public who have the spirit to serve on 
 Councils and Committees will find it costly and laborious 
 to attend at the centre on more than one or possibly 
 two days in the week. The County Committee has to 
 deal with towns of moderate size, with mining districts 
 neither town nor country, with villages large and small, 
 and with almost trackless solitudes. Nor would it mend 
 matters to separate the outlying districts and leave them 
 to themselves, as the experience of the small Country 
 School Boards has shown. 
 
 As with the Committees so with the scholars. In 
 a County Borough such is usually the density of popu- 
 lation that it is looked on as a hardship if a child has 
 a mile to go to the elementary school, so the journey of 
 the secondary scholar and univ^ersity student is propor- 
 tionately diminished. Also it is more practicable and 
 more profitable to differentiate one's institutions, when 
 it is feasible to fill each of these with the appropriate 
 kind of pupil only. Whenever I come into a County 
 Borough I feel like Lazarus, and only hope that Dives 
 is sufficiently appreciating his opportunities and ad- 
 vantages. In the country it is not an unheard-of thing 
 for a child to have to travel three miles daily from his 
 home to the school, where on his arrival he will find 
 a scanty band of fellow-pupils and perhaps only a couple 
 of teachers with no very outstanding quahfications. 
 These difficulties are reflected in the work of the 
 Committee, and seriousty affect the organization of the 
 
LOCAL AUTHORITIES 23 
 
 schools. The mobiHty of the teaching staff in Counties 
 is relatively small. A teacher in a County Borough 
 is available, apart from denominational difficulties, for 
 almost any school in the whole area. In a County, 
 Beersheba school may be over-staflfed, while the Dan 
 School is on the point of closing, and yet it may be 
 impossible to effect the transfer of a single teacher. 
 But so long as Town and Country continue to 
 exist, and until the whole of England is covered with 
 evenly distributed garden cities, so long shall we have 
 to make shift to administer our areas to the best of our 
 abilities. 
 
 To return to the Committees themselves, County 
 Councils being representative of larger areas have more 
 members than Town Councils, and this is reflected 
 in the size of the Education Committees. In actual 
 practice the County Committees are appointed for three 
 years, the duration of the life of the Council, while in 
 the County Boroughs they are reappointed every 
 3'ear. It is open to each Committee, subject to the 
 directions of its Council, to appoint such and as many 
 Sub-Committees as it thinks fit, each consisting wholly 
 or partly of members of the Committee. In Counties 
 this has largely been used for the purposes of School 
 Attendance, and also in some areas for the more impor- 
 tant purpose of delegation of powers and increase of 
 local control. The Sub-Committees as a rule seem to 
 be much the same in Town and Country: Finance, 
 Higher and Elementary Education, Staffing, School 
 Attendance, and Medical Inspection : Sitesand Buildings, 
 and the government of special institutions are the normal 
 subjects allocated, while in Counties Agricultural Edu- 
 cation provides a good deal of work, if this is not 
 allocated to the new Agricultural Committees. 
 
24 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 The only unusual feature in the Staffordshire Scheme 
 ^ of 1903 is the constitution of three so-called ' Geo- 
 graphical' Sub-Committees for North, Mid, and South 
 Staffordshire, each of which deals, subject to confirmation 
 by the full Committee, with the detailed work of both 
 Higher and Elementary Education in its own portion of 
 the County. Every member, according to his residence 
 or his interests, is placed on one of these three, and the 
 other standing Sub-Committees are constituted by the 
 appointment of the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of 
 North, Mid, and South, and of three other members 
 elected by each of these Geographical Sub-Committees, 
 a thoroughly democratic method of appointment. 
 
 The number of members on Committees varies under 
 different authorities. Lord Palmerston said that the 
 best Committee was one of three members, if two of 
 them stayed away, and there is no doubt that this is true 
 where prompt and certain action is necessar}^ In 
 practice the principle is usually recognized by allowing 
 large discretionary power to the Chairman of the 
 Committee and also to the Chairmen of Sub-Committees. 
 In a County Area there is a natural tendency to appoint 
 quite small Minor Sub- Committees, having special know- 
 ledge of the circumstances and locality, to visit and 
 report upon any special difficulty, and this leads to the 
 exercise of that personal contact, which it is the first 
 object of a local authority to achieve. 
 
 The chief difficulty in general Committee work is the 
 rapidly increasing calls on the time of the Chairman and 
 of the ablest members for public work. Not only has 
 the bulk of Education and Public Health work rapidly 
 increased, but the establishment of bodies for dealing 
 with Pensions, Insurance, Tuberculosis, and Territorials 
 has made it difficult for any members to co-ordinate 
 
LOCAL AUTHORITIES 25 
 
 the work of several Committees (which is in itself most 
 desirable) or to give to any one Committee that un- 
 swerving and continuous attendance which is the indis- 
 pensable condition of good public service. The member 
 with special knowledge or qualifications is invaluable 
 on occasion; but reliable attendance is the chief of all 
 virtues which nothing can replace. 
 
 The pressure of work causes this further difficulty. 
 So limited is the time, so great the concentration, and 
 so urgent the need for reducing the presentation of 
 business within the shortest possible space and for taking 
 it at top speed, that it is difficult even for experienced 
 members to realize how many difficulties have been 
 smoothed away, how much economy has been already 
 effected in estimates and proposals before they reach 
 each Sub-Committee concerned. It is expedient to 
 mention occasionally a few typical reductions and to 
 acknowledge good offices in reaching a settlement, 
 but the effect is not the same, and critics who would be 
 well satisfied if they had been through all the stages 
 themselves are too little impressed by a mere lightning 
 summary or abstract of them, if there is time even for 
 this. The sick hurry and divided aims in modern life, 
 of which we have been complaining now for nearly 
 a century, are to blame for this result also, that work 
 so compressed has very little interest for those who 
 merely have to gulp it down, and pemmican is not an 
 exhilarating diet. 
 
 To return to the Committee, the crown of Committee 
 work is the Chairman. From the very qualities which 
 cause him to be chosen, he is the natural leader of the 
 Committee, and to the prestige given him by his ability 
 and force of character he adds the authority resulting 
 from the knowledge of detail and familiarity with, his 
 
 A 7 
 
26 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 subject which come from his continuous attendance and 
 constant attention to business. 
 
 Of the arts of Chairmanship it is not for me to speak. 
 There is one method for dispatch of business, another 
 for encouraging discussion, another for knotting up 
 contentions and securing unanimity by an instinctive 
 perception of the general sense of the meeting. To 
 keep the members interested and informed with regard 
 to the policy and progress of the Committee is one of 
 the greatest services he can render. There is the work 
 that is not done in the Chair, the perpetual vigilance 
 and concern for education, the securing of likely recruits, 
 and the conciliation of interests ; there is the support of 
 officials, and when necessary the faithful dealing with 
 them as a friend. These may be accompanied with 
 varying degrees of eloquence or persuasiveness, but in 
 the end it is character and reliability that retain the 
 leadership of a body whose votes may vary but whose 
 ministers do not go in and out of office. Besides the 
 Chairman of the full Committee, judicious appointment 
 of Chairmen and Vice-Chairmen of Sub-Committees 
 greatly increases the strength of the Committee in 
 debate and leads to solidarity. Members with special 
 subjects, or at any rate special responsibilities, take 
 increased interest in their work, which often assumes a 
 different aspect when seen from the Chair and not from 
 the private member's seat. I feel that in dealing with 
 the topic of Committees and Chairman I may be looked 
 on as walking in slippery places, but I have no unfriendly 
 criticism to offer. To the three splendid Chairmen and to 
 the hundred and more members of my Committee under 
 whom I have served I can never be sufficiently grateful 
 for their unvarying kindness and support. Of officials 
 and their work I propose to speak later. Of their 
 
LOCAL AUTHORITIES 27 
 
 power and influence with the Committee it is not for me 
 to express any opinion. I could only say with the Admir- 
 able Crichton in the play, ' Nature will decide '. But in 
 that very remarkable but too little-known book, The 
 Government of England, by the President of Harvard, 
 published in 1908, there is the following passage : 
 
 ' Great stress has been laid upon the influence of 
 permanent officials, and its importance in promoting the 
 efficiency of administration. Now it must have been 
 evident to any one who had personal knowledge of 
 school management before 1902, that as a rule the 
 influence of the permanent officials was much less than 
 in other branches of local government. In an occasional 
 town, indeed, a clerk of the board, or some other officer, 
 was a real superintendent of education, but more 
 commonly he was little more than a head clerical officer, 
 the appointment of teachers and the management of 
 schools being really done by the elected members of the 
 board. This would seem to account in part for the 
 long period that it took the schools to grow to maturity, 
 even under the strong pressure of the Education 
 Department. Here the Act of 1902 worked a great 
 change, as any one travelling through the country a few 
 years later could not fail to perceive. Owing to the fact 
 that the members of the representative bodies who now 
 control education are not selected for any special know- 
 ledge of the subject, and owing stiU more to the fact 
 that they are busy with other affairs, the influence of the 
 permanent officials in the schools has greatly increased, 
 their position becoming much more like that of the 
 officers in other branches of local government.' 
 
 The direct relation of Teachers to the Education 
 Committee and especially their representation and co- 
 operation are most important if only because they are in 
 close and constant touch with the children, and more- 
 over still have a good deal of administration, especially 
 as head masters or head mistresses. 
 
 Our County practice has been to have two representa- 
 
 A 8 
 
28 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 tives of Secondary and two of Elementary Teachers as 
 full members of the Education Committee, and most 
 helpful they have been. We had a number of con- 
 ferences on matters of teaching before the war and were 
 very ready to receive teachers' deputations, but it was 
 only in 1920 that a Joint Advisory Committee for 
 Elementary Education came into being. This has six 
 members on each side, the Chairman of the Education 
 Committee is ex officio Chairman, and the Secretary of 
 the Teachers' Association and the Director are repre- 
 sentatives on their respective sides. A year's experience 
 of its working, including a discussion of the Provisional 
 and present Burnham Scales, has been wholly favourable. 
 There is as yet no similar Committee on the secondary 
 side, but there have been conferences to which the 
 heads of the whole of the schools serving the County, 
 whether from inside or outside, have been invited, and 
 at which they have nearly all been present. It remains 
 to be seen how best to keep in touch with the Secondary 
 assistant staff. 
 
 The principal difficulty in a County Area is to give to 
 the teachers an adequate share not only in controlling 
 but in making arrangements for their own schools, 
 especially when their schools are combined in a large 
 group under the charge of a body of Managers. In a 
 single school any head teacher who is fitted for it usually 
 obtains his full share of influence. If, however, there 
 are a dozen schools in a group, the Managers, who are 
 probably the heirs and successors of an important 
 School Board, cannot invite the dozen heads to be 
 present simultaneously and hear one another's intimate 
 affairs discussed and confidential explanations given. 
 Where any appointments of staff are being made and 
 an}^ imusual and important inquiry is on foot, the head, 
 
LOCAL AUTHORITIES 29 
 
 of the school concerned usually is, and always should 
 be, called in. But there are many variations short of this, 
 and we are now trying a voluntary system by which an 
 elected representative of the whole staff of the grouped 
 schools may attend. 
 
 In a neighbouring County I hear that five Advisory 
 Committees of teachers have been set up, covering the 
 whole County, and to them reports and suggestions for 
 the schools in their area are submitted and left for them 
 to deal with. But in this arrangement Managers are, 
 I understand, not included. 
 
 I have referred to the difficulty of increasing the 
 powers of Head Teachers at the expense of the 
 Managers, and this involves a very real problem— viz., 
 how to allow sufficient power to the Managers of elemen- 
 tary schools and the Governors of secondary schools to 
 keep them interested in the work, if the local authority 
 are to maintain anything like a reasonably uniform 
 standard of expenditure in local payments. 
 
 In Staffordshire nearly all our secondary schools are 
 now maintained by the County and governed by bodies 
 of Governors under Schemes : the finance is based on 
 their annual estimates approved by the Education Com- 
 mittee, which may not be exceeded without express 
 permission. But the coming of the Burnham Secondary 
 Scale for Heads ^ and Assistants in these schools has 
 necessarily removed from the Governors another instal- 
 ment of responsibility and in one more particular has 
 made any variation between school and school im- 
 practicable. 
 
 So far I have, like the Education Acts, accepted 
 things as they are and made no suggestion of probable 
 alterations in the present distribution of authorities. 
 * So far as minima are concerned. 
 
30 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 There have been numerous proposals for the grouping 
 of authorities for higher education, but from my experi- 
 ence it would be very unwise to go beyond the present 
 system of Part III Authorities for elementary education 
 and the optional powers of combination of Counties and 
 County Boroughs. Staffordshire has done more, I 
 believe, than any other County in combining with its 
 neighbouring authorities : with Dudley and Wolverhamp- 
 ton for existing High Schools and prospective Technical 
 Colleges, with Stoke for the Pottery and Mining School 
 and in part for a Blind and Deaf School, and with 
 Shropshire and Warwickshire in the Harper Adams 
 Agricultural College. These alliances seem to work 
 well enough in the maintenance of institutions with 
 governing bodies. 
 
 So far as joint elementary schools are concerned it 
 has not appeared to us worth while to establish com- 
 bined bodies of Managers, but the control of each such 
 school is left to one of the two authorities concerned, 
 a financial adjustment on a simple basis being made 
 each year. 
 
 There was for several years an Agricultural Provincial 
 Advisory Council between the Counties of Salop, Stafford, 
 and Warwick, started at the instance of the Board of 
 Agriculture, and this proved in my experience (and I 
 was Secretary) to be wholly unreal. Each County went 
 its own way and allowed its two neighbours to go 
 theirs, forming their own schemes and working by their 
 own officers. There was no disagreement ; the parties 
 were most friendly and complaisant, but the net result 
 of co-operation was to appoint one farrier instructor, 
 whose services were shared by the three partners. If it 
 had ever come to one authority insisting on the estab- 
 lishment of a joint institution within its own borders, 
 
LOCAL AUTHORITIES 31 
 
 or of precedence being given to one farm school over 
 another, I fancy that the harmony would soon have been 
 broken. But the war came, and after the war this combi- 
 nation disappeared with the full approval of the Ministr}'-, 
 and each County is working as before. 
 
 There was at one time a great eagerness on the part 
 of some reformers for the establishment of large pro- 
 vinces for Higher Education, each containing several 
 Counties and, I suppose, County Boroughs. I have the 
 greatest possible admiration for Chairmen, but I do not 
 believe that Counties would readily submit to be ruled 
 by one another's Chairman, and still less by one another's 
 officials. A similar proposal was once I believe made of 
 forming the smaller colleges at Cambridge into several 
 groups. A don of one of these colleges received the 
 suggestion with a shudder and said, ' It reminds me of 
 the Roman punishment for parricide ', in which, you 
 may remember, the criminal was put into a sack with 
 an ape, a dog, a cock, and a snake, and was thrown into 
 the Tiber. I am afraid the local education authorities 
 would not have accepted their scheme with more 
 enthusiasm, while a proposal to have a central provincial 
 body for Higher Education, leaving Elementary education 
 only to each County and County Borough Authority, 
 would have been even more distasteful. 
 
 Local authorities can send representatives or individual 
 officers to attend Advisor}^ or Consultative Committees 
 with excellent results in the diffusion of knowledge and 
 in the gradual formation of policy, but the ruling powers 
 are after all those who are legally constituted and who 
 possess the power of the purse. They will not give up 
 to one another nor delegate any but strictly limited 
 expenditure to subordinate bodies. And I may add they 
 are extremely loth to make grants over which they cease 
 
32 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 to have any control — except in the case of universities or 
 colleges of established position and fully recognized 
 efficiency. An authority is in fact unwilling to be 
 regarded and treated as merely a milch cow. 
 
 There is another point I should like to add. We hear 
 a great deal at the present time of the Burnham 
 Committees on Scales of Salaries, and both local 
 authorities and teachers have good reasons to be grate- 
 ful to their representatives on these bodies for the 
 strenuous and valuable work they have done. But 
 while we all recognize a need for a certain uniformity, 
 it will be a great misfortune for education if the need for 
 abohshingcompetition in salaries between local authorities 
 leads to depriving them of any power for making those 
 educational variations which are the soul of local 
 administration. 
 
 It will be a heavy price to pay for financial peace, if 
 uniformit}^ of payment and not variety of Education is 
 to be the chief result. 
 
 Of the Autonomous Areas for Part III I have no time 
 to speak, nor of the Continuation Schools, of which as 
 yet I know nothing, nor of Juvenile Employment and 
 its Care Committees, nor of School Circulating Libraries, 
 due in Counties to the liberality of the Carnegie Trustees. 
 I have time only for a brief reference to the relation of 
 Local Education Authorities to the University of their 
 district. 
 
 It should be clear to all of us that in every province 
 of England there should be a Centre of Higher Educa- 
 tion for students of eighteen and upwards, for advanced 
 teaching in all subjects, not only for science applied to 
 those industries which are so vital to our welfare, and 
 without which we cannot afford to build and maintain 
 Universities, but in pure science, and in those abstract 
 
LOCAL AUTHORITIES 33 
 
 studies of histor}^ and literature and philosophy and 
 religion by which the mind of man transcends his 
 material limitations, and by which alone he is able to 
 fulfil his destiny. 
 
 If the University discharges these functions with any 
 approach to success, it will provide light and leading for 
 the district, including the surrounding Counties : all will 
 look to it, all will receive from it nourishment for the 
 mind and spirit. 
 
 It is still common in the darker places to hear 
 assertions that there is no relation between Universities 
 and elementary teachers, that secondary schools are not 
 for the workers, and other like fallacies, due to ignorance 
 of what has been done and what is being done. Not 
 only should the teachers in Elementary, Secondary, and 
 Continuation Schools be its graduates, and have aims 
 and studies beyond the immediate requirements of their 
 pupils, but from it should come a plentiful supply of 
 extra-mural teaching in the closest connexion with the 
 work of the local education authorities. And if these 
 benefits are to be given out, the means of providing them 
 should be found by the areas which will benefit. In 
 return for such assistance will come increased repre- 
 sentation and more intimate connexion. The stage of 
 isolation and inward growth is, I hope, over, and I, for 
 one, warmly welcome the coming of expansion and 
 inclusion. 
 
EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 II 
 
 LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATION 
 AND THE PERSONAL ELEMENT 
 
 We have seen how Central and Local Education 
 Authorities were established in England during the last 
 century : how the form of the local control of education 
 was settled by Parliament, how a national pohcy is 
 provided and its continuity secured. We have seen how 
 the local Education Committees carry out the laws and 
 central regulations, how the mixture of popular election 
 and co-option of special representatives provides the 
 necessary blend of popular control and special knowledge 
 for the working of a highly technical subject. 
 
 We now come to the immediate administration by the 
 officials ; the work, as I prefer to regard it, of shouldering 
 the burden of the teachers. These should be set free 
 to educate with as few hindrances as possible, not only 
 to give instruction, but to use their expert knowledge 
 and their intimate acquaintance with the children so as 
 to build up that development, moral, intellectual, and 
 physical, which is the aim of education as a whole, 
 intended to turn out citizens efficient, happy, wise, just, 
 and good. 
 
 Perhaps before now we should have sought a clear 
 definition of the object of Educational Administration, 
 
36 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 I suggest that it is: To enable the right pupils to re- 
 ceive the right education from the right teachers, at a 
 cost within the means of the State, under conditions 
 which will enable the pupils best to profit by their 
 training. 
 
 The first point to notice about this definition is that 
 it contains no reference to committees or their officials, 
 and that it subordinates even teachers to pupils. This 
 is entirely as it should be. Education is for the pupils 
 first and last : all the rest of us are their servants. The 
 second point open to criticism is its vagueness. Who 
 are the right pupils? what is the right education? who 
 are the. right teachers ? what are the conditions ? what 
 the possible cost ? 
 
 In the first place these questions remind me of a talk 
 on education given by Ruskin to a girls' society at Oxford. 
 He began with ' First of all I would have you taught 
 common sense'. To which Miss Maggie Benson, the 
 Archbishop's daughter, replied * in her very quiet voice', 
 'And how would you begin?' And Mr. Ruskin said: 
 * My dear young lady, I cannot tell you.' My answer, how- 
 ever, is that these are not the problems before us. They 
 have been settled rightly or wrongly, or will be settled 
 in the Committees' Schemes submitted to the Board : 
 and before the Schemes existed, the questions had been 
 answered, for the time being, implicitly and provisionally, 
 by the practice of each authority. 
 
 It is, of course, not an infrequent experience to hear 
 members of committees complaining that the last thing 
 which is ever discussed at Education Committee Meetings 
 is Education, and that they are always settling contracts 
 for stationery and the wages of school cleaners. There 
 is to this the further answer that the only place where edu- 
 cational theories can be worked out is in the school itself; 
 
LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATION 37 
 
 experiments are best left to the teachers and inspectors 
 who are in personal contact with the pupils, and that 
 problems which would first have to be explained to 
 ordinary laymen would not be likely to receive a very 
 satisfactory solution at their hands. This is in no way 
 inconsistent with the fact that it is the duty of the Com- 
 mittee to require a broad and liberal curriculum for all 
 stages of education, one which cannot be confined solely 
 to converting children into cheap labour or useful hands 
 when they leave school. It is equally the duty of 
 Directors to keep abreast of the professional theories of 
 the day so that we may be ready to afford intelligent and 
 sympathetic help to new developments as they pass into 
 practice. Committees cannot be too ready to provide 
 facilities for teachers to attend conferences and lectures, 
 and above all refresher courses, and it will be a good 
 thing for English schools when the sabbatical year, or 
 even the occasional term's leave on full pay is given as 
 a matter of course to teachers to enable them to widen 
 their experience and keep their souls alive. 
 
 We have seen what the work of the Chairman and 
 Committee is: it is now for us to consider how their 
 directions are to be carried out from day to day both 
 in the office and throughout the area. The principle of 
 managing a County Office is necessarily much the same 
 as that laid down by Sir George Cornewall Lewis for 
 a Government Department. ' It is not the business of 
 a Cabinet Minister to work his department. It is his 
 business to see that it is properly worked.' Something 
 depends on the circumstances, but in most Counties 
 I take it that a Chairman leaves the detailed administra- 
 tion in the hands of the Director. 
 
 Close contact with facts is the first need in any dis- 
 cussion on principles of administration. I need hardly 
 
38 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 apologize for taking my illustrations and references from 
 my own experience of nearly twenty years in Stafford- 
 shire. 
 
 I have already mentioned the division of our work 
 and its delegation to Sub-Committees, which differ 
 but little from Sub-Committees elsewhere. I now 
 turn to the Office Staff in Stafford. In addition to 
 Clerks to Council Schools and to School Attendance 
 Committees (few of whom are whole time Officers) and 
 to School Attendance Officers scattered over the County, 
 in the Stafford Office the staff numbers about fifty, 
 chiefly men and boys, with a certain number of girls 
 who were, however, not employed before the war except 
 in the Medical Inspection Department! The lads have 
 largely come from the Grammar School, generally with 
 a strong recommendation from the head master of their 
 previous elementary school. The work is necessarily 
 divided into clerical and administrative, and all the 
 administrative officers except the Director have been 
 teachers. But so far as the clerical staff come into 
 contact with the outside world, and entirely within the 
 office, there is the same aim to secure for them the spirit 
 which is required of all the senior officials. 
 
 There is no one method of organizing an Education 
 Office, which may be affected in many ways by its 
 surroundings and by the control of the other officers of 
 the Council. At Stafford the Technical Instruction 
 work had created an Education Office (since enlarged) 
 a quarter of a mile away from the County Buildings, 
 and though the Clerk of the County is Clerk of the 
 Education Committee (which ranks, except for its 
 Scheme, with the other Committees of the Council), yet 
 the problem of granting all necessary independence to 
 the Director, who at the same time is afforded the most 
 
LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATION 39 
 
 ready assistance by all Departments, has been very 
 happily solved. 
 
 We have Departments for Higher (including Secondary 
 and Technical) and Elementary Education, with Works 
 and Medical Inspection serving both. Accounts, by an 
 accident of origin, are partly separated for Higher and 
 Elementary, and are of necessity connected also with 
 the County Accountant's Office. School Attendance, 
 Juvenile Employment, and School Libraries are each 
 under separate management. 
 
 Into the detailed arrangements of any of these I do 
 not propose to go : the Accounts are for various reasons 
 the most complicated. In addition to the division I have 
 mentioned, the Chief Educational Paymaster is the 
 Manager of the Bank from which the cheques are 
 issued : our whole system being devised to pass the 
 accounts through as many hands and provide as many 
 controls as possible, and as few opportunities for the 
 possible frauds of single individuals or of very small 
 groups. 
 
 In the methods of carrying on business the conduct of 
 any public office cannot be judged in the same way as 
 if the office belonged to a private firm or person. ' More 
 writing is done/ says Mr. Lowell, ' more things are 
 preserved and recorded than in a private business, and 
 there are more steps in a single transaction.* Any 
 individual member of the Committee may challenge the 
 accuracy of a minute or seek to have it rescinded, and 
 complete correspondence or precis of negotiations may 
 have to be produced : and there is always the Govern- 
 ment Auditor to be satisfied. 
 
 The storage of records and other old papers is a 
 serious question, as the sifting of them can only be done 
 by highly responsible officials, whose time is more 
 
40 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 urgently required for other purposes. Probably the 
 only expedient is a time limit for old correspondence, but 
 I am not prepared yet to say what that limit should be. 
 
 In the mechanical equipment of our office full employ- 
 ment is made of typewriters, duplicators, files, card- 
 indexes, addressographs, and other machines so far as 
 they can be kept in regular work and justify their cost 
 and upkeep. Motor cars and motor bicycles for rapid 
 transit — we have none of our own— are regarded with 
 varying degrees of favour, as saving time but increasing 
 expenditure and hurry. Among the equipment of a 
 County Office, sets of ordnance maps of an inch and six 
 inches to the mile (or even in some cases the five-and- 
 twenty inch) are of unspeakable value. I used to 
 approach country parishes with an immense respect for 
 local knowledge of distances. Armed with a six-inch 
 map, especially if I have covered the ground on a push 
 bike or better still on foot, I am too often amazed at 
 local inaccuracy or ignorance. For inspecting p ossible 
 sites, motor cars or side cars are most misleading, in that 
 they give a wholly different impression of distances from 
 that of children on foot. 
 
 In dealing with papers I have one paramount rule in 
 the office, that /^very multiplied report or memorandum 
 must be dated, and the first copy placed on the Director's 
 desk. These I have bound, and index personally every 
 year. All minutes are of course indexed. I also keep 
 a large Director's book, containing information recur- 
 rently required or likely to be suddenly wanted, and in 
 the index of this there are also references to volumes of 
 minutes or of bound papers. These and all other 
 mechanical aids it is our duty to use to the best effect, 
 but our Me/ duty is to deal with matters which these do 
 not touch. 
 
LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATION 41 
 
 Publicity: One of the most difficult questions is to 
 decide on the amount of printed information to be issued 
 to the Committee, to other persons concerned in educa- 
 tion, and to the pubhc at large in the County. Even so 
 far as the members of the Committee itself are con- 
 cerned, /one man's meat is apparently another man's 
 poison. The detailed figures eagerly consumed b}^ one 
 person may be withheld from another at his own request. 
 There is hardly any matter on which there is so much 
 difference of opinion and of practice^ One authority 
 will publish a fat annual volume full of information as 
 to the exact cost of each school, another area will regard 
 this as a matter of useless expenditure. On this par- 
 ticular item I made the experiment of collecting the full 
 material one year, and of then, with my chief officer, 
 scrutmizing and comparing the details of expenditure to 
 see how we could save money on unnecessary expenses 
 in order to spend it where it would be beneficial. But 
 again and again with a personal knowledge of all the 
 schools concerned we were reduced to making further 
 inquiries, and in the end we were convinced of one 
 result and of one result only, viz. it was a waste of time 
 and money to present a mass of stereotyped information 
 upon a host of institutions housed in buildings varying 
 so infinitely in structure and arrangement, in local con- 
 ditions and personal differentiations, to the members of 
 the Committee or the pubHc at large who had no means 
 of discriminating between them. 
 
 The golden rule in these matters seems to me : Before 
 sending out any inquiry, ask yourself what use you will 
 make of the information when you have got it. Again, 
 reflect that nearly every document begins to go out of 
 date before it is sent to the printer. There are few 
 more exasperating occupations than trying to patch up 
 
42 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 to date afmemorandum which for some reason has been 
 hung up for six months. Too soon to get the new 
 returns, too late to employ the old ; the writer at an}^ 
 rate realizes that his egg is no longer new-laid. 
 
 In dealing with periodical tables the period chosen 
 must be long enough to show the curve. A useful 
 instance in point is our experience in School Attendance 
 Returns, which for many years we published every 
 month. For the last two years we have^for the sake of 
 economy tried the experiment of quarterly publication 
 only, and the results are so much more authoritative and 
 so much less at the mercy of the passing ailment, that, 
 even on grounds of efficiency alone, we think we have 
 changed for the better. 
 
 What I have found invaluable for the use of corres- 
 pondents and teachers is a Monthly Circular, a printed 
 sheet, usually single, which brings forth things new and 
 old, novel announcements and reminders of directions 
 certain to be forgotten. In a wide area it saves its cost 
 in postage many times over. 
 
 Minutes vary greatly with different authorities. Our 
 own choice has been on the lines laid down by the 
 London County Council, which aim at a concise but 
 detailed register of the resolutions. Minutes are not an 
 Agenda paper, but a record. The only question that 
 can arise at their signing is their accuracy, and the 
 phrase 'arising out of the minutes' can only be an 
 attempt to dig up what is dead and buried, or to indulge 
 in a breach of order. A properly constructed Agenda 
 and a firm Chairman will always prevent either in- 
 discretion. 
 
 A Quarterly Report on the education work has been 
 a condition of the delegation of its powers to the Com- 
 mittee by the County Council not only since 1903, but 
 
LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATION 43 
 
 since 1890, when the first grants were made to the 
 Technical Instruction Committee. As it is a report of 
 what has happened since the preceding meeting of the 
 Count}^ Council, it is merely a current record and does 
 not correspond to any well-marked periods of educational 
 development. We have never had an annual report, 
 but in 1913 we published a record of * Ten Years of 
 Staffordshire Education '. 
 
 A Directory for Higher Education was published 
 yearly up to 1915, and was reprinted in 1919, but it is to 
 some extent replaced by pamphlets deahng with Scholar- 
 ships, Grants to Urban Districts, and other subjects. 
 So far as the work of the Committee themselves is 
 concerned, a Memorandum (now always multiplied, 
 formerly printed) on any proposed new development, 
 on the Annual Estimates, or on an}^ new schools, is 
 found, if clearly written and not too laboured, to ex- 
 pedite greatly the work of the Committee Room. 
 
 Minor Officials. For service in the Education Office 
 a good memory, accuracy, and hard work are all needed, 
 but the first requisite is to take an intelligent interest 
 in the work. Of accuracy- we may say that some are 
 born accurate, others achieve accuracy, while others 
 have accurac}^ thrust upon them : the first of these 
 classes is the best, if it is accompanied with any degree 
 of swiftness. And the next best thing to accuracy is 
 a readiness to admit mistakes. I knew of a notoriously 
 inaccurate Scotch clerk, who on being detected in an 
 error for the hundredth time would say, ' Weel, I may be 
 wrang, but ma word it 's not often ! \ But the intelligent 
 interest can best be secured and developed by clever 
 distribution of the work in each department, so arranged 
 that though there must be some mechanical drudgery, 
 no one's lot need consist wholly of such routine. For 
 
44 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 this reason I have always eschewed a typewriting depart- 
 ment, and require each lad or girl, as they developed, to 
 do their own typewriting and to learn, at any rate, short- 
 hand, even if they do not use it daily. Both attending 
 and teaching in evening classes are strongly encouraged 
 in the subordinate staff. 
 
 The unpardonable sin, sometimes though rarely found 
 among minor heads, is that of jealous monopoly of 
 official knowledge, due to an attempt to make capital 
 out of the sole acquisition of detail, or to a mistaken 
 belief that it takes too long to teach subordinates, whom 
 they regard as incompetent. Some day that pin falls 
 out and the machine is temporarily held up. But for 
 the reasons just given this vice is also harmful because 
 it leads among the subordinates to an unintelligent per- 
 formance of apparently arbitrary orders. The aim to 
 achieve is to secure an understudy or substitute for 
 everybody in the office, and personally I find it 
 worth while giving a good deal of time, mostly at odd 
 moments, to securing continuity of knowledge between 
 departments. 
 
 Another difficulty besetting all offices is to prevent 
 the upper positions being filled with mediocrities who 
 have drifted there. ' Ower bad for blessing and ower 
 good for banning, like Rob Roy.' The first-raters go to 
 the top, and we are happy if we can keep them there : 
 but a day comes when there is a vacancy two or three 
 places down, and nobody very good to put into it. This 
 is the chance of the third -rater, and if his progress is 
 not deflected or in some wa}^ modified at a later date by 
 a reorganization, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to 
 remedy the results of a mediocre appointment made 
 some years ago. 
 
 In organization it is useful to bear in m.ind the watch- 
 
LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMIiNISTRATION 45 
 
 word of a well-known general, ' No finality', and indeed, 
 one celebrated organizer used to say that, when you 
 had completed your organization and thought you had 
 it all perfect, the only thing to be done if you wanted 
 to keep your work living was to pull down all your 
 machinery and build it up again in a different way. 
 
 In making office oppointments my Committee has 
 always recognized it as reasonable that the head of 
 a department should have the chief voice in the selection 
 of a man who is to work under him, and for whom he 
 will be held responsible. In proportion to the import- 
 ance of the appointment will be the previous consulta- 
 tions between the Director and the official immediatel}^ 
 concerned, the mention of the matter to adjoining 
 departments, the pains taken to obtain not only a good 
 field, but also trustworthy information about the best 
 candidates. An office boy will not normally be brought 
 from a hundred miles away, nor in the case of higher 
 appointments will glowing testimonials from wholly 
 unknown persons be accepted without further close 
 inquiry. In Education Offices it is necessary to insist 
 on a standard of accuracy and of conformity to educa- 
 tional conventions which are perhaps not so indispensable 
 in a shop or other business. An ill-spelt and ungram- 
 matical letter on which the signature of an Education 
 Officer is stamped creates an unfortunate impression, 
 which from a certain type of mind can never be erased. 
 As the American humourist said, 'Appearances are 
 deceitful, we all know, but so long as they are, it is as 
 well to have them deceive for us as against us \ When 
 it comes to selection I am tempted to say that the power 
 of making a good selection is a gift. Certainly I have 
 known of able administrators, even of great head masters, 
 who were largely without it, but there is no doubt that 
 
46 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 this interfered with their success. It is partly a matter 
 of knowledge of the world and experience, and for its 
 exercise needs of course a fairly close knowledge of 
 what the duties and relations of the successful candidate 
 will be. There is a legend — one of those well-invented 
 stories of which the central fact probably never happened^ 
 but which represents the inmost truth— the legend of 
 a well-known bishop who as a rector went to a railway 
 station to meet a candidate for a curacy. The young man 
 walked up the platform only to be met by ' Thank you 
 very much. It is very kind of you to have come to see 
 me. But I think if you cross that bridge, you will be 
 just in time to catch your train home again.' Un- 
 fortunately such swift decisions, even if they can be 
 made without fear of a mistake, cannot in real life be 
 so rapidly announced without misunderstanding, and I 
 have known committees continue poHtely labouring for 
 many minutes with candidates whose chance had dis- 
 appeared with the first replies they gave. Conventions 
 do not always allow the most direct methods. There is 
 the story of another parson who got up in the pulpit, 
 and instead of preaching, announced that as he had had 
 no time for preparation he did not propose that day to 
 give any sermon. One to whom this was afterwards 
 told said, * I have often heard that sermon, but usually 
 at very much greater length \ 
 
 To get a man to talk about his work and to ask what 
 improvements or new developments he would like to 
 introduce if he were appointed are useful methods. 
 The vain man begins to boast about himself, the dull 
 m.an is taken hopelessly aback at the idea of new 
 departures : the man whose heart is really in his work 
 and who has brains in his head has generally something 
 alive and personal to say. Into the secrets of the Inqui- 
 
LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATION 47 
 
 sition it is perhaps inexpedient to go farther : it is 
 conceivable that I might hereafter meet some candidate 
 skilfully modelling his replies upon the advice I have 
 been giving in this lecture. 
 
 There are those of course who would deceive the very 
 elect. In the worst appointment I ever had a hand in 
 making, the candidate came before us twice, with an 
 interval of several years. On the first occasion he (or 
 she) — it is well not to be too precise — was second, and 
 for the time being we saw no more of her (or him). 
 Time passed, the post again became vacant, and the 
 same candidate reappeared. I found myself wondering, 
 as the door opened, what had been the special charm at 
 the previous interview. Within five minutes we were 
 again under the spell, and the appointment was unani- 
 mously recommended: an appointment subsequently 
 regretted and remedied. 
 
 As to applicants, I take it for granted that every 
 authority has a form for this purpose, if for no other 
 reason than to render omissions conspicuous and to 
 enable the seeker after truth to know where to find the 
 definite items of information. Not the least necessary 
 among these items in an Education Office is a clear 
 and consecutive statement of the candidate's own educa- 
 tion. 
 
 But the worst part of applications is the testimonial. 
 Testimonial — the very word breathes disappointment. 
 In moments of bitterness I should describe it as * a docu- 
 ment of extravagant eulogy proceeding generally from 
 an unknown source, which has been frequently hard to 
 give and almost always impossible to refuse '. After 
 reading a batch of such documents, one is irresistibly 
 reminded of Charles Lamb's childish question to his 
 sister, ' Mary, where are the naughty people buried ? ' 
 
48 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 But the real reason that I dislike them so much is that 
 the art of writing eloquent and plausible testimonials 
 is so unevenly distributed in this world, and that while 
 the master in one school may be fortunate enough to 
 have a vicar or a Chairman of Managers with great 
 ingenuity and a gift for sonorous platitude, the school 
 mistress two miles away may have a patron of the kind 
 which John Knox called a * dumm dog ', and no educated 
 friend in the least able to do her justice. One good 
 definition of education is that it enables a man to distin- 
 guish argument from rhetoric : it does not, however, 
 always enable one to distinguish between inarticulate 
 panegyrists or rival rhetoricians. 
 
 There is an admirable footnote in a book by Sir Horace 
 Plunkett which I have pinned up opposite to the desk 
 in my office. It runs : ' Personally I prefer the practice 
 of telling the brutal truth in testimonials — a method well 
 illustrated by the following incident which occurs to m}^ 
 memory. An Indian called at the ranch where I was 
 living at the time and handed me a letter from the Agent 
 of his Reservation : this characteristic, and, as I after- 
 wards learned, just testimonial, ran — "Tinbelly is a 
 worthless Indian. Any one who gives him anything will 
 be that much out." Do any of us know a country where 
 the testimonial would be phrased : *' Mr. P. J. Tinbell}^ 
 is well qualified to discharge efficiently and faithfully 
 any duties which ma}^ be entrusted to him"?' And some 
 of us may remember Swift's testimonial to a servant 
 who left him and went into the Navy : ' The bearer, 
 while he was in my service, was a liar, a rascal, and 
 a thief. Whether his service in the Navy has improved 
 him they may best decide who are best qualified to 
 judge.' I do not suggest that either of these are the 
 type of applicants with whom Education Offices have 
 
LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMINISTRAIION 49 
 
 to deal, but I am sure that in my time I have had to 
 read many testimonials no less evasive. 
 
 When one comes to scrutinize testimonials, if they are 
 without discrimination and probability, the only course 
 is to rely on such solid facts as are permitted to appear, 
 and to note the absence of qualifications which might be 
 expected. Above all, by the reading of many testimonials 
 one may hope to acquire a certain flair for what is not 
 to be found. We may remember how in The Egoist 
 Dr. Corney found in Crossjay's narrative *a strong 
 flavour of something left out '. If there is a lower but 
 still uniform level of rather undistinguished merit, I am 
 afraid that the skilled searcher begins to discount such 
 sound but colourless virtues as patience, perseverance, 
 and punctuality, which, however praiseworthy in them- 
 selves, are seldom mentioned before more striking 
 qualities of mind and character. 
 
 After all I, too, am human, and have in my time both 
 received and given testimonials which would fall within 
 the categories I have described, and which might bring 
 a blush to the cheek of the most hardened Director. 
 But I have travelled far from the Education Offices and 
 the ranks of its service. 
 
 As to Educational Heads in Stafi^ordshire, without 
 going into unnecessary detail I may say that since 1903 
 there has always been a Director of Education with two 
 Assistants, one for Higher and one for Elementary 
 Education, varying slightly in title, and under them 
 the working principle has been that each Department 
 has a head, recognized more or less formally according 
 to the importance of the Department. The Assistants 
 are responsible to the Director for and have immediate 
 control, so far as they need to exercise it, over all 
 Departments in their province. The more highly 
 
50 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 qualified any officers are— as for instance the Medical 
 Inspection staff— the more completely they are left in 
 the control of their own officer. The Director on the 
 other hand is in charge of the whole, and has always 
 retained the right of intervening anywhere throughout 
 the building, or inquiring without notice into any part of 
 the work. I have never reserved the services of any 
 clerk for myself nor had any sort of private secretary, 
 and have made a point of writing no letters except short 
 personal notes, or official letters of the first order of 
 importance. 
 
 It will be clear that the problem of an office thus 
 organized is the problem of the Neck of the Bottle, and 
 how much can be got through it. At each successive 
 stage the amount is reduced, until at last only so much 
 is left as can reasonably find a passage. This involves 
 frequent consultations not only between Heads of Depart- 
 ments and the Assistant Directors, but almost as much 
 between the latter and the Director. With the Assistants 
 remains much responsibility for smooth working, but 
 it is always understood that an appeal lies from any one 
 in the office to the Director, or beyond him to the 
 Chairman. 
 
 The fact is, however, that the work of the Director 
 and of the Assistant Directors is much the same, and 
 the daily task of the administrator was never better 
 described than by one of H. M. Inspectors in the words of 
 his ^ Father OTlynn ' — * Coaxing the crazy ones, soothing 
 onaisy ones, lifting the lazy ones on wid yer shtick '. 
 
 The special feature that distinguishes the chief local 
 officials from the staff at Whitehall, with whom they are 
 rightly comparable, is the detailed knowledge which 
 every competent Director should possess of the chief 
 persons, places, buildings, and local conditions of every 
 
LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATION 51 
 
 part of his own area. This experience takes long to 
 acquire and needs frequent refreshment and revision. 
 But every Director who has been in his area during the 
 last ten or fifteen years of rapid expansion must feel at 
 times like the Greek athlete who carried a full-grown 
 bull on his shoulders through the stadium at Olympia, 
 and when he was asked how he managed, replied that 
 he had carried it every day since it was a calf. It is not 
 in any way the performance of the veterans which I hold 
 up to you ; what I admire is the thews and sinews of 
 the younger heroes who come late into the arena and 
 take up the full-grown animal as it seems without an 
 effort. It is in this local knowledge that the personal 
 touch comes in, and I must have made my points very 
 badly if it has not yet been realized that I regard the 
 Personal Element as the essence of local administration. 
 No two persons and no two places are alike in this 
 world in my experience, and if you do not know enough 
 of local circumstances or local personalities to take them 
 into account in your administration, you are likely to be 
 a Bureaucrat. 
 
 The inward besetting sins of a permanent official are 
 the excess and the deficiency of assuming responsibility, 
 and with both of these the name of Bureaucrat is 
 associated as a term of just abuse. In excess the 
 masterful man, insufficiently controlled and^^king little 
 notice of the wishes of his Chairman and Committee, 
 tends to press his own views too strongly, and to ride 
 roughshod everywherey There is on record the advice 
 of a well-known Civil Servant upon reforms, 'Get it 
 done, let the objectors howl ! ' In defect — and this seems 
 to be the more common vice, perhaps because it is 
 associated with caution — and the result of experience is 
 generally to increase caution — officials tend to rely on 
 
52 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 precedent and to shelter themselves behind their Com- 
 mittees, and so to avoid responsibility. Boards, it has 
 been said, are often screens. During the years 1914-19, 
 many civilians had opportunities of observing the result 
 of Army organization, and from my own experience in 
 France and that of many of my friends, I make bold to 
 say that the besetting sin of ordinary Army administra- 
 tion was this. The system made it easier to say No than 
 to say Yes, and there were far too many precedents in 
 favou/- 0/ refusing, and agamst making a desperate effort 
 towards granting any desired concession. Sooner or 
 later the positive act might incur blame and misunder- 
 standing : to do nothing was always safe. Play for safety. 
 Stevenson has somewhere said that the rightly consti- 
 tuted mind will always prefer to say Yes, but either 
 rightly constituted minds are scarce, or else many of 
 them are lacking in courage and initiative.^ 
 
 Precedents are not wholly bad : on the contrary they 
 may be of great and proper service. Those of us who 
 had the experience of bringing in the 1902 Act, in a 
 County Area at any rate, know how disconcerting it was 
 to start almost wholly without precedents in nearly all 
 the work we had to do, to sail uncharted seas with 
 a compass which had hardly settled down, especially 
 as all the time we were oppressed by the knowledge 
 that too sudden or too unqualified a decision might 
 
 1 Sir John Cowans was fond of recalling how on his first day as 
 Quartermaster-General in his new room at the War Office 'an 
 older General came in to see how he was faring, and stood behind 
 his shoulder. General Cowans had just written and signed a 
 minute, which the veteran having read exclaimed : "My dear boy, 
 this will never do. You have made a decision. Now remember, 
 whether you say ' Yes ' or whether you say ' No ', you will live to 
 regret it." . . . But to Cowans decision was as the breath of life.' — 
 The Times, April i, 1921. 
 
LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATION 53 
 
 create a new tradition far worse than mere indecision. 
 In due course sufficient decisions were made and suffi- 
 cient precedents were found, a great deal of time was 
 saved, and the work began to go ahead. 
 
 The creation of precedents for all possible contin- 
 gencies is pleasantly illustrated by the little French story 
 of a revolution. An official in a Hotel de Ville sees 
 a group of men rushing along one of his corridors. 
 ' Where are you going, gentlemen, where are you going?' f 
 ' We're going to proclaim the Provisional Government! ' 
 ' Not that corridor, please. This way. This is the 
 window from which Provisional Governments are always 
 proclaimed ! ' ^ 
 
 But these faults, though perhaps the most dangerous, 
 are not those which most rouse the public anger or make 
 business most difficult. That, if people only knew it, is 
 achieved by mere bad manners, by inattention, real or 
 assumed, such as was shown by flappers in Government 
 Departments and shop-assistants during the war; by 
 unwillingness to hear people state their case and by 
 refusal to explain perfectly reasonable actions ; by the 
 lack, in fact, of that consideration which is the good 
 manners of the heart. If people would only remember 
 that maxim, which used to be on the desk of a well- 
 known minister : * Be kind, for every one of us is fighting \ 
 a hard battle.' / 
 
 The first step in dealing with too formal organization 
 is to humanize it and to render it more flexible. 
 
 To afford full consideration to each person and each ) 
 case is surely the object of local administration. Rules / 
 and generalizations there must be, which will fall on the [ 
 just and unjust ahke. Nobody pretends, for instance, 
 that a scale of salaries represents payment according to 
 merit ; at the best it is merely a compromise, an insurance 
 
 I 
 
54 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 against the extremes of injustice, of miserliness and of 
 misjudgement. But /within regulations there can be 
 a wise discrimination, and at least correspondents and 
 teachers can feel sure of a friendly reception and an 
 understanding explanation of difficulties. Uniform 
 A_ mechanical administration may be cut off in lengths : 
 — the personal method does not shorten work or make it 
 easier ; it may lead to opportunism and irregularity of 
 procedure, but it does sweeten life and make education 
 more acceptable, whether as a service or even as a 
 burden. 
 
 ' Courage ', as Stevenson once wrote, ' is the principal 
 I virtue, for all the others presuppose it ', and courage is 
 I necessary at times if we are to take responsibility. I 
 once found myself in an impasse — not in my own area. 
 I went off to the Board of Education, and told the 
 officials what we intended to do and induced them to 
 offer no opposition. For six months we ran a Committee 
 which had no legal existence, but the work was done, 
 and well done. At the end of that time matters were 
 regularized, and all has gone well since. 'You and 
 your South Sea methods', said the officials, but they 
 were quite sympathetic. Some of us remember Carlyle's 
 Indian hero. Ram Dass, who ' had fire in his belly to burn 
 up the world'. It might perhaps be dangerous, but 
 ' officials as a whole are likely to suffer more from the 
 want than the excess of this incendiary gift. 
 * f Courage is necessary also in composing differences : 
 I there is no solvent like meeting people who differ, and 
 \ talking matters over. When one has had one's back to 
 the wall two or three times, one can realize the advan- 
 tages of the position, and a fiery beginning to an interview 
 is often the best prehminary to a harmonious ending. It 
 is interesting by the way to note that the experience of 
 
LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATION 55 
 
 Mr. Gladstone was that interviews were the most tiring 
 part of his work. 
 
 But these are for the rare occasions. For the daily 
 setting work on foot and following it up, tact and 
 geniality and encouragement make far better progress. 
 For the introduction of a new subject, I have only ^ 
 ^.nown one method, and that is to begin with the willing 1 
 people, whose sympathies should be enlisted by an j 
 explanation of its aims and importance. The history is 
 always the same ; first the pioneers, then the main body, N 
 lastly the stragglers who have to be brought in. As // 
 Morant said, ' Great things begin with small, never with 
 a flourish of trumpets \ All schemes should be as elastic 
 as possible, if the main principles are retained, and 
 enough hard work is done. Uniformity is the enemy 
 of development, and no scheme is good which cannot 
 develop naturally. 
 
 Let us turn to more peaceful themes, to the art of 
 managing the office and the teachers. The work needs 
 imagination and needs sympathy : imagination not of the 
 Shelley type, but the power to project oneself into the 
 development of a scheme, to see whither it will lead and "N 
 what assistance it will require on its often prosaic way : / 
 sympathy to understand the difficulties of those who, 
 under adverse conditions and small means, are labouring 
 in schools and offices, and imagination to perceive 
 opportunities for giving their work in turn more life 
 and more freshness for the children. Without per- 
 ception there can be no effective exercise of tact, but it 
 is dangerous to be over sensitive, even in perceiving. 
 One eminent organizer of education had this sentence 
 written up in his room — ^ Blessed is the man who has ^ 
 a skin of the right thickness : he can work happily in J 
 spite of enemies and friends.' 
 
56 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 In dealing with teachers and subordinates, before all 
 things the need is for magnanimity. Which of us forget 
 Milton's magnificent description of an ample and 
 generous education as enabling us 'to perform justly, 
 skilfully, and magnanimously the offices both private and 
 public of peace and war' ? And the first step in magna- 
 nimity is to bear no grudge. We must always be open 
 to conviction — in a generous spirit, if we can achieve it, 
 rather than that of my fellow countryman who announced 
 that ' I'm open to conviction, but I'm a dour deevil to 
 convince '. And when an apology has to be made, it 
 should always be ungrudging and whole-hearted. It 
 has been well said that a man can do a great deal of 
 good if he does not care who gets the credit for it, and 
 I for one have never found selfish jealousy except in 
 a third-rate man. Nothing makes a man so keen on 
 any piece of work as the belief that it was he himself 
 who originated it. 
 
 It is perhaps hardly necessary to say that for the 
 chief officers and any one who have to do with minutes, 
 the power of drafting clearly and concisely and rapidly — 
 but before all things clearly — is invaluable. When a 
 resolution is going to be of great importance, it is well 
 to be prepared with a form of words, but always to 
 produce a resolution cut and dried beforehand leads to 
 a wrong impression that the Committee are brought 
 together only to register decisions which the Chairman 
 and officials have already drafted and taken for granted. 
 Especially in dealing with new matter, on which the 
 Committee has not yet decided its policy, a paper with a 
 well-thought-out sequence of questions is of the greatest 
 assistance both in crystallizing opinion and recording 
 the steps by which each decision was reached. But 
 in all the memoranda and regulations which fall to our 
 
LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATION 57 
 
 lot, good drafting is indispensable. Sir Courtenay Boyle, 
 in his admirably clear and fertile little book on Hints 
 on the Conduct of Business, quotes an extraordinary 
 but actual instance of a draft which ' had been prepared 
 by an officer of high technical attainments and passed 
 under the eye of more than one competent critic. The 
 'riead of the Department sent it back three times for 
 reconstruction, saying he could not understand its pro- 
 visions. Twice it came back to him unchanged. On 
 the third occasion the technical officer who had drawn it 
 in the first instance confessed to the accidental omission 
 of the word "not" in the principal enacting sentence.' 
 
 When it comes to drafting regulations, special care is 
 necessary. Sir Fitzjames Stephen has said, * It is not 
 enough to attain a degree of precision which a person 
 reading in good faith can understand, but it is necessary 
 to attain, if possible, to a degree of precision which 
 a person reading in bad faith cannot misunderstand. 
 It is all the better if he cannot pretend to misunderstand 
 it '. I may add what I have often said, that any code 
 of regulations is really a register of past offences, as it 
 is built up gradually of provisions to prevent misdeeds, 
 most of which the code-maker never thought of as 
 possible when he sketched his first draft. 
 
 As to qualifications for Education officials, in higher 
 education especially arises the question as to how far 
 a principal officer should himself be an expert in any 
 one or more subjects, and the answer is that while he 
 should have a broad education, including a considerable 
 knowledge of science, it is his attitude of mind rather 
 than his actual learning which is vital. He should be 
 informed and interested in all the matters that come 
 before him ; he cannot possibly be an expert in a quarter 
 of them. I have had to deal with education applied to 
 
58 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 agriculture, bee-keeping, ceramics, dairy work, engineer- 
 ing, farriery, gardening — I could go on to the end ol 
 the alphabet, but must not leave out metallurgy and 
 mining and refractories and several branches of art, and 
 to my own loss I am an expert in none of them. But 
 even more than to have scientific knowledge is it needful 
 to realize the need of it and to have the will as well 
 as the power to make use of and combine the advice of 
 the various experts. The kind of thing to avoid is the 
 attitude of the General Staff of the Army before the war, 
 as described by a witness before the Committee on 
 Science in Education. ' Hitherto the General Staff 
 had been of opinion that " Infantry Officers did not 
 require to have a knowledge of Science ", and their view 
 had been that " the military efficiency of the officers had 
 not suffered from lack of Science ".' A similar view is 
 unfortunately taken by too many manufacturers, who 
 have been quite unable to see the need for expert 
 scientific advice in various forms of production. In no 
 branch of work in Staffordshire have we made more 
 progress during the last dozen years in breaking down 
 this spirit than in pottery, but to take only two instances 
 a similar advance is needed in dealing with refractories 
 and the glass trade. 
 
 Of the training of local officials much has been said. 
 The Directors and Sub-Directors of the future should 
 be men of high intellectual powers, which have received 
 the highest training that universities can give, who are 
 neither prigs nor idlers, and who have sufficient practical 
 experience of teaching, if possible in more than one 
 kind of school. Although it is desirable that a man 
 should be caught young — for he can never become 
 a good official when he is old — yet the more knowledge 
 of the world at large that he possesses the better for his 
 
LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATION 59 
 
 work. Personally I count the years I spent in Oxford 
 and the years I spent in the South Seas as equally 
 valuable parts of my own training, though the South 
 Seas can hardly form part of the ordinary curriculum, 
 and might not be suited to all temperaments. Mr. Fisher 
 has said, in his address on *The Place of the University 
 in National Life ', ' It is not my submission that it should 
 be made a condition of entrance to the higher branches 
 of the local service of education that a man should have 
 a University Degree, but I do contend that there is 
 urgent need that the spirit of a liberal education should 
 be infused into this important branch of the public 
 service, an object which may perhaps be more readily 
 attained when it is realized that University men who 
 elect to adopt a career with a Local Education Authority 
 may, if they have the necessary qualities, find themselves 
 armed with a degree of power for furthering the edu- 
 cational progress of the country which far transcends 
 that attaching to the head mastership of a great Public 
 School'. Perhaps I ma}^ add that though a University 
 Degree may not be indispensable, no man should ever 
 be appointed a Director who is not capable of having 
 won high honours, though he may not have had the 
 opportunity of obtaining them. At all events, when 
 such a man has been secured, with the right ability, 
 education, and experience, he should enter an Education 
 Office where the business side is efficient and a Hberal 
 spirit prevails in the administration. The difficulty is to 
 find administrative vacancies for trainees : one of the 
 best qualified Directors I know tells me that he can 
 in a very short time make good use of them. Personally, 
 until they receive actual responsibility (and that respon- 
 sibility the public at large outside the office are very loth 
 to recognize), I find their training a burden on the staff, 
 
6o EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 if they are to be admitted to a full knowledge of the 
 working of the Office. 
 
 Of the duties of the Director himself, what am I to 
 say? In Staffordshire the ruling principle is that he is 
 personally responsible to the Committee for the conduct 
 of all their work, and in practice, except so far as it is 
 impossible to be in two places at once, he attends all 
 Sub-Committees and presents all the business, except 
 such items as the Chairmen may keep in their own 
 hands. He is regarded as intermediate between the 
 Committees and the staff, and except when matters 
 affecting himself, such as salary or special leave of 
 absence, are concerned, is present at all deliberations. 
 With the other County Officials he attends meetings of 
 the County Council and the full Education Committee, 
 but only for the purpose of supplying information, like 
 the secretary to a Minister in Parliament. Of the actual 
 work, especially the preparation for Committees, much 
 is of the nature of the work of a barrister : getting up 
 and compressing large quantities of detail which have 
 to be delivered in as short and convincing a form as 
 possible. Perhaps the more difficult task follows — when 
 the meeting is over to forget nine-tenths of the whole, 
 while retaining only a sort of general index in one's mind. 
 
 There is another forensic role which the Director has 
 not infrequently to fill — that of advocatus diaboli : at any 
 rate he has to represent the views of persons not present 
 with whom he personally may not agree, but whose 
 views should receive full and fair consideration at the 
 hands of a Sub-Committee. 
 
 The Director is freed as far as possible from any con- 
 tinuous routine work, in order that he may have time to 
 supervise, to think, to consult, and to devote his chief 
 attention to whatever new departure is being made, to 
 
LOCAL OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATION 6i 
 
 any piece of reorganization, to whatever crisis may be 
 impending. ^ 
 
 It is obvious from what has been said that the first 
 conditions of County work — a wide area and a Chairman 
 and Committee mostly resident at a distance — lay a 
 heavy burden of responsibility, and a corresponding 
 amount of discretionary power, on the Director. I 
 remember an instance in point where the question arose 
 of some continuous correspondence being submitted to 
 the chief Sub-Committee, and it was ruled out as im- 
 practicable (though the Director would have welcomed 
 the relief) when it was shown to involve the attendance 
 of the members at Stafford on three da3^s a week. 
 
 The responsibility includes the strict keeping of much 
 information given in confidence and scrupulously borne 
 in mind. He must keep the spirit, if not the exact words, 
 of Secretary Seward's reply at Washington to some one 
 who was pressing him to divulge some information, * If 
 I did not know, I would gladly tell you '. 
 
 Though he must hold his own, and must sometimes 
 disappoint people, no one should ever leave his presence 
 discouraged : even when the time comes for finding 
 fault, he should remember that if he has provided against 
 the recurrence of the fault his end is already achieved. 
 Moreover, he can often do as much service by remaining 
 in reserve and as a further court of appeal, as by the 
 most active intervention. If time takes away the keen- 
 ness of temper and brings patience, it is not always 
 patience in repeating experiments which have formerly 
 failed : but with time there does come a certain flair for 
 recognizing what will go wrong: just as we are told 
 that Disraeli seemed to have an intuitiv^e perception of 
 what would pass the House of Commons. One acquires 
 a power of recognizing as a rule what will not do. 
 
62 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 though often one has to cast about for words to ^explain 
 the reason. 
 
 But enough of paradoxes and of platitudes. Unless 
 a man has a good staff, individually he can hope to do 
 but little. To get good material and to make the most 
 of it when obtained is the beginning and end of all good 
 administration. To an exceptionally able and willing 
 staff, past and present, Staffordshire owes whatever 
 good work in education it has accomplished, and to my 
 colleagues and subordinates I give my full tribute of 
 admiration and close personal affection. Their practice 
 and experience are the foundation of much of what 
 I have said ; which for the rest represents the aims and 
 aspirations of a very fallible Director. 
 
 Finally, I would end with the words of the farewell of 
 that wise and good lady, Octavia Hill : — 
 
 * When I am gone, I hope my friends will not try to 
 carry out any special system, or to follow blindly in the 
 track which I have trodden. New circumstances require 
 various efforts ; and it is the spirit, not the dead form, 
 that should be perpetuated. When the time comes that 
 we shp from our places, and they are called to the front 
 as leaders, what should they inherit from us? Not a 
 system, not an association, not dead formulas. . . . What 
 we most care to leave them is not any tangible thing, 
 however great ; not any memory, however good ; but the 
 quick eye to see, the true soul to measure, the large 
 hope to grasp the mighty issues of the new and better 
 days to come— greater ideals, greater hopes, and 
 patience to realize both.' 
 
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