It is unnecessary to describe the Fabian plan, because it is
substantially the system of administration, established by the Act of
1902, under which present-day education is organised. The main
difference is that we presented a revolutionary proposal in an
extremely moderate form and Mr. Arthur Balfour found himself able to
carry out our principles more thoroughly than we thought practically
possible. Our tract advocated the abolition of all School Boards, but
anticipated, incorrectly, that those of the twenty or thirty largest
cities would be too strong to be destroyed: and whilst insisting that
the public must find all the money required to keep the voluntary
schools in full efficiency, we only proposed that this should take the
form of a large grant by County Councils and County Boroughs, whilst Mr.
Balfour was able to make the Councils shoulder the cost.
How far the draughtsmen of the Bill were influenced by the Fabian scheme
cannot here be estimated, but the authorities at Whitehall were so
anxious to see it that they were supplied with proofs before
publication; and the tract when published was greedily devoured by
perplexed M.P.'s.
It must be recollected that the whole complex machinery of educational
administration was in the melting-pot, and nobody knew what was to come
out of it. It had been assumed by nearly everybody that education was a
department of local government which demanded for its management a
special class of representatives.
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