PART V.-DECISIONS IN COURT OF SESSION AND SHERIFF COURTS, WITH EXTRACTS FROM OPINIONS OF 10. ADDRESS BY THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE YOUNG (LORD YOUNG, 11. RULES, DIRECTIONS, ORDERS, CIRCULARS, ETC., OF THE k. CIRCULAR NO. 132-EXAMINATIONS: ABSENTEEISM, 1. MINUTE AS TO APPROVAL OF TIME-TABLES, m. ORDER FOR TRIENNIAL ELECTIONS, INTRODUCTION. THE Bill "to amend and extend the provisions of the Law of Scotland on the subject of Education" was introduced into the House of Commons by the Lord Advocate on the 12th of February 1872; read a second time on the 7th of March; considered during nine days in Committee and on Report; and passed the Lower House on the 27th of June. It was read a second time in the House of Lords, on the motion of the Duke of Argyll, on the 5th of July; passed through Committee on the 12th; and after being again amended in the House of Commons, it received the Royal assent on the 6th of August. This Act is the conclusion of a series of efforts which have been made by Liberal Governments during a period of eighteen years to establish a system of National Education in Scotland. Five bills were introduced into Parliament on the subject between 1854 and 1870, and only one of them, the Act of 1861 (repealed by this Act), was carried. In 1870 the Elementary Education Act for England and Wales was passed, and in the following year a Bill for Scotland was introduced, being the sixth in the series. That Bill commanded much popularity in Scotland, and might have passed into law. But the work of the session was unusually heavy, and, owing to the lengthened debates on the Regulation of the Forces Bill and the Ballot Bill, no time was found for it. The Act of this year (1872) is in its main features a reproduction of that Bill, the only material differences between them being the provisions regarding higher class public schools, and those regarding compulsory attendance. In both these matters the Scotch Statute differs from the English. The English Statute deals with elementary education alone; by the Scotch Statute the framework of a graded system of public education is laid down in an Act of Parliament comprehending infant, elementary, and higher class public schools. In Scotland, education is made compulsory and universal by the direct agency of statute law in both town and country; in England, it is left to the discretion of school boards appointed in localities to enforce education on the people or not. The object of the Act is to amend and extend the provisions of the law of Scotland on the subject of education, in such manner that the means of procuring efficient education for their children may be furnished and made available to the whole people of Scotland. The principles upon which the Bill was framed are (in the Lord Advocate's words1): "First, that the imperial money voted by Parliament for promoting national education should be, in Scotland as it was in England, administered by the Government, and not by a statutory Board, which would not be responsible to the Government, and for whose proceedings, consequently, the Government could not be responsible to Parliament. Second, that a popularly elected school board should be forthwith established in every parish and burgh, and that the duties of each school board should be, first, to manage all rate-supported schools within the district; next, to provide such additional school accommodation as should be necessary in the district; and thirdly, to impose and levy such local school rates as should be necessary. Third, that there should be one uniform system of management, applicable without distinction to all public rate-supported schools, whether existing before the Act or established under the 1 Lord Advocate in Committee, June 3. |