Abstract
THE two publications of the Board of Education o1 before us, “Suggestions on Rural Education” and “Memorandum giving an outline of the successive legislative and administrative conditions affecting the relation of the Board of Education to Agricultural Education in England and Wales,” cast several sidelights on the very curious administrative situation which at present exists with regard to agricultural education in this country. As the memorandum explains, the first move in this direction was taken in 1888–9, when a sum of 5000l. was voted in aid of “agricultural and dairy schools,” and the administration of this vote was handed over to the Board of Agriculture on its creation in 1890. Almost simultaneously the county councils became charged with provision of technical instruction, and were granted the so-called “whisky money” for its development. The outcome was the creation of a number of schools and colleges of agriculture, some departments of existing universities, others independent institutions maintained by a group or by a single county, supported in the main by county council funds, but also subsidised and inspected by the Board of Agriculture out of its grant of 5000l, which has since grown to 11,550l. annually. The institutions thus subsidised by the Board of Agriculture were, however, all of the university or higher technical school type; other agricultural instruction in secondary or primary schools, or by means of evening classes or peripatetic teachers, was provided by the county councils on their own initiative, and not recognised officially by the Board of Agriculture.
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The Organisation of Rural Education . Nature 79, 161–162 (1908). https://doi.org/10.1038/079161a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/079161a0