Abstract
THERE has just been issued the Seventh Report of the Select Committee on National Expenditure, a document, including appendices, of twenty-three folio pages, sixteen of which are devoted to the expenditure on public education, a subject which receives caustic criticism. It would appear that the net cost of education for the year 1920-21 for all forms of education from the public elementary school to the university throughout the United Kingdom is estimated at the vast sum of 97,206,548l., of which 60,081,831l. is derived from taxes and 37,124,717l. from rates. This figure is in striking contrast to that of less than ninety years ago, when the local authorities contributed nothing from the rates and the only grant from the Exchequer was one made for the first time in 1834 of 20,000l. in aid of school buildings and not of their maintenance. This was the measure of our indifference to the cause of public education, from which the nation has suffered irremediable loss; it enabled more progressive nations with a finer insight into things of real value to compete with us in all departments of civilised life and its varied activities, to our great disadvantage.
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The Cost of Education. Nature 106, 589–590 (1921). https://doi.org/10.1038/106589a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/106589a0