Huge Appropriations for Education

Last week the education committee of the London County Council approved an appropriation of £17,500,000 to be spent on education in the coming year. This sum is the largest appropriation the committee has ever set aside for the purposes of education; the committee is responsible for popular elementary and secondary education in the County of London.

Before the war there were about 460,000 boys and girls in the elementary, secondary, and technical schools under the County Council, but owing to circumstances brought on by the war their number in the coming year is expected not to exceed 338,000. In spite of this, the financial estimates are about two and a half million pounds higher than those of the previous year.

The reason for this great increase is that the terms of the Education Act passed in 1944 have begun to be applied and put into effect. The costs of secondary education alone in the London area will rise from two million to more than three million pounds. Likewise the appropriations for children's recreation have risen from £9,000 to £33,000, and the appropriations for recreation and for social and physical training from £50,000 to £202,000. More than six million pounds will be spent on school equipment and its renewal, for most of it had been in use since before the war, and much of it is no longer fit for use in the new schools provided for by the Education Act.

And although the total expenditure will exceed the pre-war total by three million pounds, two-thirds of this expenditure will be covered by an increase of 40 percent in the grant paid by the Treasury.