MINUTES OF EVIDENCE, 1892-93.
f the entire expense of that school.
That Prt**n \ was ratified by the Act of Parliament • and s?^en
was made that, if the income of the endow-proYisxon ^ ^ ^e payments to Christ's Hospital, mT the Junior Fellows of Trinity College, and ?
fltoecoat Hospital, should not bo diminished.
tt +1 1833 the chief officer of the Governors, the nJLrer though a member of the body, was paid S ordinary poundage of a receiver.
% the next
• riant document, a Charter of William IV.,
""I*',
-n 1833, the payments to the Treasurer ftbohsked, and the amount of his poundage ^ laced more at tho discretion of tho Board than taS]?ther
portion of their fund, and was to bo applied •^°ch manner as tho Board, from time to time, ®sa
appoint.
One can easily conceive that an lio had been at liberty to apply that money to ik own purposes, would be in a position to say—« If T veup this, the Governois must be free to use it {the general object of their trust."
It seems at fet to have been largely applied to found English
and ultimately to found tho Dublin High School.
I Mw come to the question of tho formation of the Governing Body.
The Governing Body originally consisted, and still consists, partly of ex-officio and rarity of co-opted members.
Substantially about one-fifth have been ex-officio, and the remainder co-opted _the total number being between thirty and forty.
^he actual work, however, has devolved upon those who have attended more regularly, who form a stand¬ ing Committee, which practically manages the affairs of the body.
Some portions of the lands have been sold for railways and tho like, but I believe the money funds which the Governors possess represent either lands of Erasmus Smith, or accumulation of rents, chiefly the Treasurer's poundage.
They have also the buildings of the three original Grammar Schools, and of afourth School founded in 1773 at Ennis, but recently discontinued.
They also acquired a school in Brunswick Street, Dublin, in the early part of this century, which is bettor than a Primary School, though rather a Commercial than a Grammar School; and in 1862 they founded a High School in Harcourt Street,chiefly with money derived from tho Treasurer's poundage.
It appears from tho report of the Commis¬ sion in 1880 that there woro some difficulties as to the legality of that foundation, which wore got over by applying tho Treasurer's poundage to tho establishment of that School, It has become a very important and efficient School, with some 300 pupils, and is now doing a large educational work, but seems to he almost entirely self-supporting, and no longer draws any very largo sum from tho endowment.
The income of the endowment appears to have varied very much from time to time, In the early years it seems to havo been about £G0O a year, no inconsiderable sum for those days, hut it afterwards greatly increased.
In 1804 it appears to lave amounted to about £8,000 a year; in 1880 it was about £7,000, and in tho year ending May, 1891, itwas£6,983, of which £0,109 was derived from rents, tod the rest from interest on moneys.
The expenditure in 1891 consisted, first, of tho payments io Christ's Hospital, to Trinity College, tod to King's Hospital.
Tho payment to King's flospital was about £800—£40 a year for each of jhe twenty pupils maintained there.
The oxpendi-
on the Grammar Schools, including Harcourb with the Commercial School in Brunswick ^ amounted to £1,097.
Having visited all to Grammar Schools, we wore struck with the small amount of money that reached them from tho endow-toeat • and I think that observation is to some extent confirmed by the figures which 1 have given, which wowthat the five Schools got under £400 a piece on ju pTjf3^' The next item of expenditure was W»~praotioally the same amount, upon the ghsh schools.
Those English bchools originated
from the four English schools for which Erasmus Smith allocated only a small and defined portion of his property, but to which the Act of 1723 enabled the Governors to apply an indefinite amount.
I need not go through the reports of previous Commissions which give the history of those English schools.
A great multiplication of them took place at the time of the great contest between the National Board system and the Church Education system; at one time the Governors maintained no less than 140 English schools, in the interest of " Church Educa¬ tion," as against the National Board.
In 1880 the-number had been reduced to, I think, 102.
The Vice-Chancellor then gave evidence as to the mode in which the reduction had taken place.
The neces¬ sity for reduction bad arisen from the diminution which had occurred in the income of the Board, and a saving was sought to be effected by discontinuing the expenditure upon such English schools as were in a position to take advantage of grants from the* National Board.
The Governors put pressure I think it came to that—upon the managers of those schools to join the National Board, and thereby to relieve the endowment.
Whatever may be the fate of the present Scheme, 1 hope that the figures which 1 now propose to give will be considered worthy of the attention of the Governors, There were 102 "English Schools" in 1879; the number is now reduced to forty-three.
Prom the Reports of the National Board and of the Governors of the Erasmus Smith's schools, we have traced the fortunes of as many as we could of the schools that were deprived of the Erasmus Smith grants, and transferred to the-National Board • and the results are certainly very startling.
We have identified thirty-eight schools,.
as to which we can state the number of pupils, and the amount of the expenditure in 1879, when they were Erasmus Smith Schools, and in 1889, when they were National Board Schools.
In 1879, in those thirty-eight schools, there were 2,225 children, In 1889, in the same thirty-eight schools, some of which had only recently become National Schools, there were 3,810 children.
Therefore, on the withdrawal of tho grants from the Erasmus Smith Endowment, and the substitution of the National Board grants, the number of pupils increased by seventy-one per cent,; and that increase was chiefly in the smallest schools, schools that might have been kept on because, in the words of the Vice-Chancellor, they were not in a position to take full advantage of the National Board grants, but the moment they did take advantage of them, they ceased to have any difficulty at all.
We find such numbers as twenty-six increasing to eighty-five, twenty to seventy-two, thirty to eighty-four, and so on; it is in the largest schools that the proportion of increase is least.
Now, how does the matter stand as regards money'?
In 1879, for those thirty-eight schools, the Erasmus Smith grants amounted in all to £1,039 lis.
Id.
That was only 9s.
id.
per head upon the children then in those schools, about half what the National Board would consider a sufficient capitation grant.
To the same thirty-eight schools, in 1889, the National Board, presumably not wasting the public money, made grants amounting in all to £3 277 3s.
Zd„ being 17s.
2d.
per head on the in¬ creased number of 3,810 children.
Therefore, while the number of pupils increased by seventy-one per cent, on the withdrawal of the endowment, the amount of money expended upon the schools more than trebled.
There are seven other schools which we are able to add so as to compare the expenditure, but we have not the number of pupils.
Adding these the total amount spent in 1879 by the Governors of ErasmusSmithonforty-five schools was £1,229 9s.
8d, and on those same forty-five schools the National Board expended, in 1889, £4,108 16s.
lid.
The Vice Chancellor.—Perhaps
I may be par¬ doned for one moment.
As a matter of fact, in considering those figures, it should be taken into account that the Board has always requireoUhat one
Oct.
is, 188&
