Report on the working of the Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 1906, for the year ending 31st March 1910.

Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the working of the Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 1906, for the year ending 31st March 1910. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    RE PORT, 1. The Board of Education have requested Local Education Authorities to furnish them with particulars for the financial year ending 3lst March 1910 of the manner in which they have exercised the powers conferred upon them by the Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 1906, and of the scope of the work which they have done under it. The Circular issued by the Board on llth August 1910, and the Schedule which accompanied it, are printed as an Appendix to this Report; the questions in the Schedule correspond, so far as they deal with matters which can be conveniently treated in statistical form, with the tables appended to the Report upon the working of the Act for the year ending 3lst March 1909, which was issued by the Board in April 1910 [Cd. 5131]. In framing these questions the Board desired to obtain sufficient information to enable them to present a fairly clear and comprehensive view of the work done under the Act. They were reluctant to impose upon Local Education Authorities the burdensome task of supplying elaborate statistics, and consequently they confined themselves to asking for returns of as simple a character as possible. The Board desire to express their recognition of the care which has been taken in supplying the particulars for which the Circular asked, and they hope that the information contained in this Report may prove useful to Local Education Authorities who desire to compare their own operations with those of other Authorities whose areas, in respect of population, assessable value and other circumstances, are comparable. 2. In many places the work done under this Act is still in an experimental stage, but in the year now under review - there has been a slight increase in the extent to which the Act has been put into operation. The total number of Local Education Authorities in existence on 31st March 1910 was 327; the Board have received full replies from 128 Local Education Authorities in whose areas “School - Canteen Committees” have been formed; 107 of these Committees were permanently established, and 21 were intermittent. ‘The figures for the previous year were 99 and 14 respectively. The number of Local Education Authorities who have considered that there was no need to put the Act into operation has been reduced from 210 to 198; in many of these areas the Authorities have stated that voluntary organisations were sufficient to deal with any cases of necessity that arose. As in the previous Report, the figures in Tables I., IJ. and III. of this Report deal only with those Authorities in whose areas School Canteen Cominittees have been established. 3. The other tables appended to this Report also follow the form of those in the Report for the year 1908-9. Table I. shows the amount of expenditure from the rates authorised by the Board under Section 3 of the Act and the amount of the expenditure