Acland Background notes The complete report except for the Appendices is shown in this single web page. You can scroll through it or use the following links to go to the various chapters. This diversity of opinion is due, no doubt, to the unusual complexity of the problem, which is nowhere more effectively displayed than in the exhaustive Report which the Consultative Committee have just presented to the Board of Education, and which is published herewith.
It is not necessary here to recite the terms in which the question was referred by the Board to the Consultative Committee, since those terms are set out verbatim in the first paragraph of the Report. In seeking the advice of the Committee the Board were moved by the hope of obtaining a carefully considered opinion upon a question which had for some years been widely canvassed, and, as an outcome of that opinion, practical suggestions for lines of policy which might perhaps to some extent reconcile the widely divergent views to which reference has already been made.
In this hope it is clear that the Board have not been disappointed. The Committee have carried out their task with the thoroughness which their work in the past has led everyone to expect from them as a matter of course; and, even though diverse opinions may be held as to some of the conclusions at which the Committee have arrived, there cannot be any doubt as to the value of the evidence they have collected with so much care and labour and presented in such a useful and readable form.
The very bulk and comprehensiveness of the Report and the Evidence here presented which only reached the Board of Education yesterday render it impossible for them without long and careful consideration to express an opinion as to the conclusions of the Committee, and still less to formulate any new policy on them.
Knowing, however, the interest which the question under consideration has aroused throughout the country, the Board have determined to publish the Report of the Committee immediately. It should be added that the thanks of the Board are due not only to the Committee but also to those persons who, having given evidence before the Committee, have consented to the publication of their evidence. It is no reflection on the work of the Committee or on the value of their conclusions to say that the weight of the Report as a whole is materially enhanced by [page 2] the production of the very varied and comprehensive evidence upon which those conclusions are based.
