A TALE OF TWO SCHOOLS .sx RE-ORGANISATION is a big word , and when the educational experts get to work explaining their schemes for revising our system of public instruction in every detail , and with all the material considerations brought into review , the average layman is apt to become a trifle confused , if not to despair of reaching any intelligent and rational conclusion .sx So far as Gloucester is concerned , the proposals submitted to the City Education Committee yesterday all boil down in the ultimate issue to a simple tale of two schools , or rather of three authorities and two school projects , about either of which nobody seems really keen .sx ARE THEY REDUNDANT ?sx This being the case , public opinion , that is to say the opinion of the rate and tax payers who have to pay the piper , will instinctively challenge the authorities concerned as to why they should proceed upon an immature judgment to build two schools that may become more or less redundant in a few years' time , more especially as what is contemplated appears to be nothing more than a sort of hybrid of primary and secondary school instruction for the quite second-rate remainder of the " plus eleven " children of the elementary schools after a pretty generous comb-out of the more brilliant scholars who pass on into the secondary schools .sx It is acknowledged , indeed , that in Gloucester this specialised provision for Senior Elementary Schools is less needful than in many other boroughs of its size and importance , for a higher percentage of the children pass on to the secondary schools .sx It may be a question whether all who go up prove in the sequel to be fully capable of assimilating the secondary school curricula ; but as to that the pedagogues and the Board of Education's Inspectorate are perhaps best able to give a considered judgment .sx The City is proud of its secondary schools and of the distinctions won by their more brilliant pupils ; but if the re-organisation of the primary system is to carry through in every particular , and large new senior schools erected , it will certainly be a point of policy to consider whether many of the children who now go up to the secondary could not be retained in the senior schools without any loss to them and certainly with advantage to the City in possible avoidance of , or the modification of , large building schemes for secondary schools that are already ample as compared with many other places .sx Obviously what is required is the courage on the part of our Local Authorities to challenge the Board of Education first of all to know its own mind , and Parliament itself to determine the broad lines of national policy instead of harrying the ratepayers into costly schemes of revolutary changes , and the twists and turns of the policy that may prove redundant .sx MUST GO CAUTIOUSLY .sx There will be a good deal of sympathy , accordingly , with the Bishop's challenging note , as based upon the unhappy experience of the outlay upon a Cheltenham Church School .sx The two proposed schools that are now under consideration are certainly such as might be recommended , under more prosperous conditions , as making provision for a large area in the City that , with the sole exception of the Kingsholm Council School , has been starved of new school provision for elementary children almost from the time the first great Education Act of 1870 came into operation .sx The Church are still carrying on with buildings erected 60 and 100 years ago , and it is not to be wondered at that , in the latter case , the premises are declared to be quite unsuitable for modern requirements .sx We may hope , pace Ald .sx Bellows , that the Local Education Authority will never be persuaded to erect such substantial structures that they will outlive three or four generations .sx Our whole conception of educational policy is in an obviously fluid state , and what goes to-day may be vetoed as effete in the course of a decade or two .sx We really know but little about our industrial future , what the school population figures will be in ten or twenty years' time , or what re-housing and town planning may lead up to in that period .sx We may have every confidence in the future of Gloucester , and we may be rightly resolved that a generous education policy is the necessary basis of our future industrial activity and commercial prosperity , but the whole position is highly speculative , and until the factors are much more crystalised we may well go slow in pushing forward any costly schemes of educational reconstruction .sx A NEW MENACE TO GLOUCESTER .sx YESTERDAY we told the tale of Two Schools projected for Gloucester's future educational requirements , and counselled caution in the embarcation upon any large outlay of public money , having regard to the manifest uncertainties of immediate Parliamentary action along the lines of the bold national policy for which such schools are planned , to the industrial outlook , to the population factor , and to the changes in its distribution which may issue from boundary adjustments , re-housing and town planning .sx All these , we venture to suggest , are much more pertinent to the School problem in Gloucester than arid controversy 'twixt the Church and Chapel interests which many of the Sectarians would dearly like to fan into new life .sx TRANSPORT AND POWER .sx But of even greater import to Gloucester's future , possibly , is the problem presented by the new openings for development along two bold lines which recent advance in transport and power distribution have brought into vision , and it is equally necessary to watch with the utmost care the new tendencies and prejudices which may be set up to our grave disadvantage unless we are warned in time .sx We would suggest to the Mayor , and to those who are more intimately associated with him in the good government of the City , that , in reviewing our immediate and future commitments , they will do well to look also to those developments just as closely as to some of the larger projects which appear at the moment to be the more alarming merely because they involve a larger and more immediate capital expenditure .sx VITAL TO GLOUCESTER .sx Gloucester has a very vital interest in transport .sx Her own particular line of interest , we must never forget , is in her ocean trade and her waterway , by the river and canal system , right into the heart of the Midlands .sx That interest , pronounced by the Royal Commission on Transport to be still an important carrying interest for heavy freightage , has been largely subordinated to the railway interest in the past , and there is a danger that road interests may become such an obsession that Gloucester may be betrayed into the wastage of her resources that might very much better be applied to the development of her port interests .sx That may prove to be the actual fact if the Ring Road project , costing in all a quarter of a million sterling , should prove the abortion that some of our pessimists fear .sx AIR-MINDED ?sx There is , however , another obsession which may be even a greater menace to our interests .sx It is barely two years since Sir Alan Cobham came and bid us all to be " air-minded .sx " He succeeded so well that this " air-mindedness " has led the City Council to entertain what can only be described , in all the circumstances , as a hare-brained project for a joint municipal aerodrome , which has proceeded so far that the Air Ministry have scheduled the area which Sir Alan has indicated as suitable for the future air service of Gloucester and Cheltenham , and has put a strangle-hold upon electrical development which is already operative to the detriment both of the Gloucester Electricity undertaking and of actual building projects .sx This new strangle-hold on Gloucester's future development is much more serious in its immediate menace , and in its future potentialities of mischief , than anybody appears to have conceived ; for we can but suppose that if the danger had been realised it would have been scotched from the very outset .sx A TALE OF TWO DROMES .sx It is a tale of two aerodromes - it may be three .sx We have an aerodrome in being at Brockworth that is so ample in its accommodation , that its capacity for all the demand for aerial transport that is foreseeable in the present stage of this interest is beyond question .sx It has been approved by the Air Ministry and put forward as a suitable subject for negotiation by the two Corporations with a view to its utilisation in the direction indicated .sx Here , then , is an opportunity for Gloucester and Cheltenham , without undertaking any large capital outlay which they can ill-afford in these times , to negotiate for their initial air services whilst watching developments and the materialisation of a demand which is at the moment highly speculative , if not purely conjectural .sx But is was condemned out of hand by Sir Alan Cobham , as being too remote from the City , and on that plausible but unsubstantiated premiss he sent the two Corporations chasing around the territory common to them both for a more suitable aerodrome , and has found for them an eligible site in the neighbourhood of Churchdown - not much nearer to either Gloucester or Cheltenham than Brockworth as air and road speeds count to-day .sx And now we learn that , because negotiations have not been pushed home with Brockworth , and because the joint municipal aerodrome is still , for all practical purposes , very much " in the air , " the newly-formed Gloucester and Cheltenham Club is furnishing itself with its own flying ground that is neither at Brockworth nor Churchdown .sx Possibly this flying ground will be scheduled in due course as an aerodrome in order to hold off other interests .sx WHAT IT MEANS .sx The mere possibility of three aerodromes in the immediate vicinity of the City is alarming , because of the precautions which must be observed for their safety , and which the Air Ministry is already insisting upon in regard to the aerodrome projected for the Churchdown neighbourhood .sx One of the essential conditions is that the air approaches to a 'drome , for taking off and alighting , must be ample and free from the dangers of overhead cables and wires ; and that has involved the scheduling of an immense area of country , comprising no less than five square miles , against electrical development by means of overhead transmission lines .sx In other words , upon an area much larger than that of the City itself ( with a total acreage nearly 50 per cent .sx bigger ) a very .sx CO-ORDINATE OR SUBORDINATE ?sx In future contemplation of County expenditure upon roads , consideration must be given to the fact that the setting up of Traffic Commissioners with executive jurisdiction over wide areas has the effect of very definitely qualifying the discretion and authority of our county bodies .sx The sitting of the East Midland Commissioners at Nottingham this week has demonstrated that so far as regards the licensing of road 'buses and coaches , the Commissioners have a judicial power , and will exercise it in a judicial way in hearing and determining applications and objections .sx The County Borough and County Councils of the areas in question may be heard in support or objection to the continuance or establishment of particular routes and services , but the decision will rest in every case with the Commissioners .sx This power of decision applies equally to local and to long distance services .sx In the case of the latter , traversing routes through many boroughs and counties , the Commissioners' jurisdiction is obviously one of co-ordination , and it brings into play a power long overdue .sx LIMITATION OF POWERS .sx But from the viewpoint of the individual road authority this general co-ordination involves the subordination of its own power and authority .sx Thus in proceedings this week the local transport services of the Nottingham Corporation were submitted for sanction .sx The schedules of routes and services submitted were formally approved , but we take it that if in such cases objection is tendered that any district is starved in the matter of public transport and could be better served by a variation of the routes submitted , or possibly by the introduction of a competitive company's service , the Commissioners have full power to over-ride the local authority .sx