A Deputation on behalf of the Exasperated Ratepayers’ Association waited yesterday afternoon on the Chairman of the London School Board at their new and commodious palatial premises erected on the vast central site recently cleared, regardless of expense, for that purpose in Piccadilly, and presented a further protest against the ever-increasing expenditure indulged in by that body.  The Chairman, smilingly intimating that he would hear what the Deputation had to say, though he added, amidst the ill-suppressed merriment of his confreres, he supposed it was the old sing-song protest, possibly on this occasion because they had recently directed that the boys attending the schools of the Board should come in “Eton” suits, the cost of which naturally fell upon the rates, or some captious objection of that kind, which it really was a waste of breath to discuss.  However, whatever it was, he added, he was willing to hear it.

The Spokesman of the Deputation, a Duke in reduced circumstances, who ascribed his ruin to the heavy rates he had been called upon to pay through the extravagance of the Board, and who declined to give his name, said that though they had not thought the Eton suits a necessity, still it was not against them that they had to protest.  It was the addition of Astronomy involving the erection (with fitting first-class instruments) of 341 observatories in the London district alone, Chinese, taught by 500 native Professors imported from Pekin for the purpose, horse-riding, yachting, and the church organ (these last two being compulsory), together with the use of the tricycle, type-writer, and phonograph, all of which instruments were provided for every single pupil at the expense of the ratepayers, to the curriculum of all those pupils who were fitted for the third standard.  The speaker said he knew that it had long been settled that the finest and most comprehensive education that our advanced civilisation could supply should be provided for the submerged half of the population, and they could not grumble at these things, but what they did not consider necessary was, that a salary should be forthcoming for each pupil-teacher sufficient to enable him or her to drive down to the schools in their own carriage and pair. (Much laughter.) He did not think it a laughing matter.  He would strongly suggest a diminution of at least L1000 a-year in the salaries of these overpaid officials.

The Chairman here asked the speaker if he had considered that “descending” from a carriage was necessarily connected with the teaching of Deportment, on which the Board set great value?  Was he not aware that some great man had said, wishing to give Deportment its proper weight as an educational factor, that the Battle of Waterloo (at least he thought he was quoting correctly) was won at Almacks? (Renewed laughter.) Anyhow, he did not consider that L2,500 a-year, and a house in Mayfair, was at all an excessive remuneration for a School-Board teacher, as measured by the Board’s standard.  He thought, if that was all the Deputation had to urge, that they might have saved themselves the trouble their protest had cost them.