ABSTRACT
The Endowed Schools Commissioners had defined their principal objectives in their report of 1872 (PP 1872 XXIV:10). They had endeavoured to put the governing bodies on a more popular basis, to grade or classify the schools, to ensure that substantial fees were charged (with free places for able children), to secure some independence for the head teacher, and to introduce modern subjects into the curriculum. The same threads of policy run through the work of the Charity Commissioners after 1874, though there were substantial differences between the two bodies. H.J. Roby told the Bryce Commission that the Charity Commissioners were much more independent of the government of the day than the Endowed Schools Commissioners had been. The Charity Commissioners had, he thought, ‘a certain judicial character, and from long tradition their own method of working’, whereas the Endowed Schools Commissioners had been set up as a government agency to carry out a specific task. On the other hand, that close connection with government strengthened the hand of Lyttelton and his colleagues (BC IV; 433:16543).
