Re-Imagining Christian Education for the Twenty-First Century

daughter.

Part 1

The Politics of Christian Educational Provision

Introduction

The papers in the first part of the book cover, in their different ways, some of the internal and external political circumstances which face the main Church providers of Christian education as they look to the future of their schools within the English maintained system of education. Politics, in this context, is not restricted to the necessary interaction of state and voluntary bodies, though that is a central issue that has to be addressed, but also considers different interpretations and understanding of the nature, purpose and approaches that might best fulfil the Churches educational mission. Legitimate controversy exists both within and outside Christian circles.

Authors have chosen, deliberately, to leave to one side, as far as is possible, some of the more contentious areas, such as the sustained secular attack on the existence of Christian schools, simply because they have been more than adequately addressed elsewhere (see, for example, Holmes, 1992; Thiessen, 1993; Dennis, 2001; Gardner et al, 2005; Parker-Jenkins, 2005, Morris, 2008; McKinney, 2008) and there is little value in repeating those arguments. Some of the essays, however, inevitably note the existence of that debate.

The papers fall into three main categories which reflect a more nuanced approach towards the changing legislative framework within which such schools will (most probably) operate in the coming decades, ways in which internal tensions within the two main Christian denominations about their future roles and approaches to education - and they differ - might be resolved and, finally, how the future teachers in Christian schools can be most effectively prepared for their educative tasks within a national system where approximately one-third of the schools in which they can choose to work will have a religious character.

From his perspective as a former Member of Parliament, John Battle gives a brief overview of his experience of the legislative impact on schools and education, arguing both that there is too much, and that what is enacted is often misdirected, or perhaps more the case, bypasses the realities and needs of urban life.

In an important comprehensive and incisive paper Paul Barber examines what he describes as the remarkable and unique settlement between the government and the major Churches in 1944. He analyses that settlement in the context of the rapidly changing legal frameworks and environment in which schools with a religious character currently exist. He briefly analyses the key features of so-called ‘dual system’ of education and its legislative antecedents before illustrating how that settlement has become more complex and obscure over the last fifty years. He contrasts the English and Welsh settlement with some other jurisdictions, before moving on to look at a number of areas in the legal and political sphere where the landscape has changed dramatically as the settlement has aged. Finally he considers the framework on offer for Church schools in the light of recent legislation. In his legal analysis, he has provided scientific references in support of his arguments, whereas his political analysis is more anecdotal, based largely on his own experience working in the field over the past 16 years.

Rev. Janina Ainsworth takes a broader approach as she discusses the background, current circumstances and future directions of Anglican Church School Education from her perspective as Director of the National Society. Following a brief exposition on the history of Church of England education she reflects on the significance for the Church of England of the recently published Chadwick Report and its response to the rapidly changing educational landscape from that enshrined in the Education Act 1944. In the light of those changes, which she describes as fundamental and a huge shift, she describes where The National Society thinks Church of England schools are at the moment and where it thinks they might be going in the light of new circumstances.

Alison Brown is a senior officer working for a Church of England Diocesan Board of Education. She attended the recent Watson Symposium, a one-day conference convened by the National Society and Anglican Association of Directors of Education to mark the bi-centenary of church school education, the proceedings of which have been published (Worsley, 2012), because it directly related to her daily work which, in common with that of others in similar positions throughout the country, is concerned with responding to the challenge of holding on to what the Church of England deems to be of great worth in its schools, whilst at the same time trying to navigate through the new educational structures which will dominate the coming decades. She particularly focusses, and comments, on a paper presented at the Symposium by Tim Elbourne (see Worsley, 2012: 239-254) which addresses the future role and purposes of Anglican Church schools, and how those purposes might be most effectively realised.

In a wide ranging essay Michael Bayldon, a serving priest and former Catholic diocesan Director of Schools, argues that re-imagining Catholic education must pursue more than the analysis of existing facts upon which to plan the future. While the physical components of schools are observable, as are the policies employed within them, he sees the key ingredient to be the soul of those who make the construction when trying to imagine the way ahead for Catholic schools. However, he resists the temptation to advocate one particular solution but seeks to show the need for a variety of models within which to work. While recognising that he cannot explore or unravel every possibility, he offers four models for consideration, noting we need to leave space for that reflection within which the imagination can run.

For Sean Whittle the most effective way for the Catholic Church to respond to the current political debate surrounding its schools is to use it as an opportunity to develop a non-confessional account of their purposes. There is amongst its current advocates, he argues, an inherent tensions within the narratives they use as justification. He questions the widely held assumption that, because Catholic schools are integrally bound up with helping Catholic parents bring up their children as Catholics, the education they provide is necessarily a confessional or catechetical activity. This perspective, he argues, needs to be challenged if there is to be any significant change in attitude amongst hostile politicians. He outlines one possible way of developing and defending a theory of Catholic education that is neither confessional nor indoctrinatory but thoroughly grounded in the Catholic theology of Karl Rahner. Such an approach, he suggests, could be used by proponents of Catholic education as a way of justifying and distinguishing it from other theories of education and politicians would be far less inclined to dismiss it because it would be offering to parents an alternative but crucially non-confessional approach to education and schooling.

In the final paper of this section John Williams reflects on the demands and expectations of teachers who choose to work schools with a religious character, comparing what seemed to be in the early 1960s an obvious and straightforward approach to staffing with the situation today and in the immediate future. He describes a newly established Catholic school which, when it was opened in 1964, the governor’s staff recruitment policy was to employ Catholic teachers only. Where that was not possible, successful applicants who were not baptized Catholics were employed on one year contracts only. He notes that the policy lasted all of one year! He then argues that the Catholic sector throughout the country, both then, now and perhaps even more so in the future, depends on the professionalism and good will of teachers who are not baptized Catholics contributing to the development and maintenance of the specific religious character of Catholic schools if they are to fulfill their ecclesial mission. However, this ‘fact‘, he argues, demands that Catholic teachers in those schools must commit to supporting and educating their colleagues, who do not share their faith, to come to an ever increasing appreciation of what their commitment to teach in a Catholic school implies for them, both personally and professionally.

References

Dennis, N. (2001) The Uncertain Trumpet: A History of Church of England School Education to AD 2001, London, The Institute for the Study of Civil Society

Gardner, R., Cairns, J. & Lawton, D. (eds) (2005) Faith Schools: Consensus or Conflict?, London, RoutledgeFalmer.

Holmes, M. (1992) Educational Policy for the Pluralistic Democracy: The Common School, Choice and Diversity, London, Falmer Press.

McKinney, S. (ed) (2008) Faith Schools in the Twenty-first Century, Edinburgh, Dunedin Academic Press.

Morris, A. B. (2008) Fifty Years On: The Case for Catholic Schools, Chelmsford, Matthew James.

Parker-Jenkins, M., Hartas, D. & Irving, B. A. (eds) (2005) In Good Faith: Schools, Religion and Public Funding, Aldershot, Ashgate.

Thiessen, E. J. (1993) Teaching for Commitment: Liberal Education, Indoctrination and Christian Nurture, Leominster, Gracewing.

Worsley, H. (ed) (2012) Anglican Church School Education: Moving Beyond the First Two Hundred Years, London, Bloomsbury.

Politicians, Politics and Christian Education:

An Overview

John Battle

Legislation overload

Politics tends to be reactive; behind the times and experiences of the people as a whole. It follows rather more than it leads.

Effective new ideas and practices tend to be organic and grow from the ground upwards and the further from the ground of experience, the longer it takes for new ideas to get through. In my experience it takes ten years for a good local idea to become local council authority practice and about thirty years for a good policy to work through to national government practice. Politicians, locked into a maximum five year election cycle, are inevitably short-termist in outlook, struggling to understand and address current problems and pressured by a media insistence on quick and certain solutions. The consequence is a desperate rush to over legislate, to be seen to be doing something, to be responding to current crises.

What suffers is the quality of too much legislation hastily passed through, and Ministers anxious to hold their own in public, develop an addiction to fresh initiatives, top down, often media satisfying ‘fixes’, to be seen to be ‘doing something’. Reverting to nostalgic versions of past practice becomes the temptation. As I have experienced as a Member of Parliament, a major problem is that top down measures rarely tackle the roots of the problems. Education policy in particular seems to suffer in this regard. There is pressure for change that is not thought through, sometimes based on little more than anecdotal evidence or prejudice and certainly not developed in detailed consultation with practitioners.

The following example, perhaps, typifies this tendency. Following disturbances in a number of Northern towns, the Education and Inspections Act 2006 placed two new duties on governing bodies; to promote the well-being of pupils and (in England only) promote community cohesion. When the Bill was published, the duty to promote community cohesion applied only to, what were termed, faith schools. Perhaps reflecting a view that such schools were, potentially, a major source of social and communal unrest (see, for example, Hansard, 2002, 2006a; Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 2004), the Bill’s drafters assumed that they were the only educational institutions that needed to have such demands placed upon them.1. After three years inspecting this element of schools’ responsibilities it is clear that ‘faith schools’ are, in fact, particularly effective in promoting community cohesion (see for example Jesson, 2011; Morris et al, 2012; Morris, 2013). Government has now decided that there is no longer any need for Ofsted inspectors to report this facet of school life! If local politicians had been listened to, government might have realised sooner that schools with a religious character were not the problem in this respect but were providing solutions.

Perhaps it is time to press the legislative ‘pause button’ and examine the practicalities of a different approach that starts from experience on the ground and really tests the parameters of ‘localism’ which is helpfully emerging as a current theme. Can we ask how schools with a religious character relate, not just to the Department of Education nationally but to departments of local government and the local communities in which the schools are situated? What are the implications for Christian educators working with the whole community, locally, nationally and indeed internationally? Can we go beyond the concept of a ‘family of schools’ local network to a deeper practice of neighbourhood and community engagement? In other words, are Church schools central to our communities in practice?

Life in urban Britain

Addressing the context of the world we actually live in is critical. In the inner city wards of west Leeds for example, marked by traditional back to back housing tower blocks and 1950s council estates, unemployment is high particularly among young people in an area of primarily service sector work, many work part time and wages (around £13,500 a year) are well below the national average of £26,000 a year. There is a significant proportion of migrants (some 26 languages in local schools), a high turnover of population, but a good presence of faith communities as a stabilizer. It is traditionally a neighbourhood of low educational aspiration (youngsters leave early to try and find work), very few even think of going to university. Furthermore parents who themselves had a poor experience of school are reluctant to take their children further in than the school gate. Just as the future is now urban (most people now live in cities) and the global is now local (bringing all the world’s tensions and conflicts to local terraces and tower blocks) paradoxically there is a ‘poverty of isolation’ in the inner city. There is a breakdown of community and mutual support. Moreover the increasingly dividing city (reflected in a widening gap between richer and poor) makes an impact on educational opportunities.

In this context debating the politics of education in terms of ‘international rankings’, league tables, and reviews of the curriculum (described as ‘crude’ by the government’s adviser Professor Andrew Pollard) and even issues of transport and access seem to be somewhat removed from daily reality. What might be described as the micro politics of education, curriculum reforms etcetera, important as they are to the whole direction of the system, are best left to the educational practitioners to tackle. The focus here is on the macro politics of education and in particular, the very purpose of a school with a religious character in our neighbourhoods. The Secretary of State has usefully invoked the need for values and visions in education so perhaps legislators should reflect on the actual contribution of such schools in the context of their local communities.

References

Hansard (2002) Education Bill 2002, New clause 18 - No requirements of attendance at a place of religious worship, Commons amendment No. 78 considered, HC 6th February 2002, Columns 868-957.

Hansard (2006a) Education and Inspections Bill, Invitation for Proposals for Establishment of new schools, Lords Amendment No. 3 considered, HL 30th October 2006, Columns 19-42.

Hansard (2006b) Education and Inspections Bill, General Duties of Governing Bodies of Maintained Schools, Lords Amendment No. 30 considered, HC 2nd November 2006, Columns 480-493.

Jesson, D. (2009) A study of recent Ofsted data assessing schools’ progress on the duty to promote community cohesion and tackle inequality, in: Strong Schools for Strong Communities: reviewing the impact of Church of England schools in promoting community cohesion, 3-7. London: Church of England Archbishops’ Council, http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/education (accessed 4th December 2009).

Morris, A. B., McDaid, M. & Potter, H. (2012) Promoting community cohesion in England, School Leadership & Management, 31:3, 281-296.

Morris, A. B. (2013) Some Social Benefits of English Catholic Schools, International Studies in Catholic Education, (forthcoming).

Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (2004) Government Response to the ODPM Select Committee Report on Social Cohesion, July 24th, London, The Stationery Office.

1 Following representations made to the Secretary of State for Education, including some made by different religious organisations, the relevant clauses were amended as the Bill progressed towards enactment so that the duty was placed on all schools not just those with a religious character (see Hansard 2006b).

Nineteen Forty-Four and All That:

Christian Schools and the Political Settlement

Paul Barber

Key features of the 1944 settlement: the dual system

In 1944, in the middle of a World War, a remarkable and unique settlement was reached between the government and the churches in England and Wales in relation to schools. That settlement is largely still in place today and its longevity is testament to the nature of the settlement itself. The settlement continued what is well known in church circles as the ‘dual system’ in education in England and Wales.1.

In some ways the key features of the 1944 legislation are somewhat technical. The key to understanding the legislation by a ‘lay’ audience is to understand the nature of two different types of school that existed at the time that the legislation came into force. First of all there was what is, and was known as, the voluntary school, one which is founded by an organisation which has no legal obligation to establish such an institution. It does so, voluntarily, because it wishes to do so for its own objects or purposes.

Voluntary schools understood in the broadest sense had, of course, existed without any state funding for many centuries. But it is with voluntary schools that are partly or wholly state funded that we are concerned in this particular paper. The possibility of state funding for voluntary schools began in 1833 with the first annual government grants to voluntary bodies. This funding was widely taken up, particularly by churches, to fund existing or new voluntary schools. These schools continue in existence with state funding to this day, and have survived the various changes in the legal framework that principally took place in 1870 and 1903 before 1944. These schools were formerly known as non-provided schools2. and are also known as Church schools.3.

The second type of school within this framework is a statutory school, that is to say, a school which is founded by the state, or an organ of the state, under a statutory responsibility laid down by statute. In the framework that we are examining, statutory schools, schools that one could unambiguously called state schools in the fullest sense of the term in any context, first came about in the guise of board schools following the Forster Education Act 1870. These schools were formerly known as provided schools, or council schools and became known as county schools under the Education Act 1944.

Origins of the church/state partnership

In 1833 concern about the education of the poor led the government of the day to establish annual grants to bodies who would provide elementary schools for the poor. From 1839 these were administered by the newly established Committee of the Privy Council for Education.4. The Church of England and the Free Churches immediately took advantage of this funding.

Following the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, the Catholic Church also wished to do so, but the Bishops were initially unwilling to accept the funding on the basis on which it was offered, which included the State inspection of religious education and collective worship. Negotiations continued until 1847, when a compromise was reached which put the inspection of religious education and collective worship under the jurisdiction of the bishop, and outside that of the secular inspectors.5. In 1870, statutory local school boards were created to fill the gaps by providing elementary schools where there were not enough Church schools, as a precursor to compulsory elementary education. Completely state funded elementary education (without fees) came in 1903, the responsibilities of school boards were transferred to local councils, which became local education authorities (LEAs). LEAs also took responsibility for voluntary schools, with modern school governance taking shape in the form of local ‘managers’ with a trustee majority in the case of voluntary schools.

The Butler Act - Education Act 1944

In 1944 the current settlement was reached, whereby the voluntary schools, owned and provided by voluntary bodies, and county schools, owned and provided by the LEAs, were integrated into the same system, all being maintained (100% revenue costs) by the LEA. About one third of all schools were (and are) voluntary, and almost all of these were (and are) Anglican or Catholic. County schools were controlled by the LEA (by appointment of the majority of governors), the LEA also being responsible for all capital costs in these schools. Voluntary schools were divided into two main types:6. voluntary controlled (VC), where both control and responsibility for capital funding rested with the LEA (the voluntary body appointed a minority of governors) and voluntary aided (VA), where the both control and responsibility for capital funding rested with the voluntary provider, subject to grant aid from central government (originally at 50%, successively increased to 90%).7. The creation in this country of the dual system of statutory and voluntary schools fully maintained within the state sector is a unique achievement not replicated anywhere else.

Unlike the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church never accepted the voluntary controlled model,8. and all its maintained schools are voluntary aided. Thus the governing body of each VA school is the occupier of the premises, employer of the staff and proprietor of the undertaking (including being the admissions authority). In the case of a VC school, the last two functions belong to the local authority, although increasingly they are delegate back to the school. Moreover the governing body of all voluntary schools, despite being clothed in a statutory framework, exist, occupy their premises and carry out all of their other functions on behalf of their trustees: that is to say the charitable body that represents their founder (speaking historically) and provider (speaking currently).

The dual system - a partnership of providers

The dual system is also a unique partnership between the voluntary and statutory providers of schools. This is reflected in the statutory representation rights of the Anglican and Catholic churches (who together provide 99% of voluntary schools) on the overview and scrutiny committees (formerly education committees) of all local authorities. The local authority, as well as being a provider of its own schools, has certain statutory responsibilities for all schools. In relation to a voluntary aided school, there is therefore a partnership between the local authority and the particular provider. In the broadest terms the local authority has the primary responsibility for ensuring school standards, and for supporting schools when they fail to deliver those standards of education, as it is to local authorities where public funding for this task is directed. On the other hand, the provider takes the lead responsibility when it comes to governance in voluntary aided schools, as well as premises and capital funding. There is a varying degree of partnership on a range of other matters.

Recent developments

Subsequent legislation has complicated and lessened the clarity of this system, but has not yet replaced it. Notable developments include the following.

Local education authorities (LEA) effectively lost full ‘control’ over their own (and VC) schools, first by losing the right to appoint the majority of governors in the late 1980s, then by statutory delegation of most of their employment powers to individual school governing bodies. Most financial control of maintained schools was lost by LEAs by the introduction of delegated budgets in the 1980s and 90s.9.

When grant maintained (GM) schools came back within LEA funding in 1999, county schools were re-named ‘community schools’, and a new category of ‘foundation school’ was created to house the ex-GM schools that had formerly been county schools. At the same time, the legislation somewhat confusingly allowed voluntary schools to opt to become foundation schools and, under certain conditions, for statutory schools to become voluntary controlled or even voluntary aided schools. This unhelpful development both increased the different types of school and blurred the line between the basic categories of voluntary and statutory schools, since most of the statutory categories could thenceforth contain both basic types of school. What may at first seem to some of you to be the pedantic distinctions of a legal purist have in my view, serious practical consequences, whether intended or otherwise. Let me attempt to convince you.

First, the statutory categories now no longer accurately reflect the basic duality underlying the system that is described above. It may even require detective work just to discover whether a particular school is statutory or voluntary. On its own, this may not be a major problem. All schools with a religious character are, by definition, voluntary schools, and the vast majority of those without are statutory. But it is what these reforms have led to that causes problems.

The problem was exacerbated by the provisions of the 1998 Act which allowed statutory schools to enter into the voluntary aided and voluntary controlled categories, which had previously been reserved for voluntary schools: that is schools with trustees. The legislative answer was to allow two or more of those aspirant schools to create a statutory trust over the top of themselves, and appoint trustees to it. So now these schools looked just like voluntary schools, and most people could not tell the difference. But the difference remains fundamental. In a voluntary school, the trustees establish the school, which operates on its behalf, and is ultimately accountable to them. In a statutory trust school, the trust is established and appointed by the schools, and the trust is therefore ultimately accountable to the schools.

As if that was not confusing enough, the government decided, without parliamentary sanction, to use the term trust schools in public discourse to refer (only) to statutory trust schools within the foundation category. As a result of protests ministers acknowledged that all voluntary schools were trust schools (by definition), but this further anomaly continues to appear in Department for Education (DfE) literature to the present day.

Up to this point, it had been common practice for various key statutory provisions for the different types of school, such as governance and staffing, to be set out separately in legislation, and this was followed in regulations and guidance. The new proliferation of categories made this less practical, and so the era of attempted ‘one size fits all’ legislation was to begin. And with a minority of schools being voluntary, it was not a surprise that the ‘one size’ was not that of the voluntary sector!

Legislation led to guidance, and sure enough the DfE’s principal guidance document - the Governors’ Guide to the Law - previously issued in three separate versions, was rolled up into one single document with a few marginal notes. About this time, the Society of Education Officers gave up producing their admirably clear and concise book ‘County and Voluntary Schools’ after eight editions over 45 years.10.

All of this reduced the visibility of the voluntary school as a distinct (and distinctive) entity to the extent that, in the main, they escape the notice of newer officials altogether. The result is that almost every new government initiative is designed without taking account of the voluntary sector. This can have disastrous effect, as one illustration should make clear.

When the last government announced its ambitious ‘Building Schools for the Future’ campaign, with funding given to a local authority for all schools in the area, it quickly emerged that the assumption of the process was that all schools were owned by the council. The discovery that this was not so, and the belated introduction of trustees into local discussions extended the already tortuous process over a period of many years. In many authorities this wasted enormous amounts of everyone’s time and money, with actual building no closer when the whole scheme was ‘pulled’ by the subsequent government some years later.

Other jurisdictions

Scotland

Scottish Schools were not brought within the state funded system until the settlement of 1918.11. Under this settlement,12. ownership of premises, control of the curriculum and employment of staff was handed to local authorities, in return for 100 % revenue and capital funding. Catholic bishops retain right to issue the ‘nihil obstat’13. for members of staff to be employed, and there is an unpaid supervisor of religious instruction (usually the local clergy).14.

United States of America

The Federal constitution of the United States of America has a rigid doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Originally this was not applicable to states (indeed, some states had confessional origins) but a rebalancing of power towards the federal since the union was formed and the increasing judicial activity of Supreme Court has rolled this out to states. There is therefore no possibility of the type of system seen in England.

Continental Europe

In Europe, there is a great difference between countries. In some (largely among those European states where the majority of the population is Catholic) there is a concordat between the government and the Holy See which contains provisions relating to Catholic education and schools (e.g. in Spain, Italy, many former Eastern bloc countries).15. In some states there is a constitutional notion of separation of Church and State. This is most notable in France with its strongly held notion of ‘laicité’. However, throughout continental Europe the concept of confessional schools being able to be ‘state’ schools is unknown. It is also worth noting the disparity of the provision of Catholic schools: outside a small handful of countries provision is sparse or patchy. This is particularly true, for historical reasons, in the former Soviet Bloc.16. To put the figures into some context, the Catholic Church in England and Wales provides approximately 10% of school places in that area (roughly equivalent to the Catholic population at large). That same number of pupils, equates to 12% of places in Catholic schools across the whole of Europe (i.e. not just in the European Union).

The question of ‘state’ schools

Here it might be worth pausing to take a quick look at a fundamental question: is it the function of the state to teach? On continental Europe there has long been an idea that it was: particularly from ideas that took hold about then time of the French Revolution. As La Chalotais17. put it:

I dare claim for the nation an education which depends only on the state, because it belongs essentially to the State; because every State has an inalienable and indefeasible right to instruct its members; because, finally, the children of the State ought to be educated by the members of the State.18.

This view was not without influence in England, but the older view (that it was not the state’s function) is likely to have been heavily, even if subconsciously, behind the voluntary origins of our State funded system in 1833. The English Bishops stated this view unequivocally in a declaration in 1929:

"It is no part of the normal function of the State to teach. ... The teacher is always acting in loco parentis, never in loco civitatis, ... Thus a teacher is not and never can be a civil servant ... Whatever authority he may possess to teach and control children ... comes to him from God, through the parents and not through the State, except in so far as the State is acting on behalf of the parents."19.

This approach, that the functions of the State, and even the Church, are always auxiliary to those of the parents, is clearly reflected in canon law20. and in the Rite of Baptism21. (and even in recent statutory guidance).22. It is also reflected in the wording of the second protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights (the Right to Education).23.

Other parts of the world

Some approximate comparators can be found elsewhere in the world, for instance, some parts of Canada and Australia have similar systems, with public funding through the Church, but, in each case, with some fees still being payable. The integration of the Catholic schools into the state system in New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s was recently the subject of litigation in the New Zealand High Court.24.

Comparators in other sectors

Are there comparisons that can be made with with other types of institutions? The best potential comparators are hospitals and universities.

Voluntary hospitals

There are remarkable parallels to schools in the development of voluntary (charitable) hospitals. They had been established for centuries before the establishment of the

National Health Service in 1948, they were the oldest providers of healthcare, and many of them were run by the Churches. State funding of one form or other had been available to assist voluntary hospitals since 1875. The 1944 White Paper proposed the co-ordination of all hospitals, both municipal and voluntary, by local authority committees. It recognised that there would be insufficient provision for many years without the voluntary hospitals.25. It recognised the dangers that the proposals might have for the voluntary sector, but considered that its proposals could achieve the necessary balance:

Yet the acceptance by the community of responsibility for a service for all might affect fundamentally the position of the voluntary hospitals. A new universal public hospital service might have the gradual effect of undermining the foundations on which the voluntary hospitals are based. If this it not to happen, a way has to be found of combining the general responsibility of the new joint authority for the service with the continued participation in that service of the voluntary movement as such; a way, in fact, of securing a whole service under one ultimate public responsibility without destroying the independence and traditions to which the voluntary hospitals attach value. The Government believe that this can be done, and in settling the details arising out of the following proposals they will welcome the help and the suggestions of the voluntary hospital representatives in securing it. 26.

But the White Paper recognised that such a partnership was to be predicated on a continuing substantial financial contribution from the voluntary foundations:

"...it is the aim of the Government to enable the voluntary hospitals to take