Without discussing here the question whether it is possible to devise any system of selection which can be satisfactory, we may note some of the disadvantages of the methods at present in use. In the first place, since the selection is made in the main through the teachers, it necessarily follows that the numbers fed in any particular school depend very largely on the attitude taken by the head teachers. As a general rule the teachers are keenly interested in the physical welfare of their children, and anxious to do everything in their power which may promote it; but some teachers are opposed to the provision of meals, feeling that too much is done for the children; others, again, consider their schools "superior," and do not like their children to go to free meals. Constantly one finds an astonishing disproportion between the numbers fed at two adjacent schools, drawing their children from the same locality. It is true that the character of two schools, within a stone's throw of each other, may vary in a curious way, one attracting a more prosperous class of children--perhaps because of the personality of the teacher, better buildings, or some other cause--but this would not account for all the difference. At Bootle, for instance, it was reported, "there is apparently an absence of uniformity in assessing the needs of the children; for in the six schools of the poorest neighbourhoods it is found that of the number on the rolls the percentage of scheduled children varies from 6 per cent. to 34 per cent., and that in two schools of almost identical character, in one case 10 per cent. of the children are returned as needing daily breakfasts, and in the other 34 per cent."[223] Where the teachers are anxious to place all apparently underfed children on the feeding list, pressure is not infrequently exercised by the Education Authority to induce them to keep down the numbers. Footnote 223: Report of the Bootle School Canteen Committee for 1910-11, p. 22. At Birkenhead, and probably in other towns, the percentage of children fed in the Church of England schools is very much higher than in the Council schools, whilst the Roman Catholic schools feed a larger number still than the Church schools. This is doubtless due partly to the character of the buildings, the non-provided schools being generally very much inferior, and the better-off children being consequently attracted to the Council schools; partly, of course, also to the fact that the Roman Catholic population is chiefly Irish and very poor.