This has been fully recognised by the Commissioners, who wisely suggest proceeding on lines similar to those on which elementary education was at first organised. The local authority proposed in 1867 can now be easily constituted, since we have the county councils to supply a nucleus to which educational experts can be added, as is already done on some technical instruction committees and in the Welsh county governing bodies. The local authority would proceed ‘to inquire how far the schools within its area provide secondary instruction adequate in quantity and quality to the needs of each part of that area.’ In doing this, regard is to be had to proprietary and private as well as endowed and other public schools, and the report adds the following significant comment: ‘We are far from desiring to see secondary education pass wholly under public control, and into the hands of those who are practically public servants, as elementary education has done, and we believe that where proprietary or private schools are found to be doing good work, it would be foolish as well as unfair to try to drive them out of the field.’[21] Where the supply of secondary education is deficient in any part of the area, the local authority should have power to establish new schools. The functions of these authorities are therefore to fall under four heads— 1. The securing a due provision of secondary instruction. 2. The remodelling, where necessary, and supervision of the working of endowed (other than non-local) schools and other educational endowments. 3. A watchful survey of the field of secondary education, with the object of bringing proprietary and private schools into the general educational system, and of endeavouring to encourage and facilitate, so far as this can be done by stimulus, by persuasion, and by the offer of privileges and advice, any improvements they may be inclined to introduce. 4. The administration of such sums, either arising from rates levied within the area, or paid over from the National Exchequer, as may be at its disposal for the promotion of education. In this way these local authorities would receive large powers of supervision, but comparatively little coercive control, since ‘it is not so much by superseding as by aiding and focussing voluntary effort that real progress may be made.’ The general guidance and direction of secondary education should be committed to a central authority, to include the various departments of Government now concerned with it. Further recommendations are: the consolidation of existing sources of revenue into one fund; and a generous scheme of scholarships for the poor, in preference to a general lowering of school fees.