The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, JANUARY 15.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 2, Issue 156, 15 January 1878, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, JANUARY 15.

We may fairly claim for the inhabitants of Banks Peninsula that they have always shewn a warm interest in education, and that they also feel the debt that Canterbury owes to those among her leading men whose strenuous*efforts have urged on the good cause. Its benefits are widely shewn and cheerfiilly* acknowledged. In this district alone, we have many schools, and the attendance at them shews the appreciation in which they are held. Year by year men have come forward willingly to act on the various school committees, and to take that general interest in educational matters on which the progress of a school so much depends. It were a pity should any cause arise to lessen this interest, and we trust that this view will be shared by the Board of Education; but for some time past an increasing amount of detail and correspondence has been thrown upon'the committees, and just now they are asked to compile a return, which we conceive is quite beyond their office. The ordinary returns for 1877 have been duly Bent in, but under the new Education Act, which came into force on the first of the present month, a set of questions has been framed, and these the committees are requested to answer. That the replies to many of these questions cannot be given of their own knowledge, by those applied to, will be apparent, for instance, take—

Question 1, clause 8, which requires an estimate of the number of children within two miles of the school, and between seven and thirteen years, who have not attended any school for half of the school year 1877. Question 2, clause 8. The estimated number of same class of children who have attended other than any of the Board schools. Clause 9 requires a return of teachers' receipts from other local sources. We presume this to mean apart from the school, as salary and fees are previously enumerated.

Under clause 10, dimensions are to be 'given of each room in the master's •house, and if any teachers are about to leave, the committees are to state " what position they are to occupy."

These are some of the unreasonable questions to which replies are required by this return.

That there is much valuable information also- required, we acknowledge, especially regarding the standards and attainments of the children, but we submit that this should be looked for, not from the school committees, but from the Inspectors from whose classification this return should be compiled. We speak with all respect of the gentlemen at present filling this office. That they are at present overworked, we may believe, as no inspection of schools in the Akaroa District has taken place during the past half-year ; but if so, we see no reason why their number should not be increased. We repeat, that it is not to be expected that school committees can supply returns of such detailed character as that asked for, even supposing such to be really needed. They could be far more correctly filled up by the proper officer of the Board of Education at his visits of inspection.