NEW HIGH SCHOOL COMMITTEE TO BE ELECTED

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 55, 12 June 1950, Page 5

NEW HIGH SCHOOL COMMITTEE TO BE ELECTED

A meeting of borough householders to elect four representatives to the new Whakatane High School Committee of Management is to be held at the school on Wednesday night. This is the sequel to the calling of nominations for the committee held a fortnight ago when six names were received for the borough seats. Three were received for the county seats .but as this is the number required no election is needed for this section. Beside the seven householders the principal, Mr I. McHarg, is also a member of the committee. Six Nominations The election for the borough seats will be decided between the six nominated:—

Richard Thomson Dodds (minister), Leslie David Lovelock (town clerk), Joyce Florence Lynds (housewife), Rudolph Bernhardt Mollgaard (accountant), Albert Edgar Shaw (civil engineer), GabTiel Alfred Wilkes (postmaster). Although the new committee of management will be in immediate control of the high school the Auckland Education Board will remain the controlling authority and it alone has direct access to the Education Department on matters other than those of purely professional importance. In practice it delegates part of its authority to local committees of management and accepts recommendations from the local committee and principal. There is a diversity of names and methods of local control of the various post-primary schools in New Zealand.

The Whakatane High School was given full post-primary status on February 1, 1950, giving it the same status as Rotorua or Hamilton High Schools, Auckland Grammar School or Tauranga College. The term “District” High School should not be used in this connection as that implies that the primary school and secondary department are all parts of the one school. The term College in its original and true sense implied some connection with a University. Thiis was the reason for the original names for, say, Eton College, one of the great English Public Schools, v.hereas its greatest rival Harrow is correctly known as Harrow School. In New Zealand, such oldestablished schools as the Nelson and Wellington Colleges were probably correctly termed colleges for the same historical reason.

Some years ago some local controlling boards thought the term “College” implied something superior to the terms “High School,” “Technical School” or “Grammar School” and were given permission to change the names of their schools.

Local Control To set up full local control with direct access to the Education Department necessitates the passing of a‘bill through parliament. Rotorua High School, Thames High School, Gisborne High School, Wellington College and Seddon Memorial Technical College all have their own Boards of Governor’s or Boards of Management, as they are sometimes called.

The rapid growth of post-primary school population, particularly in the Auckland Province, over the last 20 years, has necessitated the creating of a number of new postprimary schools. Instead of passing legislation to create separate Boards of Governors, the policy of the Education Department so far has been to place the new schools under the direct control of the Auckland Education Board, which now controls nine post-primary schools, in addition to all the primary schools in the Auckland Province. Under the Education Board committees of management have been set up, as will be the case at Whakatane.