Educational Administration.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16426, 21 January 1919, Page 6

Educational Administration.

Three gatherings of some importance to the general question of education in New Zealand have been held in Wellington during the present month. These were the annual meetings of the Public School Assistant-Masters' Association, the New Zealand Educational Institute, and the Women Teachers' Association. Many matters of importance both to teachers and scholars were discussed at each of these conferences, particularly at t&at of the Educational Institute, and we may refer to some of them on a later occasion. The point to which we wish tp draw attention now has grown out of a discussion by the Institute, and also from the meeting between the, delegates from the Women Teachers' Association and the Minister. This is tho increasing tendency to take the administration of primary education out of the hands of locally elected bodies and centralise it in Wellington. If, said Mr Hanan to the women teachers, the people of this country would agroe to make teaching a national service instead of a sectional service, and place it under the Minister for Education, certain reforms which the women teachers asked for could be brought about. It will be recognised that there was nothing very strikingly novel about the Minister's suggestion. There was more novelty about the proposals of the New Zealand Educational Insti-tute-which decided that what educa-

tion in New Zealand needed "was the substitution of a National Board of Education for the nine existing Education Boards, and the establishment of local educational authorities (covering smaller areas than the present Boards and larger one 3 than existing school committees), each to direct the education work of its area, subject to the National Board. The question of providing for the creation of voluntary school committees for the various schools in an area, to deal with purely local affairs—presumably such as the appointment of a caretaker—was referred to the committee set up to consider the constitution of the National Education Board and the local educational councils. frankly we do not see that the Institute's proposals are any improvement on the system which they would displace. Primary education is already under the administration of a Minister who has the benefit of the advice of a body of experts in the General Council of Education set up by the Act of 1914. The personnel of the Education Boards is possibly capable of improvement in some instancesj but the same may be said of every eleetivo body, even of Parliament, and the average Education Board does the work allotted to it on the whole at least as well as Parliament carries out its responsible duties. For everything that is said against school committees, as much, or more, can be said jn their favour. They havo the great value of keeping alive, to some extent, local interest in the local school. We agree with the member of the Institute who described the executive's proposals regarding the National Board, which we have briefly summarised, as the "camouflaged Wei- " lingtonising of education in tho Do- " minion." The centralising of educational authority has gone quite far enough. To wipe out the present Education Boards in favour of one central body and at the same time displace the existing school committeos by two or three hundred larger bodies, with possibly the present number of smaller local committees, would be an tinnecpssary multiplication of educational authorities.