EDUCATION IN THE BACK-BLOCKS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 95, 15 January 1921, Page 8

EDUCATION IN THE BACK-BLOCKS

“ITINERANT TEACHERS” ISEW SYSTEM TO BE INSTITUTED One of the lasting difficulties of the education Department has been to devise a satisfactory system of providing educational facilities for isolated families in the back-blocks. Tho Hon. C. J. Parr (Minister of Education) yesterday told a renor-ter of a now system that was to be instituted shortly. At present, Mr. Parr explained, a capitation grant was made in order to provide the services of a teacher, who resided with the bach-blocks family and conducted a little household school. Seven years ago the capitation grant wae J:6 a head, but last session it was increased to Xl5. The system did not provide more than <iu indifferent means of educating member* of isolated families, a« under it teachers of calibre and experience were not obtained. The academic attainments of many cf the teachers in the small household schools to-day did vat go beyond those of tho Sixth Standard pupil. It was now proposed to give education boards the power to establish a svstein of itinerant teachers, to supplement the present system. The itinerant teachers would give house-to-house instruction to children of school age in the outlying districts. They would constitutea sort of special service, and would be well qualified and experienced. Their salary would be jC2OO per annum, with a travelling allowance of .£5O, and further special additions provided for by regulation. Tho plan of operation would be somewhat as follows: —Supposing that in a certain isolated district there was a family of five children, that some miles away in one direction there were two other families with half a dozen children between them, and that some, miles away in another direction there was a fourth family with seven children, the instead of having an indifferent teacher spending the whole week with each of the families, might obtain the services of a. first-class teacher, who would give two or three days a week to the children in each family. "I am sure,” Mr. Parr remarked, "that two or three days’ concentrated effort by a capable teacher would obtain frqm these few children results as good as, if not better than, those generally obtained from children in attendance at the ordinary primary schools.” Regulations for the working of the new system will be gazetted shortly.