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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3121, 29 June 1881, Page 2

The resolution that was passed last year by the Hawke's Bay Education Board compelling winners of the Board's scholarships, as a condition of receiving payment, to attend either the Napier Grammar School or the Napier Trust and High School places scholarship winners in a false position. Last year out of six scholarship holders three resigned the honors they had gained in order to continue their studies in the district school, and a fourth threw the scholarship up for the sake of an appointment as pupil teacher. It is clear the scholarships are not valued when saddled with bo unnecessary a condition as that imposed by the Board's resolution referred to above. The condition is, or rather will be, all the more hardly felt from the fact that the Napier Grammar School is no longer in existence. The object of gaining a scholarship is to secure increased pecuniary means for the continuance of study. It is then ridiculous to saddle a scholarship with the condition that the holder must attend one particular school and none other. We see no reason why the winner of a scholarship should not, if he so wish it, continue his studies at the district school, or even at his own home paying for the services of a tutor. As a matter of fact the winner of a scholarship need not necessarily be so well educated as those he bas distanced in the race for a prize. The scholarship holder may be better crammed, but his real knowledge may be superficial enough. And those boys who have resigned their scholarships for the sake of securing a longer term at the district school were, doubtless, well aware that they could learn more by continuing under their old masters than by going to a new tutor and placing themselves under a different and perhaps an inferior system. The examinations for the Board's scholarships commence next Monday, and we believe there are several candidates, including one or more females. How is this thoughtless resolution of the Board to be made to apply to a girl, in the event of her being awarded a scholarship? With such a resolution staring candidates in the face the examinations must result in so much waste of time and brain power, while the prize, the coveted scholarship, cannot be made use of.