CAPITATION GRANTS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 100, 30 April 1930, Page 13

CAPITATION GRANTS

DEPARTMENT'S POSITION

"We have not reduced our grants one penny. It is simply that the W jllington Education Board lias adopted a different system of payment," said Mr. A. Bell, Assistant-Director of Education, to-day, when-asked by a "Post", reporter to explain the Department's I position in regard to the payment of capitation. The Department made grants to the various education boards for 'school committees on a sliding scale, the grants varying according to the size of the schools, said Mr. Bell. Some boards paid the same amounts over to the committees as they received from the Department, but there was no compulsion on the boards to do so. They could pool the grants and divide th( total sum among the committees according to scales of their own. The Wellington "Education Board had, quite justifiably, adopted a scale of its own, based partly on attendance and partly on the floor space of the various schools, so that some schools received moro and some less than under the Department's system. Under the Wellington Board's scale, most of the city schools had for some years been receiving more tliari tho board itself had been getting from the Department for those particular schools. The board stated that under its own scale it had been paying, the committees more in the aggregate than it had been receiving from the Department, and that, therefore, it had been obliged to reduce the grants. Accordingly, the board had reverted to the Department's scale. "Thus," continued Mr. Bell, "many of the city committees are now getting less than formerly, and they- arc blaming the- Department for reducing the grants, whereas the Department has mado no reduction, but is, in fact, making the same grants as for a number of years past.' J LARGE SUM lITVOIiVED. "I don't say that the present grants are adequate,'' Mr. Bell remarked,'' nor that the committees could not .use the money to advantage "if the Government could find the money, but it is a question of finance. It is an awkward year to ask for more assistance. There is a pretty largo sum involved. In the Dominion ' there are 2500 school committees, and to give each oiie another £10 would mean an increase .of £25,000. Even that would not go far in some of the schools." Mr. Bell added that the Department was now paying nearly twice as much in capitation grants as before the war. The- total payments mado by the Department to school committees wereabout 10s per head for all the schools. Before the war it 5s Cd.