The Feilding Star. THURSDAY,FEBRUARY 14 ,1884 Coming Educational Troubles

Feilding Star, Volume V, Issue 18, 14 February 1884, Page 2

The Feilding Star. THURSDAY,FEBRUARY 14 ,1884 Coming Educational Troubles

♦ The croaker 9 who, for the last two or three years have continually predicted that the State system of Education in New Zealand would break down under its own financial weight, have material provided for them just now to fan the fire of their disagreeable anticipations. The "Westland Education Board is bankrupt, and the Government has had — from motives as much of national decency as of business prudence — to step in, take over the assets and liabilities, and pay out the bailiffs. The Auckland Education Board has overdrawn its banking account to the tune of £4,000, and has appointed a committee to make searching enquiries into its finances — a process equivalent to an insolvent tradesman placing his books in the hands of a professional accountant. The Wanganui Education Board, to come to a public body nearer home, had at the close of the last financial year incurred actual liabilities on the building account for £3,000, and had made conditional promises of grants to the total extent of another £1,000. Against this the Board has just received the sum of £2,700, the proportion allotted to the Wanganui Educational district, on the basis of population, out of the sum placed on the Estimates. Warned in time, the Wanganui Board has been careful during the last two or three months to avoid making even conditional pledges to build or enlarge schools, or provide teachers' residences. Looking at the matter from a purely financial point of view, this warning has not been attended to a day too soon. The Chairman of the Board (Mr Watt, M.H.8.) has publicly stated that he does not expect that the Board next year will get as much as £2,700, and some little time ago the Minister for Education informed a West Coast deputation at Wellington, that the shares coming to the various Boards next year would be considerably less than those which have lately been paid over. So far as the smaller and sparsely populated educational districts are concerned, this anticipation must obviously be correct whilst the system prevails of allotting the national grant upon the basis simply of population. Canter- | bury and Otago, rich in numbers but also rich in endowments, cannot fail to get the lion's share of the annual vote ; whilst Westland and Wanganui, in which the endowments are hardly worth talking about, must be content with the " crumbs which fall from the rich man's table" — crumbs which we now learn on good authority are likely to decrease in value every year, The financial prospects of the education system in the Wanganui district have been greatly overlooked by the present Board. The members of that body have discussed the best way to graft the teaching of secondary . education upon a system of primary instruction, the expense of which is already an intolerable burden, and the future maintenance of which will be, as we have pointed out, a matter of the gravest difficulty. Money haz been frittered away by the Wanganui Board in grants for converting school grounds into ornamental gardens, trying experiments in school buildings and furniture, and printing elaborate but premature reports, the practical uselessness of which is beyond all question. But the Board appears never to have seriously thought of doing much more than appeasing the demands of the big towns in the district, in which children by the hundred are being educated, for whom a State Bystem waß never intended ; but the question how to provide for the absolutely necessary requirements of the small but important townships, which are rapidly springing up aU over the Manawatu and up the Coast towards the Waimate Plains, has never yet been properly considered. In tbe face .of the present financial diffieultiee of tfre. Board, aad ofthe

pressing demands for school buildings which are beginning to assert themselves with an energy which cannot long be sent empty away, it is idle for the Board to talk about teaching secondary education to a handful of children picked from the better class of Wanganui residents. The projected ! High School can wait, but the demands of the settlers in the country districts cannot be any longer neglected. Let the School Committees bear all these facts in mind in the coming election for three members of the Education Board.