EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCE.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 4 January 1901, Page 4

EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCE.

Resoluiions of the Institute.

(PER PRESS ASSOCIATION.)

Wellington, This Day. The Educational Institute conference debate took place on the motion by McNeil (Southland) calling the attention of the Minister for Education to the necessity of a better system of appointing and promoting teachers. Ultimately an amendment by L. Watson (North Canterbury) was carried, reaffirming last year’s resolution that the present procedure of some Education Boards in debarring from employment in their district teachers from other districts is unjust, and should be altered to prevent the education system from becoming provincialised. A restriction was passed that in amending the powers of school committees they should be more clearly defined, and that the appointment of teachers should not be one of these powers. The Institute decided to urge the Council of the Victoria College at Wellington to establish a chair of pedagogy. It was agreed that the salaries of women teachers should be increased, but the question of equal pay for equal work was deferred till the scale of salaries comes under discussion.

The principle that teachers’ salaries should be paid direct from Boards to teachers was affirmed. Another resolution was that it is desirable that teachers should he represented on Boards, their representatives not to be teachers in the Board’s employ.

A remit from Southland was amended and passed in the following form: —That the Minister of Education be asked to introduce a School Attendance Bill to raise the school age to fourteen years and to make compulsory the limit of distance three miles for those over nine years of ago and two miles for those between seven and nine.

At the instance of North Canterbury, it was resolved that the attention of the Minister of Education he called to the inadequacy of the provisions for enforcing the School Attendance Act and to the desirability of placing the duty of such enforcement in the hands of the police. It was further resolved that between the ages of seven and fourteen years every child be required to attend school for not less than three-fourths of the number of times the school is open for each week.