The Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE THURSDAY, MAY 30, 1901. EDUCATION IN NEW ZEALAND

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 30 May 1901, Page 2

The Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE THURSDAY, MAY 30, 1901. EDUCATION IN NEW ZEALAND

Mb Hogben has been again trying his hand at a colonial scale of salaries for State school teachers, and as such scale involves a colonial scale of staff, he has also included this in his scheme. In many respects the proposal is in advance of his “ ’prentice effort,” but it is far from satisfactory. In order to place our readers in possession of the figures before analysing the proposed scale, we give the table as under:—

STAFF. ’

We are not disposed to find too much fault with the staff scale, although there are manifest inequalities in it. For instance, why the number for 250 to 275 should be narrowed down to 25 for an increase against 50 in other stages is one of those features possibly only logical to Mr Hogben. But the most serious defect, so far as this district is concerned, is the ignoring of all schools with a lesser attendance than 14 children. Now, one of the main planks of Government policy is to get the people to settle on the outlying lands of the colony, and one of the greatest inducements that can be offered to farmers to go on to these lands and for miners to work outlying auriferous drifts is to provide education for their children. Limiting the scale to 14 does not do this; for payments per head, as provided by the 88th clause of the Education Act, have been tried and proved an utter failure. We are quite aware of the fact that £lO or £l2 per head seems a very large amount for the State to pay for the education of a child, hut the bad should be taken with the good, and only an average struck. We have the word of the Premier himself for it, that there is a surplus of half-a-million sterling. £50,000 to £75,000 could not be better devoted than towards the education of the children in sparcely populated districts. If the country were in financial straits, an excuse could be found, but under existing conditions i the Government should be expected to provide a fairly capable teacher in any 1 district whore there are eight children 1 of school age. This number would J not meet all cases, but would go a fair way in that direction. During the ]

recent sitting of the Teachers’ Salary Commission, held at Greymoiith, one of the witnesses urged this view of the question, when he was met with the query that if the six or eight children belonged to one family, would he still uphold the same proposition. To which ho replied “ Yes,” and we think his “ Yes ” was perfectly right and logical, for six children belonging to one family arc quite as valuable to the State os six children belonging to six different families; indeed if wo are to take note of the Premier’s lament about the decrease of percentage of natural increase in population, then the parents who add six units to the State are more deserving of consideration than the six parents who add but a like number. Our main cause of complaint, therefore, is that the attendance scale commences too high ; and unless it is lowered it will not do justice to a very large number of colonists who go into outlying districts and carve out homes for themselves and their families, and who, moreover, are the many and sturdy never failing feeders that tend to give strength and solidity to our centres of population. In a future issue we will deal with the salary question.

Attendance Head teach’r Infant Mistress Assistant teach’r Pupil tcach’r 14 to 40 1 40 to 00 1 1 — — 90 to 120 1 1 — 1 120 to 150 1 1 — 2 150 to 200 1 1 1 2 200 to 250 1 1 3 2 250 to 275 1 1 3 3 275 to 330 1 1 3 3