ECONOMY CAMPAIGN.

Hokitika Guardian, 16 May 1922, Page 4

ECONOMY CAMPAIGN.

THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

GOVERNMENT’S TASK

(Contributed.)

In no part of the economy campaign upon which it has embarked will tho Government encounter greater difficulties than it is meeting now in its attempt to confine within the absolute needs of full efficiency, the expenditure of the Education Department. The people of New Zealand, very wisely, have sought to give their children the very best education the country can afford, and many of them are disposed to imague that any lessenng of expenditure in the maintenance of their ideals must mean some retrogression in quality. If this really were the case, it would be both impolitic and unpattiotie to suggest any departure from the existing state of affairs. But facts and figures make it abundantly plain that economy, properly applied, so far from weakening the national system of education would materially strengthen it. Efficiency is properly measured by results. not by expenditure, and results in any department of the Public Seiviec are obtained by prudent and wellordered administration. No one who has the best interests cf the Dominion at heart will wish to see its education system starved. Oil the contrary, everyone will desire to see it broadened and improved, so that in the years to come New Zealanders in this respect may lie numbered among the most favoured peoples of the world. Nor is this aspiration inconsistent with a wish for the strictest economy in the expenditure of the money necessary for its readisation.

The problem before the Government is not merely how to keep the expenditure of the Education Department within the means of the country, but, more pressing still, how to obtain, with a smaller expenditure, at lefust as good results as are being obtained now. The expenditure of the Department always lias been progressive in volume, ns if always must he with the increasing demands .following upon the

growth of population and settlement; lint in recent years it has advanced out of all proporton to these natural dcvolopments. In 1912-13 the total expeiuliturc was £1,311,888, an increase of £1)7,501 upon that of the previous years; in 191920 it had risen to £2,130,379; in 192021 to £3.436,452 and though the figures for the year just closed are not yet available it is known that they will reveal a further substantial increase. Of course the later growth of expenditure is largely due to unavoidable increases in teachers’ 1 salaries. Previously the members of the teaching profession had been inadequately remunerated and no reasonable objection can he urged against the more generous recognition of their labours, provided the State in return receives full value for its money in a thoroughly efficient service. lint in other directions there are costly and ineffective methods which have contributed in no small degree towards the alarming growth of expenditure. Take for instance the Education Boards and their administration. When the provincial form of Government was abolished the Boards were left with their original status because at that time, 4;3 years ago. they were discharging functions which the State Government. with scanty and irregular means of communication, could not undertake conveniently. Their continuance in their existing form was regarded by most people as a temporary expedient. But four decades have passed since the education system was nationalised, and slili the Boards, as survivals from the old provincial systems, continue to assume responsibilities and to discharge duties which obviously should belong to the State. The powers of the Boards have been restricted to some extent in recent years, but they still include the uncontrolled expenditure of large sums of money provided by the taxpayers and involve the over-lapping and duplication of costly services.

Of this it Ls necessary to give only one or two examples. The Boards, with funds supplied to them by the Department, pay the salaries of the primary school teachers, and for this simple operation each of them has a stall' engaged in writing up salary records, prepaiing pay sheets, making endless calculations and attending to the correspondence incidental to the business. Alter this the whole work has to he reviewed by the Head Ollice and the same tiresome circle td* operations repeated.. If . the work were undertaken by the Head Ofliee in the first instance it would he more accurately and expeditiously performed, and probably £30.000 or £4O,<KX) per annum; would he saved in the way of expenditure. Other large sums could he saved by making use of the Head Office, with all its facilities, in the purchase of supplies, the erection of buildings, the administration of endowments and so forth.

In this connection the grout dissimilarity in the salaries paid hv the Hoards is worth mentioning. The Auckland Board lias thirty-three officers on its stall', of whom scycn receive £-100 ayear hy way of salary, the architect with £l,lOO, considerably more than the amount paid to the Dominion architect, being the first on the list. The Canterbury Board, with a school attendance three-quarters that of Auckland, has three officers receiving £‘loo a year or over, of whom the secretary with £OOO and the nrchitest with £SOO are two. The secretary of the Hawke’s Bay Board receives £OSO a. year, and the secretary of the Wanganui Board £”0O a year, while the secretary of Education nt the Head Office of the Department receives no more than £750 a yenr. Including the Head Office, the total cost of the administration of the Department in 1920-21 was £99,200, of which sum £59,705 was Education Board expenditure. In New South Wales, with double the population .the cost of administration was £73,007. and in Victoria. with a population about equal to that of New Zealand, only £32,703. All this surely suggests that the whole system of administration should be thoroughly over-hauled by competent authorities with a. view to effecting economies without lessening local interest in national education, or in any way impairing its efficiency. There are other points in the system needlag attention, hut these not already have run into too great length to hold the

interest of the busy l-eador. The grants to training college students, ihe method of dealing with-indigent children, the practice of subsidising bequests and gifts, the management of reserves and endowments, the purchase of supplies and the erection, maintenance and replacement of school buildings all are matters requiring the services of the broad-minded economist and the business doctor, and it is clearly the duty of the Government to see these practitioners are called in without de-