Manawatu Herald. THURSDAY, MARCH 16,1898. School Attendance.

Manawatu Herald, 16 March 1893, Page 2

Manawatu Herald. THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 1898. School Attendance.

When interest is shown by parents and children in a public school it would have been natural to expect the public men, wtfo are granted the oversight of the working of theEduca* tion Act, would have seen the wisdom of doing all they could to second such interest. • The Wanganui Education Board is a notable instance to the' contrary.. We have drawn attention to this matter before, but we refer to it again so as to impress upon the taxpayer the remarkable stupidity which can be shown by men otherwise accounted sane. '"'''■ The Foxtou school daily grows in numbers of scholars, and a totally different position of affairs exists to what the " average attendance " as noted by the .Board, shows; The committee and the head master have made attempt upon attempt to show the members of the Wanganui Edu-; cation Board that a large number of the children now attending the Foxton school cannot possibly receive any teaching, even taking the preposterously absurd number of children the Board's regulations sot as within a teacher's power to grapple with, by the staff at present in the school. Such protests resemble knocking one's head against a stone wall, whilst it raises the fiendish wish that one could treat the members heads the same way. On application for further assistance in the teaching staff of the school the Board's secretary wrote one of his abrupt, but customary, letters, stating the school was fully officered and appended a list of proportion of pupils to teachers fixed by the regulations, thusly:— l master, 80 ; 1 assistant, 00 ; 1 junior assistant, 44 ; mid X pupil teftehei', 80 ;

total, 174 ; and adding, last average was only 167 ! As we have said the numbers of children on thp school roll increase daily, ami for the last five Weeks tha average has been 196.6. Tho regulations may be as pointed out, no one trom hero has ever urged otherwise* but what tho collective wisdom of the 13oftru\ Us Inspectors, and clerks dd Hot perceive ia, that if, evert by the Board's regulation?, four teachei's are sup posed to be able to teach 174 eliiltlred, it fails td imbue them with powor to teach 19G. By tho Board's implicit belief in its regulation «, and un bounded faith in the System of a\eragep, 22 children at the Foxton school cannot be taught, and until that happy hour arrives, when by dint of humouring both scholars and parents the average is obtained) the 22 scholars will not be taught. £lie absurdity of the system and the gross wrong inflicted upon parents, scholars and teachers, is made apparent by mentioning these facts.