EDUCATIONAL MATTERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 3739, 8 January 1907, Page 2

EDUCATIONAL MATTERS.

—— ♦ - Tun Conference ol Educational people ut Chri.slchurch has been passing resolutions at a great rate and it is just likely, that as the Government are familiar with the resolutions, having seen them in former years, the Government will keep on not doing anything in the matter. One of the resolutions of interest to people in the country where schools are scattered, is on dealing with the transport of children to school, a matter fraught with much difficulty, as anybody having children attending farback schools well know. While the town child gets every facility in the way of trains, trams, and handy schools, the country child often has to ride or drive long distances. This makes education expensive in providing horses, feed, etc. The Educational Conference want the Government to raise these transport disabilities. There are decided difficulties in the way and it suggests that the public be stirred to the necessity of making tree education as readily available to the children of the backcountry as to children of the towns. Another point of interest touched on by the Conference is the evil of paying salaries to schoolteachers on the average attendance of the pupils, a most evil practice and one that absolutely invites dishonesty on the part of a body of people who are happily enough, usually the soul of honour. To make a man’s salary dependant upon every natural or unnatural circumstance the removal of children, illness, bad roads, and so on, is one of the sins of administration that easily equals the “ tote” as a gamble.