SCHOOL COMMITTEES AND HEADMASTERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3768, 18 June 1907, Page 2

SCHOOL COMMITTEES AND HEADMASTERS.

It costs this colony a lot of money for education, and we don’t begrudge it, so longl as it is spent legitimately. In fact, we boast of the best Slate system of education in the Empire —free, secular, and compulsory. The colony is divided up into educational distiicts. Each district has its Board, which is the responsible and controlling head. Every town or village possessing a school, elects annually a committee, which is vested with circumscribed powers. Sometimes, however, committees take it into their heads ‘‘ to do and say things ’’quite outside their province, in fact, usurp the powers of Boards. They foolishly imagine that the teaching staff is the committee’s particular care, and in fact, that the running of the school is in their hands —that they are responsible to the parents for the children’s education 1 This is particularly evidenced when a school is controlled by a headmaster who is weak disciplinarian The supervision of a State school belongs to the headmaster — who is responsible to the Board alone—the sanitary arrangements and care of the buildings and grounds to committees. Committees act as buffers between parents and teaching staffs, and recommend to the Board. It often happens, however, that a school is robbed of a splendid master simply because he will not put up with the petty interferences of a school committee which holds illusionary ideas of its powers. The Education Act wants amending in that school committees’ duties should be clearly defined and read at every annual meeting of householders before the election takes place. If this was done many committee men and parents would know that the headmaster is not their puppet, but a man skilled in his profession, wisely chosen by the Board to mould the lives of the scholars placed under his care. Parents and committees should do all in their power to make the headmaster’s responsible duties as pleasant as possible.