EDUCATIONAL REFORM.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2130, 20 May 1920, Page 2

EDUCATIONAL REFORM.

THE Hon. C. .1. Farr, Minister for Education, intends to do his utmost to bring about necessary reforms in our primary educational system, which have been advocated by the N.Z. Educational Institute and School Committees’ Association for some years past. As pointed out by our Palmerston evening contemporary, his past experience in educational matters has enabled the Minister to see the weakness of 1 he existing system, and no doubt has also impressed him with the necessity for more direct control on the administrative side of education. The “Standard” expresses views similar to our own when it says that “existing Boards are merely relic-- of the old provincial system of Government. In no sense of the term can they he regarded as democratic. Their members are elected by the School Committees, which, in turn, arc elected at the householders’ meetings on an uncertain franchise, while the method of election is open to serious abuse, as it enables ‘packed’ meetings to secure the return of committees tinged with strong party or sectarian Idas. The Education Boards, again, sometimes find themselves in opposition ..to the Minister and the Departmental authorities in Wellington, and they do not always agree, among themselves, the result being a division of control and authority, which is far from helpful to the cause of education. It is, again, somewhat of an anomaly that the schools in a town like Palmerston should be under the control of a Board sitting in Wanganui, and that the School Committees acting should have to turn from the Board to the Minister, and |rom the Minister to the Board, to secure a just recognition of their requirements, only to he met with (as they often have been in the past) a repudiation of responsibility on both -.ides. . . . Provincial might well

be substituted for local control, with direct responsibility to the Minister, which would largely remove the friction, occasionally noticeable under the chief control of the Boards and the Department.

Wore the Boards abolished, the teachers would come under the direct

control of the Department.” “National Education,” the official organ of the New Zealand Teachers’ Institute, has had a good deal to say in condemnation of the existing system under which “some of the boards and committees still cling to the wretched system of patronage, which makes it impossible for sheer merit to be certain of receiving its reward. Nothing,” it remarks in a recent editorial, “will now satisfy the teachers but a Dominion system of appointment.” Local administrative control would stimulate interest in educational matters, and give better results, while the National Board would put an end to wire-pulling and patronage. The Minister will find that in his efforts to bring about these reforms he lias the backing of the general public.