GENERAL EDUCATION REGULATIONS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 317, 9 March 1878, Page 16

GENERAL EDUCATION REGULATIONS.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE NEW ZEALAND MAIL.

Sir, — The teachers in this province in particular, and perhaps throughout New Zealand, are in anxious expectation of what the new regulations will be. It is to be hoped that they will be of a liberal and large-minded character, and based upon fundamental and comprehensive principles. That the Minister of Education should be allowed and should take ample time to consider carefully and thoroughly what the general education regulations for the colony, should be there can be no doubt. However, it would enable teachers to proceed with some satisfaction and some degree of certainty if they merely knew two things—whether there would be six standards for New Zealand, and what time of the year would be choseu for the general examination of teachers. We hope that the Minister of Education will kindly gratify us by stating his intention on these two points.

Another very important question, but one that requires more penetrating insight and a fine discrimination of character, is the choice of a large-minded chief inspector. For while regulations can easily be altered, it is found most difficult to remove an unqualified inspec-

tor. Teachers have to pass examinations, their schools are examined, and they are removed by the dozen, but there is no professional check upon an inspector. It is not till he has under cover done a large amount of mischief that his true qualifications are discovered. If inspectors had to pass examinations, and the teachers were inquired of how an inspector had acted towards them, what a large proportion of inspectors might be removed—as large a proportion perhaps as have been removed of the teachers. Education Boards have no more practical check over an inspector thau school committees had over a schoolmaster, and the relationship is exactly similar.—l am, &c., A Teacher.