Untitled

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5371, 14 June 1878, Page 2

Last session an Act was passed to make provision for tlie apportionment of education reserves for the purposes of primary and secondary education, and for their control and management. The Act provides that onefourth part of all education reserves which have heretofore been made in and lor any province or provincial district, and vested in any Education Board or other body, and of all other such reserves heretofore made in and for any province or provincial district, but which have not been granted to or vested in the Supreintendent of any province under the Public Reserves Act, 1851, or otherwise granted to or vested in any such Board or other body, shall be set apart specially as an endowment for secondary education within the provincial district for which such reserves and lands were originally made and set apart, and the remainder of such reserves and lands shall be set apart specially as an endowment for primary education within such district. The chairmen of the several Education Boards and the Commissioners of Crown Lands for the several provincial districts are appointed arbitrators for the apportionment of these reserves, and power isgiventor the appointment of an umpire. It is provided that every award shall bo made on or before the 31st March, or at such late period as the Governor may determine, and an abstract of the division and apportionment made [is to be gazetted. The award is to be final. Reserves for primary and secondary education are to vest in school commissioners, who have power to lease lands. The Governor may reserve waste lands for school sites, which are to be vested in the Education Boads, who may, with the consent of the Minister, sell or exchange them. The Governor may also reserve waste lands ns endowments for primary and secondary education, and in order to provide an endowment for primary education in the North Island, at least five per cent, of the waste lands in each district which were open for sale on the Ist January, 1878, are set apart for that purpose. The revenue derived by the school commissioners from the reserves set apart for primary education are to be handed over to the Education Boards of the provincial districts in proportion to the population in each education district as determined from time to time by the census. The revenues derived from the reserves Set apart for secondary education are to be appropriated by the commissioners for the exclusive advancement of secondary education in the several educational districts wholly or partially included in the provincial districts, in proportion to the population in each education district, or part thereof; to be determined in the same manner. But no school is to be entitled to any grant unless it be a public school under the Education Act of 1877, or established or governed under any Act of the Assembly, or under the Canterbury College. A supplement to the Gazette of Thursday, June 6, published on Wednesday, June 12, contains the apportionment of reserves for educational purposes in accordance with the provisions of the Act. A long list of lands set apart in the several provincial districts is given. The amount varies considerably in the several districts—from 573 acres for primary education, and 210 acres for secondary education, in tho Patea District, to hundreds of thousands of acres set apart in Otago. In the Wellington District 10,371 acres are set apart for primary education, and 3014 acres for secondary education. The question is one of great importance, and we may have to recur to it again at a future time.