EDUCATION MATTERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17687, 26 July 1919, Page 10

EDUCATION MATTERS

GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS CRITICISED.

(Fbom Ottb Own Cobbespondent.) _ WANGANTTI, July 25. ■The Education Department and the Railway Department came in for some severo criticism at a meeting of tho Board of Education. It appears that at a place inland from Mataroa, on tho Main Trunk line, about 25 children have been deprived of education because of the railway curtailment. The material necessary to build the school will not be carried by tho Railway whilst there is no limitation to the carrying of liquor. It was suggested that the materials should be eent up in barrels. The chairman said that "probably the railway service would be resumed as soon as the Prime Minister returned, and he would take the credit for stopping the disorganisation at present existing. -The Education Board and its manner of conducting the affairs of an . important phase of country activities was then scathingly denounced by members. . Tho chairman (Mr Pirani) declared that some of the subsidies to the board were two. years overdue. He considered that tho Education Department was the most dis- ■ honest of all the Government departments, Mid he asserted that commercial morality did not exist there. All sorts of excuses we're made to avoid responsibility, and it was' really a crying scandal. Wanganui was not the only place suffering. As a matter of fact the condition of schools throughout the dominion was disgracefdl. In Invercargill and Otago there were some which wero a disgrace to civilisation. In oho' school in Invercargill there was a room where the ceiling was 7ft from the floor. The coiling had bare rafters, and the building was _ probably 40 years old. Under such conditions no human beings could ba expected to work. The Government spent thousands of pounds in health and town-planning matters, yet allowed such conditions to continue. The procedure of the Education Department was absolutely the limit. ..The secretary mentioned that when he was in Dunedln recently he 6aw an old school building which had been built the wrong way. One room was lighted from three fides. It was the most extraordinary classroom he had ever seen.

' • -Mr Pirani said that eight years ago ho had advocated the spending of £1,000,C00 in_ rebuilding schools, but no heed -was taken of what ho said. At the present time it would take £5,000,000 to put the schools m decent condition.