HITTING BACK

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 165, 3 October 1927, Page 13

HITTING BACK

EDUCATION DIRECTOR ANSWERS CRITICS LOOSE ACCOUNTANCY (From Our Resident Reporter.) WELINGTON, Saturday. The Director of Education, Mr. T. B. Strong, in replying to criti- | cism of the Canterbury Education Board, makes the allegation that £90,000 has been improperly used by boards. He said that again and again the department, which is sneered at by j the Canterbury Board member as not having sufficient ability “to ran a lollie shop,” has been forced to straighten j out the accounts of certain boards and j to lay down rules for the proper ad- j ministration of boards’ funds. The department has experienced { great difficulty in inducing boards to i adopt a system of accounting that j would show clearly the state of a j board’s finances with respect to each of its principal activities. Legislation had indeed to be introduced to force boards to adopt a reasonable system. Previously it had been the practice to divert money granted by Parliament for one purpose to quite another purpose. They were accustomed to transfer amounts freely from one account to another. Overhead charges were extraordinarily high and were distributed in a perplexing manner among various accounts. Confusion of this kind has been altered by the department’s insisting on boards adopting a reasonable system of accounting for their expenditure. At the time the department investigated the matter no less than £90,000 had been thus improperly used.