Minister for Education.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVI, Issue 43092, 14 May 1907, Page 2

Minister for Education.

DEPUTATIONS AT DUNEDIN. (By Telegraph—-Press Association.) DUNEDIN, This Day. Several members of the School Committees Association, v aited upon the Hon. Geo Fowlds, Minister for Education yesterday morning, for the purpose of congratulating him on his appointment as Minister-in-charge of the Education Department. The deputation stated that it recognised in Mr Fowlds a man with a man’s experience and advanced ideas, and a man who was to be trusted with the colony’s education. Mr Wilkinson, the chief spokesman said he noted with pleasure the reference made by the Minister in one of bis speeches to the necessity of making some provision for endowments for educational purposes, so that there would always be an assured fund. Mr Fowlds, in reply, said he recognised that one of the best things a minister could do was to come into personal contact with those who were co - workers with him and the work of bis Department, As to teachers’ salaries, he was trying to devise some means of recognising the efficiency and length of service of teachers without interfering with local control. He would be the very last to take any step that would retard local interest in the schools. The School Journal was intended to meet the difficulty of expense to parents in the matter of school-books, and was not intended to take the form of a magazine or newspaper. Altogether he believed it would serve a useful purpose in the educational system of the colony. A deputation representing teachers, complained that teachers now had to pay the postage on the return of examination schedules and other official communications forwarded to their education .boards. The Minister said that the boards are going altogether in a wrong direction in asking teachers to pay this postage. The boards of education should pay the postage of teachers’ communications and returns. I think in some districts they do so ; the question as to whether the hoards should get a grant for this is a matter they should fight out with the government and penalised teachers