CONTROL OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 March 1921, Page 6

CONTROL OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

POWERS OF COMMITTEES. < HINT OF WIDER FUNCTIONS. Addressing the School Committees Association in Christchurch, the Minister for Education said it was not advisable to depart fpom the present system of administration by boards and committees. Later, there might be a lessening, or the abolition, of the'.powers of the boards, and an increase of those of the committees. As a suggestion for academic discussion, he might suggest, giving increased functions to the committees, and their coming into contact, not •with the boards as at present, but directly with the district departmental officers. Such a system, he calculated, would save the country £40,000 or £50.000 per annum, which could be used for improvements to buildings, etc. Yhe school committee, he thought, must never be abolished in this country; it was the base of the system of education in this country, and it stimulated the interest of the people in their schools. For those reasons he was inclined to favor an increase in the functions -of the committees. With further powers, the committees would prove a stimulus to education. He was afraid that the general conception of the people regarding schools was not as yet the correct one. He wished the people to absorb the idea that the schools belonged to them, and not to the Minister. In other countries they were stimulating the parents’ interest in schools and education. The committees might do good work in New Zealand by forming such parents’ associations here. The time was ripe for such a movement, for never before had there been such a passion and thirst for education. The war had awakened us considerably to the importance of educating the young. Educate the folk, the “common folk,” and he had no fear for the future of New Zealand. In education lay the solution of nearly every problem. * It was the illiterate man that had to be feared.