HOSTELS FOR SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19050, 22 June 1925, Page 8

HOSTELS FOR SCHOOLS.

It is gratifying to learn that at last something deJinite is to be done toward supplying the Grammar Schools of this city with hostels. The provision is long overdue. No secondary school without accommodation for boarders can be regarded as complete. However unexceptionable the private boarding house may be, it can never take the place of an institution under the direct control and surveillance of the school authorities; and there are undeniable risks attaching to the private boarding house system or lack of system. Parents and guardians of children of secondary-school age quite rightly hesitate to send those children to reside near the school, so long as there is any margin of doubt whether every desirable care will be taken of them. There is in many instances the opportunity of sending them by railway or other means as day scholars] but this often involves many hours' travel daily, without adequate control by either home or school; and when the alternative faced by country parents is that between such travel and no secondary education—as it frequently has to be faced where satisfactory boarding arrangements are difficult to make —tho choice is naturally that of secondary education. The moral of these facts is obvious. It has been drawn by the authorities of most southern schools. In Auckland, unfortunately, the need has been less seriously and less resolutely faced, with a limiting effect upon the local schopls' service to the community. The beginning to be made with hostel accommodation at the Mountain Road school, and its anticipated extension to the Mount Albert school, should not stop short of providing the two girls' schools with similar accommodation. They have a need every whit as clamant as the boys' schools ; a case might easily be made for their prior claim. There is a need also for hostels in connection with the university college. This has had some attention from the college council, and might well be made a matter of urgency in view of the approaching completion of the new arts building, with its provision for a larger student-roll. Like the four high schools here, the university college has lagged behind the southern institutions in this almost essential adjunct to educational facilities.: