The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1886. SCHOOL BUILDINGS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1361, 4 October 1886, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1886. SCHOOL BUILDINGS.

Recently what appears to us to be exceedingly arbitrary action has been taken by the Minister for Education in intimating to the several Education Boards that no part of the moneys | granted lo them out of the vote’for school buildings m iy be expended on repairs, and although it has been pointed that out no such embargo has ever before been laid upon the Boards, who have hitherto piovided for repairs from this very source, and that there is no other fund out of which they can be provided for, the Minister not only insists upon the mandate being respected but has issued a second circular intimating that any sums expended for repairs out ot the building grant will be deducted by the department from the capitation money. The North Canter bury Board in discussing this ultimatum from Sir Robert Stout, condemned the attitude of the Minister, and passed a resolution setting forth that repairs cannot othetwUe be provided for unless, by reducing the salaries of teachers (which are low enough already) and that to neglect necessary repairs is to allow of the rapid deterioration cf public property. The small incidental allowances made to School Committees are quite insufficient for the purpose and, in a word, to refuse to allow the application <>t the building grant as hitherto is in effect to say that repairs shall not be effected all. Sir Robert is in fact repeating the tyranny of the Egyptian taskmasters against whom Moses rebelled—is in sisting that bricks should be made without straw —and we are wholly unable to understand his taking up an attitude so wholly opposed to the best interests of the department over which he presides, and in which he undoubtedly tak- s the deepest interest. As to his threat to deduct any sums expended in violation of his edict from the capitation allowance granted by law we look upon it as mere brutumJulmen, for we do not think that he has the power to make any such deduction, the more especially that the vote taken under the head of school buildings is not, and never has been, limited to new buildings. Money has been lawfully expended for repairs out of the building grant in previous years and,, if so, why not this year. Moreover, as our Timaru contemporary, the Hefald , has pointed out, “ School buildings figure in the second schedule of the Public Works Appropriation Act, under the head of Public Buildings, side by side with Parliamentary Buildings, General Departmental Officts. Judicial, Post and Telegraph and Customs Offices, Lunatic Asylums, Hospitals and Charitable Institutions, and Quarantine Stations, and if repairs were wanted to any of the buildings under these headings, neither the Premier nor any of his colleagues would make the least difficulty in drawing the necessary funds for that source.” It is, therefore, obvious that no exception can be made in the case of school buildings, and hence the edict of the department is naturally strongly protested against. The fact is, that the cost of education and educational buildings is so large that in these times of falling revenues Ministers are at their wits’ ends how to provide for all demands, but while sympathising with them in these circumstances we do not approve of insidious attempts to shift the difficulty on to the shoulders of others. The whole question of providing for public education must be gone into ere long folly and fairly, and the

logic of necessity will we think enfo r ce changes in the incidence of the burden of cost. But let whatever is to be done be done openly, anti as the result of free discussion pro and con, and not at the mere arbitrary direction of a Minister, even though that Minister be so eminent an educationist as Sir Robert Stout,