EDUCATION CONTROL.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 251, 22 October 1924, Page 4

EDUCATION CONTROL.

There are one or two points in the Minister's latest Education Bill that should be discussed. One is the power sought to combine secondary and technical schools in a town under one Board. The Bill in its original form provided that the Minister might do this after "consultation" with the Boards affected. Mr. Parr told the House that the provision applied to towns of 10,000 lo 15,000 inhabitants, whicli he considered too small for a multiplicity of governing bodies, but this limitation was not in the Bill itself. When the Bill came back from the Education Committee it contained this important alteration, that the Minister could act only with the approval of the governing bodies concerned. There is needless multiplicity in some cases, and even a town the size of Christchurch supplies an exumple of efficient grouping in the Canterbury College Board of Governors, which controls the two high schools as well as the University College, the Museum, and the Public Library. There are, however, objections to a general policy of amalgamation. Schools build up traditions, and governing bodies are part of their systems. It is desirable that the consent of the bodies concerned be obtained before one is merged in another. Another point of importance is the power given to a. Board, in order to avoid overcrowding at public schools, to limit attendance in apparently any way it chooses. This has been interpreted to mean that a Board may order children to leave one school and go to another. It is the sort of power that should be sparingly exercised. It might be right for a Board, on the ground that a school was overcrowded, to tell parents that they must not begin to send their children to a certain school, but it would hardly be so for a Board to remove children who had spent some time at that school. Children and parents have some rights in these matters. It would not be fair to a child to interrupt its work in this way. Parents have preferences; try as the Department may to make the education system uniform, it cannot prevent one teacher from being abler or more attractive to parents in his methods than another, and parents should be allowed some choice in a matter that they may think vitally important.