EDUCATION CONTROL.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 226, 24 September 1927, Page 8

EDUCATION CONTROL.

The Canterbury Education Board has a grievance against the Education Department which is of more than local interest. In a recent issue of the "Education Gazette" the Department accused a member of the Board of being responsible for a misleading statement about the size of classes in primary schools. It has been pointed out that the statement in question was made by an ex-teacher, and not by any official or member of the Board, and the Department was charged at the meeting with using this mis-statement to attack the Board. Annoyed by this incident, members of the Board assailed the whole policy of the Department in respect to Boards. It is a matter of public interest to the whole Dominion that there should be close and sympathetic co-operation between the Education Department and the various local Boards. One member of the Canterbury Board says bluntly that the Department has been laying itself out to have the Boards abolished, and another that for some years the Department has been working to get sole control of education in Wellington. These statements are made by men who, as members of a Board, have exceptional opportunities of judging the Department's policy. Whatever that policy may be exactly to-day, after the recent vigorous defence of the Boards, these members are convinced that the Department has tried to cripple or destroy these local institutions. It thus becomes clear that the conflict now in progress, or that has been in progress, between the Education Department and the Boards involves the whole difference between control and local control; and our readers do not need to be told that we are emphatically on the side of local self-government in educational affairs. Bureaucratic inefficiency and the impossibility of guaranteeing that capable departmental officers shall also be practical business men, are two important reasons for the failure of the centralisation system. The Boards have, as a rule, accepted tamely the demands of the Department, instead of resisting where they felt that an important principle was involved. As was shown in an interesting article contributed to our Thursday's issue, the British Education Boards secured their own dignity and independence only by resolutely resisting the aggressive policy of the Central Government, and our Boards might well take this lesson to heart. The decision of the Canterbury Board to examine the regulations and to inquire into the recent Departmental encroachments upon its privileges and powers eeems to us clearly a step in the right direction. _._ f . .—^ waafttotofcl.