BOARD AND DEPARTMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 226, 24 September 1927, Page 9

BOARD AND DEPARTMENT.

INDIGNATION IN CANTERBURY. (By Telegraph.—Special to "Star.") CHRISTCHURCH, Friday. A statement in the '"Education Gazette' , that ''at the last meeting of the Canterbury Education Board one of the members stated that there were in the Dominion 900 classes of over 60 pupils each," and that the Department did not know where the member got this most misleading statement from, drew a strong protest from the Canterbury Education Board to-day, and serious charges of mismanagement were made against the Department. Mr. R. Wild, a member of the Board, said that the statement complained of had been made by an ex-teacher at an unemployment conference, and the Department had seized on it to attack the Board. This member went on to say that there was utter lack of co-operation by the Department with the Board in the interests of education, and it was wellknown that the Department had been laying itself out to have the boards abolished. Mr. E. H. Andrews said it would not be so bad if the Department

were capable of handling the control of education, but almost all the officers of the Department were recruited from school teachers and hardly any of them had the necessary business training. The Board requested the correction of the Department's statement, and instructed a special committee to go into the regulations, find out if any of its authority had been filched, and take steps to recover it.