"DEADLIEST BLOW."

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 175, 26 July 1930, Page 21

"DEADLIEST BLOW."

local, education control.

illtOBE SEPORT DENOUNCED

"EXPERIENCE IGNORED.

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

TIMARU, this day,

. «jt lias remained for a committee wholly composed of laymen to strike the dealiest blow that lias been'administered to the locsll control of education since the national system was introduced," declared Mr. A. E. Lawrence, who Was one of the lay members of the Primary School Syllabus Committee, in a statement to-day on the education report. "The ironic aspect of the report of the Eecess Education Committee is that 10 laymen, whose collective experience n f the local administration of education is almost negligible, have considered themselves qualified to evolve a new education policy which, in effect, declares that all lay educationists from end to end of New Zealand, thousands of whom have devoted a lifetime of public service to the administration of education, are unfitted to be entrusted with the least measure of local control. The report itself literally bubbles over witli the views of a professional educationist, but the considered views of experienced education authorities are wholly ignored, although extensive extracts of evidence arc quoted in Which the Director of Education is well featured. "The only persons outside the charmed circle of the teaching, profession whose views are considered of sufficient value to have their evidence quoted in the report are Mr. Atmore, who brought out clearly several important points, and an ex-school teacher who is now a farmer."

Jfr. Lawrence suggested that the explanation was obvious. "The report may be the voice of the committee, but the hand is all too clearly the hand of the department." "Moreover," Mr. Lawrence observed, "16,000 school committeemen throughout New Zealand will no doubt be thrilled to learn' that they will gain rather than lose by being relieved of their useless and unreal powers, but everyone Who takes the trouble to read the report of the Recess Education Committee and read it carefully will be forced to the conclusion that the recommendations do riot aim at the unification of local control, but favour the crucifixion of local control of education and the glorification of bureaucracy centralised in the Department of Education in Wellington."'