CANTERBURY SCHOOLS

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19733, 25 September 1929, Page 10

CANTERBURY SCHOOLS

REPLY TO MINISTER'S STATEMENT. Mr J. O. Brown, chairman of the Canterbury School Committees' Association, has forwarded the following statement to The PbeSs in reply to the statement of the Minister for Eduction (the Hon. Mr Atmore) that Canterbury schools were not affected by the delay in announcing the new education policy:— ''The statement of the Minister for Education, published in Saturday's Pkess, 'that practically no school in Canterbury is being held up by the delay in announcing the new education policy,' appears to be a deliberate attempt to mislead the public, and his suggestion that the school committees of Canterbury and Westland have a political bias is absolutely unwarranted. "When Mr Atmore took office no district could have been more disposed to extend sympathetic consideration to him in his declared object of bettering the organisation of education in this Dominion than was Canterburv He knows, and the officers of the "Department in Wellington knew quite Well, that the Buildings Department of the Canterbury Education Board is prevented from undertaking necessary work in the schools, and at the present moment is at a standstill, because the Minister's powers of description and elucidation are not yet exhausted. Camouflage seems to be the watchword of the Department under the leadership of the present Minister for Education, and it is time that his colleagues realised that something better is needed "Difficulties of finance have no doubt prevented Cabinet from authorising a full scheme, but it is time that these limitations were openly admitted and a modified programme definitely authorised in a dignified manner."