Education Economies.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20524, 18 April 1932, Page 8

Education Economies.

It was made clear enough by Mr Masters at Palmerston North that the Government is not going to adopt the report of the Economy Commission so far as it applies to 1 the Education Department. Some of the recommendations are of course being followed in full, and many in part; but others are being ignored altogether. For example, the Minister agrees that subsidies should he abolished; but he is careful to say that cutting them out is " merely a temporary measure," and not an indication that the Government disapproves of them. As the amount involved, on the current year's appropriations, is only six thousand pounds, it is not a very important measure of agreement. The first big saving recommended by the Commission was an item of fifty thousand pounds on transport, hut the Minister says plainly that the Government does not regard it as an economy to refuse to carry country children to secondary schools. It will not reduce the allowance to School Committees, on which the Commission hoped to save ten thousand pounds, or withdraw the free issue of boobs in necessitous cases, which now costs two thousand pounds, or require parents to pay for the School Journal and Proficiency Certificates, though the Commission's recommendations under these two heads provided for a saving of a further ten thousand pounds. That is to say, it bluntly refuses economies aggregating over seventy thousand pounds of which the Commission hardly thought it necessary to offer any justification; and the list could be considerably extended. This stil! leaves three hundred thousand pounds on which to agree, and since there cannot he much doubt that Mr Masters intends, where he does cut, to cut deeply, the difference between the Minister and the Commission may not beuso pronounced in the end aa these introductory differences indicate. What is really important at this stage is the fact that the economies of which the Government so far disapproves are economies of which a majority of the public disapprove, usually for very good reasons. The School Journal, for example, may or may not be worth seven thousand pounds, but it would he merely vexatious to demand payment for it—even such small payment as tho Commission had in mind—unless there were no other methods left by which the vote could be cut to the community's capacity to pay. What Mr Masters still has up his sleeve is of vastly more importance than the things he has now told us; but he has said enough to indicate that he is going to allow him-

self a great deal more power of independent judgment than most' people supposed he would feel free to exercise, and in itself that is not disturbing. The Commission went a good deal further than it was entitled or qualified to go, and so long as the Minister does not react too sharply, his decisions, if they are not too long delayed, may be awaited without undue anxiety.