The Press SATURDAY, APRIL 22, 1950. Post-Primary Schools

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26094, 22 April 1950, Page 6

The Press SATURDAY, APRIL 22, 1950. Post-Primary Schools

5 The discovery by the Avonside g Girls’ High School Board of Mana--5 gers that it cannot instruct its 3 member of the central Christchurch 5 Post-Primary Schools Board how 3 to vote draws attention to j one of the weaknesses of the cumbersome machinery for the , administration of post-primary education in Christchurch. A few >1 weeks ago the Christchurch Girls’ • High School managers also came to j the conclusion that they could not 1 ; bind the member they had ap- | pointed; but they thought they ; could meet the difficulty by expect- : ing him to abstain from voting if 'he disagreed with them. One of . the constituent boards thus leaves I the member it appoints free to act ■ as he wishes; the other goes half--way towards binding him. Such 5! difficulties are inevitable when the j administrative system is unnecesi sarily complicated. On the one hand, the central board can hardly come to reasoned decisions if its members are not able to use their discretion; on the other, individual school boards will not find the cen- ■ tral board a useful co-ordinating authority if they have no control over their own representatives. The essential weakness is that the system arbitrarily divides functions that are not logically divisible. It • was the outcome of a hurried and , unhappy compromise made when, ! the single board originally proposed | met strong opposition. This pro- | posal was sound in principle, al- ’ though the composition of the j board was badly planned. By pro- | viding both for a single board and for six other boards, one for each school, the Minister (Mr McCombs) sought to retain the principle while meeting the objections. The central : board was given certain financial and co-ordinating powers and the other functions of secondary school boards were given to the six subsidiary boards. It seemed then, and it still seems, that Mr McCombs fell between two stools. If a central board is desired, it can work well only if it has reasonable powers. If there are to be separate boards, they should have the normal and proper functions of governing bodies. Separate boards would have to develop working relations with each other; but the brief experience of the Christchurch system supports earlier I warnings that they should be left ! to do it in their own way. Already another co-ordination j plan, which attempted to link the i clerical and works staffs, of the ; Post-Primary Schools Board and I the Canterbury Education Board, has broken down. The chairman of the Canterbury Education Board (Mr A. E. Lawrence) was indignant yesterday about lack of co-oper-ation in “ an interesting and worth- “ while experiment ”, though he was quick to explain that the experiment was proposed by the Education Department. But he seemed more concerned with the rejection of the board’s agreement to co-operate than with the reasonable decision of the Post-Primary Schools Board that it needed its i own staff for its own work. It was [ a good decision, if for no more | than one reason: that where a staff I has divided loyalties one will come ■ first. Now that part of a faulty I system has been abandoned, the ’ seven post-primary boards and the ! new Minister (Mr Algie) would be wise to consider whether the interests of education would not be served by scrapping the rest and making a fresh start.