Local Control Of Education

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27592, 24 February 1955, Page 12

Local Control Of Education

If the active interest of education boards in regaining a greater degree of local control is sympathetically considered by the Minister of Education (Mr Algie) and his departmental officers valuable administrative reforms are possible. The objective of these reforms should not be merely the saving of expense on maintaining clerks in Wellington to check the work of clerks in Christchurch, or the saving of time in making decisions. These and similar economies could presumably be made by abolishing education boards. The real aim in seeking more local control should be to give new vitality to education in New Zealand by making use of great local enthusiasm instead of frustrating it, as the present highly centralised system often does. In his introduction to Leicester Webb’s book on the control of education in New Zealand, Sir James Hight quoted the remark of John Stuart Mill that no amount of centralised efficiency would ever compensate for an inferior interest in the result. As Mr Webb put it himself, the problem is one of “ using the “ administrative resources and the “ co-ordinating power of the central “ government and at the same time “curbing the central government’s

“ inherent love of uniformities ”. The question was not new when Mr Webb wrote his book (in which he suggested how some larger share in administration could be restored to the boards without weakening the Education Department). The question is 18 years older now; and experience in the interval has not invalidated the criticism that education, more perhaps than any other service, is peculiarly sensitive to the evils of centralisation.

Because the central authority and local boards should both have their parts in organising and inspiring education, the proposal of the Wanganui Education Board for an initial approach to the department is to be preferred to the Auckland board’s blunt request for an inquiry into administration. The Canterbury board has wisely accepted the Wanganui view, which recognises that no amount of local control will produce good results if the central department is hostile, The education boards will probably have to overcome the natural reluctance of the department to concede that local control can possibly be as efficient as central control Officers accustomed to making decisions for which they accept responsibility may not welcome relinquishing this power, unless they are reasonably assured that their successors will have the same sense of responsibility. They are more likely to co-operate if they are asked to help develop a new administrative plan and are not put in the position of being, as it were, defendants in litigation before a commission of inquiry. Overseas experience suggests that decentralised control would be more effective if financing could be decentralised, too, and education finance raised locally. That is no longer practical politics in New Zealand; but however the money is raised, each board would still have every reason to spend its share to the best advantage in the particular circumstances of its own district. Incidentally, it should not be overlooked that the pew method of appointing teachers by local appointment committees is, in fact, a good measure of decentralisation. This is one of the advantages of the appointment scheme. It is also something of a precedent for further decentralisation,