Local Contributions To Education

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27992, 12 June 1956, Page 12

Local Contributions To Education

The control of primary education in New Zealand has become so highly centralised that almost the only opportunity for enlisting active local participation is through the school committees elected by householders. Collectively they play a more vital part in the system than the education boards do, although the boards will soon have some authority returned to them through the new appointment scheme. Anything that weakens a community’s interest in its school and school committee should be resisted. Mr R. W. Taylor, in his presidential address to the North Canterbury School Committees’ Association, recognised the need to sustain the committees; but he was mistaken about the direction from which danger comes. Mr Taylor was concerned that, because parent-teacher associations did so much to raise money for school equipment not fully provided by the Education Department, the associations might replace the committees. Although he suggested as a compromise that the department should lend committees money for this equipment, he

plainly thought that the remedy would be for the department to relieve the committees of all financial responsibility for sucfy things as pianos, sports gear, and radio sets. Mr Taylor’s apparent fear of parent-teacher encroachment would drive him in the much more perilous direction of complete domination by the department. It is almost axiomatic that the less a locality contributes* towards a school or other institution the less its needs and wishes are heeded by the central authority. Further, the very effort of raising money for school amenities creates public interest in the school. Without the stimulus of local endeavour and the encouragement of having some authority, public interest in schools and committees

would be greatly weakened. The £9OOO raised voluntarily in Canterbury every year for primary schools is not a large sum for a prosperous province. Someone has to find this money. The central government would not get it out of thin air. Very much the same people would have to pay, without the satisfaction of having control of the spending Mr Taylor would find departmental officers much less co-operative in local matters than parent-teacher associations, whose interests are identical with those of the committees. If co-operation between a committee and an association ’develops into rivalry, the committee ' may be as much to blame as the association. In any case, a local difference can be settled locally by the people of the district who, after i all, control both organisations.