Education Finance

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30629, 21 December 1964, Page 12

Education Finance

Sir, —One wonders what the Rector of .the Timaru Boys’ High School means when he says that, as a taxpayer, he “objects to contributing towards the support of private prestige schools,” and then in the next sentence, but one, that he “would welcome the cost to himself, as a taxpayer, if pupils of the prestige and other private schools came back into the national system.” It would be interesting to know whether these schools cost the taxpayer money or save him money. Can they do both?—Yours, etc., JOHN STEWART.

December 10, 1964. [The rector of the Timaru Boys’ High School (Mr M. A. Bull) said: “Private prestige schools do indeed save the taxpayer money. At the same time, in the Government’s last financial year the taxpayer contributed about £296,000 to private school education, and the current year’s contribution by the taxpayer is nearly doubled, to a total of about £516,000. That the taxpayer should have to pay a brass farthing for the support of segregating schools, operated upon grounds of either conscience or of prestige, is in the judgment of very many taxpayers utterly unethical. It hurts the more when one considers that the majority of parents sending their children to private prestige schools must be in financial circumstances above those of the average taxpayer who is being compelled to help pay for these people’s segregated education. The fact that there is some saving of taxpayers’ money completely fails to remove the injustice, except perhaps in the minds of those who measure justice by cash balances.”] t