Deputation On South Westland School

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31661, 23 April 1968, Page 9

Deputation On South Westland School

A deputation to the Minister of Education (Mr Kinsella ★seeking a district high school at Harihari will be arranged by the Canterbury Education Board and South Westland organisations. The board said it could not accept the Minister’s decision that a school was not warranted by numbers. The secretary-manager (Mr W. P. Spencer) said the board’s surveys indicated that if a district high school was opened in 1969 it would have a secondary roll of 21, not counting the 24 South Westland pupils now boarding in Greymouth for secondary education. Still not counting these boarders, the roll would rise to the required 50 by 1973. “But this survey does not take account of the families which move away from South Westland as soon as children require secondary schooling,” said Mr Spencer. The board's officers felt the Education Department was being too rigid in this case, Mr Spencer said. Darfield, which opened with 25 second-

ary pupils, was now a full high school. Culverden was much the same. All the board’s estimates were conservative and there seemed to be a good case for Harihari. Mr R. A. Gibb, a West Coast member, said he had attended a meeting of 69 South Westland representatives at which parents and officers of the National Park, Ministry of Works, Roads Board, Post Office, Forest Service, Federated Fanners, local bodies, and others reported that they could not hold workers once children required secondary schooling. State staff houses were vacant for this reason. Mr M. Wallace had made a personal protest to the Prime Minister. “The whole district is being held back by lack of secondary education/’ said Mr R. W. Sansom, another West Coast member.

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