More money wanted for manual training

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32461, 23 November 1970, Page 16

More money wanted for manual training

Manual training classes in Canterbury schools may have to be curtailed unless the Department of Education provides more money for them. At a meeting of the Canterbury Education Board on Friday the technical committee presented a report saying there had so far been no progress in obtaining more money even though the question had been raised with the Minister of Education (Mr Taiboys) through the member for St Albans (Mr R. P. B. Drayton). One member of the board said there had been no increase in the grant for five years, but costs in materials for woodwork and home science had increased by at least 33 per cent. Unless more money became available classes would have to to curtailed and the services allowed to run down. The buildings committee reported that a grant ol

i $33,606 had been approved i for the addition of two extra i classrooms and a new heati ing system at Clarkeville and ' $7451 for the replacement of toilets at Whataroa. Negotiations were now i going on for the acquisition ■ of a new school site in h> : woods Road, Burwood, and i for additional land for build- > ings and recreation at the ■ Grey Main, South Westland s District High School and ' Timaru schools. Heating Systems • The committee told the board that the department considered there was no case to be placed before the Inter- ! Departmental Fuel and ! Power Committee for the 1 use of oil instead of coal in school heating systems. j The board’s Hokitika dele- ; gate (Mr R. A. Gibb) de- ’ scribed this attitude as “ridiculous.” , “I can’t see how we are ; going to spend money on - coal fires and then go to great sxpense to change them to oil ind electricity,” he said. “I have a school in my district where the burners lave been altered three or four times over the last seven ir eight years. “I think we should approach this authority ourselves and get some reasonable answers and not the unreasonable answers we get now. I have no faith in what they are doing and their ability to control our fuel authority in New Zealand,” he said. In Mr Gibb’s view, coal was a fuel of the past which even the Railways Department recognised. He said coal cost as much in Hokitika as it did in Cliristchrch.