Education boards move condemned

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33065, 4 November 1972, Page 16

Education boards move condemned

Threats to end lay participation in the administration of education in New Zealand must be opposed at all costs, a meeting of the executive of the New Zealand School Committees’ Federation agreed in Christchurch last evening.

The executive unanimously supported a motion condemning a proposal by the Education Boards’ Association to investigate changes in the method by which education board members were elected.

The proposed changes might take the responsibility for electing education board members away from school committees and place it in the hands of the public, in the same manner that hospital boards are elected. This proposal would turn education boards into political arenas, the School Committees’ Federation executive suggested. The Education Board’s Association needed to be told “firmly and without delay” that the N.Z.S.C.F. viewed with extreme concern the idea that the education boards should even consider changing the method by which they were elected.

"They are our servants, and it is high time they were told what we think to make them sit up and take notice,” Mr W. W. Fugler (Wellington) said. Mr W. J. Alcock (Palmerston North): “It is a pretty shabby way for the education boards to go about seeking change, without even

consulting the people who elect them—the school committees.”

Messrs Fugler and Alcock said that in their discussions recently with the DirectorGeneral of Education (Mr A. N. V. Dobbs), Mr Dobbs had made it clear that he did not want the right to elect education board members taken away from school committees.