EDUCATION BOARDS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 93, 13 January 1921, Page 5

EDUCATION BOARDS

A REPLY TO MR. PIRANI (To the Editor.) Sir, —There are one or two points in the letter of Mr. Pirani in your issue of January 10 that are worthy of notice. Ho writes with the object of showing that the board system is the best system of educational administration for this Dominion, and by way of evidence he names a large family of small children which he calls “reforms” that have originated with the education boards. Most of the "reforms” iiamcß—•a good many of them adopted without acknowledgment of their true parentage—are mere improvements in administrative detail; and tho enumeration of these serves to obscure rather than illuminate the subject under discussion. Moreover, the implication. is that all the good little children of his numerous .family are or have been as carefully cherished by all tho other boards as by that with which he has been connected; but no’ one knows better than Mr. Pirani that this is far from being the case. While his list shows a number of small things that the boards have achieved in the forty odd years of their existence —and to Mr. Pirani’s credit it must be said that a considerable proportion of them belong to his own district and his own administration —it includes no menion of the larger reforms that the boards —all or most of them—have opposed. I shall not attempt to make an exhaustive list of these; but the mere mention of some of the more significant of them will show how ’little of real educational impulse has'been at the back of the operations of tho boards. Most people —even most teachers —have forgotten the circumstances that made necessary the passing of the Teachers’ Court of Appeal Act, opposed ; bv the boards. Equally important was the Dominion scale of staffs ami salaries —opposed by the boards, although it was clearly shown that the institution of a superannuation scheme depended on it. Freedom of classification was opposed by the boards; although on it depended the easting off of tho shackles of “percentage of passes.” A Dominion inspectorate was opposed by the boards, although it was and is the first essential in the growth'of a really national system of education. The right of appeal against arbitrary transfer was opposed by some of the boards, as was and .still is tho just demand for a Dominion scheme of appointments. The institution of tlie Dominion grading scheme was opposed by some of the boards though the experience of several of them had amply demonstipted the value of such a scheme. Enough has been said to show that in nearly all cases of reform that really mattered the board system has been the clog on the wheelrf of progress. Air. Pirani implies that he places great value on what is understood by tho term “local administration.” In that all who have the real interests of education at heart will agree with him. It is because under the board system any effective local administration is impossible that the abolition of the system in favour of real local administration is advocated. The present system is simply the system of bureaucracy exemplified in nine centres instead of one. There is only one other point that I shall mention. Air. Pirani says: “I. have never - made educational, administration a. question of personal gain”; and even his strongest opponent’ will ungrudgingly admit that that is true. But could not Mr. Pirani have beeli equally fair to that body which he seems to hold in peculiar detestation—the New Zealand Educational Institute? Speaking of the members of the institute he says they “. . . confine themselves largely lo tho improvement of their own pay and working conditions.” That statement i» entirely unjust. 1 affirm, and 1 challenge Air Pirani or anyone else to dispute the affirmation—that, since the. teachers secured themselves from the lyrannv <:f board members by the Teachers’ Cdurt of Appeal Act nnd secured their meagre salaries from the manipulations of boards by the Dominion scale of stall’s and salafios, they have devotefl a great deal more of thoir time a’ii'l energy to measures for the benefiting of their pupils than for their own benefit. A perusal of any order paper of any annual meeting of the last eighteen or twenty years will confirm what I say; apart from the fact that the few real reforms mentioned in Air. Pirani’s own list originated in their advocacy by the institute'. .Medical inspection, a grading scheme, co-ordination of control, are only a few cases in point by way of illustration.—] iipi, etc.,

H. A. PARKINSON, Secretary. N.Z.E.I Wellington, January 12. 1921.