Parents and School Fees

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 112, 4 February 1933, Page 16

Parents and School Fees

H * FTER all, the parent has and ought to have very considerable /'k responsibility for the upbringing of his children,” declares Mr. Ramsbotham, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education. "The upbringing of the child involves the education of the child and a policy which would put the child, as it were, on the State, would, to my mind, be a retrograde policy. The State’s business is not to supplant the parent but to supplement the parent. “ AV here the parents’ resources are not adequate for the educational requirements of the child, it is for the State to intervene, but, so long as the parent has those resources, it is his business to look after his own child and to be responsible for it. It would be a disaster if we should go very far from that principle “ It is absolutely right that no child who is able to profit by secondary

school education and who wins a free place in competition, a child whose parents are too poor to pay the school fee or any part of it, should be charged, and no such child will be charged. " It is not equally right that a parent of a child, entered without competition should, on the average, pay less than one-third of the cost of its education, nor does it seem to me to be absolutely right that the child of a. parent admitted by competition, who is able to contribute the whole or part of the standard fee, in other words, able to dispense either with the wnole scholarship or with part of it, should be exempt from fees. “ AVhen the resources of the taxpayer and the ratepayer are so much reduced, subsidies, scholarships, public assistance—call it what you like—should be bestowed, as far as possible and consistently with financial considerations, where they are needed, and should not be diverted to those who can do without them.”