“PUSHING AHEAD WITH EDUCATION”

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 299, 14 September 1936, Page 8

“PUSHING AHEAD WITH EDUCATION”

Government’s Objectives DIFFICULTIES, BUT NO LACK OF MONEY Dominion Special Service. Auckland, September 13. “We are not boastful about what we have done for education because it is small compared with wbat remains to be done,” said the Minister of Education, Hon. P. Fraser, in an address at Ellerslie. Speaking of the readmission of “the five-year-olds to the primary schools, Mr. Fraser said the Labour Government had not lost a day in rectifying what the late Government had done. The Minister condemned the closing of the training colleges in the depression and said that 1187 students were now being trained in them , to overtake the shortage of teachers. When that had been accomplished other problems would remain such as over-large classes and congested floor space in particular. There was nolack of money, but the difficulty would be to get the work done. It would take millions of pounds and a great deal of organisation especially while the Government was undertaking its large housing programme qnd the many other public buildings required to.be The best school buildings to-day were those of the Canterbury open-air type, but there also were some very bad schools in Canterbury and very bad teachers’ houses all over the Dominion. He had heard of one in which a baby and its cot disappeared through the collapse of the floor. Another had its bathroom outside five or six yards from the back door. Related Policies.

The Government, was pushing an with the related policies of consolidating the country schools and providing for the conveyance of the children, continued the Minister. Forty new conveyance services had been instituted, six new school buses had been built by the Railways Department, and six more were under construction. AII possible use, was being made of the railways, but the Government was determined to extend the benefits of modern primary education and post-prim-ary education to children who • lived away from the railway lines) This assistance even included, where necessary. small boarding allowances which would be Increased later to help in the purchase of books. The largest- recorded vote for school buildings had been placed on the Estimates and it had been decided to make grants for extensions to the science building at Auckland University College, the Medical School at Otago University, and the biological department at the Victoria University College. "The tyranny of the proficiency ami matriculation examinations will be ■considered in co-operation with educationists,” added Mr. Fraser. "We intend to make the road from the kindergarten to the university open to the child who wants to take it. We have done more in all directions than was ever done before, and that is not the end. It is not too much to say that new vision has been brought into education.”