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Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIV, Issue 3573, 31 December 1868, Page 4

To the Editor of the Daily Southern Cboss. Sir, — The £2,000 put on the estimates for a subsidy to Highway Districts which levy an educational rate can have been placed there only to serve some underhand purpose. His Honor's Executive passed an Act by which an education rate must be expended iv support of a school situated within the Highway District in which it is levied. Now the Executive cannot help being aware that the position of a school has no connection whatever with the boundaries of a Highway District, but that in very many cases, those country schools which were formerly subsidised by the province are situated withiu & few yards of the outside of the highway districts which happen to include them. I mention, for instance, Pukekohe and the Papakura schools, because I believe them to have been shut on -account of that one deficiency in the A.cfc. It is not to be supposed that ratepayers of ona~ district, some of them cix miles off, will^ tax themselves for the support of a school which is beneficial to ratepayers of another district which can do nothing to support the school in the w*y of taxation. The Education Act alluded to is a miserable failure ; but, being a prot§g6 of our Executive, the only thiDg they will do is to hold out a bribe of £2,000, in shares of £25 each, to adopt it. There is one respect, however, in which it is an improvement on the repealed Act. The Highway Trustees 1 are a disinterested party to have supervision of the school, and not like the clerical (superintendents who, in some instances, indirectly robbed the teachers of their own personal advantage. At the same time, there is no reason why Highway Trustees should nob be M.P.C.s as well as school supervisors.— Yours, &c , An Old Hand.