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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3783, 30 August 1883, Page 2

TnE Legislative Council yesterday threw out, on the casting vote of the Speaker, the Bill for an alteration in the mode of the election of school committees. Every one who has taken any active part in school management will regret the loss of that useful measure. The mode of electing school committees differs from that of any other executive body in this colony, and the School Committees Election Bill sought to remove this anomaly. The existing system provides that a committee shall keep office for one year ; the whole of its members then retire, and a new committee is elected. Thus a fresh sot of men can bo put in, new to the work, and unacquainted with the proper functions of a school committee. In some country districts this system has worked most prejudicially to the cause of education. In the larger centres of population the mode of election resolves itself into a farce, and the electors, instead of being restricted to householders, in the hurry, and in a densely packed room, include everybody who may be thero for the purpose of plumping for a particular candidate. The election, considering that until the declaration of tho poll nobody knows who has been nominated, as a rulo, does not turn on the votes of the householders as a body, but on those of a few who may have banded themselves together for a particular purpose. The School Committees Election Bill sought to remove tho chief blot in tlic Education Act and we exceedingly regret -that the Bill has been thrown out by the "Lords.