The Daily Telegraph. THURSDAY, JULY 10, 1890.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 5879, 10 July 1890, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. THURSDAY, JULY 10, 1890.

™he party of retrenchment in the House insist on the Estimates being reduced by £50,000. The Government artt inclined to believe that, as regards the public services in their relation to public convenience, retrenchment has gone far enough. "We do not think it hae. We do not ask for officers to be dismissed ; wo do not ask for any roduction of salaries; but we do demand that needless expenditure should be stopped. Every penny of the £50,000 of the retrenchment required could be saved from the vote for education. Wo do not wan: it to be taken from either tho capitation grant or the building grant, any further than this — that the sum total of each could be reduced, without interfering with either. This may seom paradoxical; but when it is considered that if the school age were raised from five to six or seven years, and if the Seventh Standard, which is wholly unknown to the Act, were abolished, schools which now roquiro to be enlarged would be amply big enough, and there would be less to pay on capitation. There would also be less teachers wanted. New Zealand, we believe, is theonly country in the world whore it is deemed necessary that the education of a child should begin at five years of age. If |the school ago were raised to six years. Mr G. Fisher, who was then Minister of Education, estimated that the country would save £'25,000. He pointed out that in France, Germany, Sweden, and Hungary, no child neod go to school till it has entered the soventh year. In Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, and Prussia, the school ago is six years. Another point, says tho New Zealand Herald, on which a large saving might bo made is by ceasing to give education a tthocost of the State after the pupil has passed the Fourth Standard. Any boy who has passed the Fourth Standard, if it were somewhat raised from the present measure, is equipped for the work of life, and has received all tho education that any reasonable people can expect tho State to provide. We have always contended that tho whole benefit of this teaching in the high standards goes to the children of well-to-do people, who aro able enough to pay for tho superior education of their children, and who generally are willing enough to Jo so if they are allowed. In the report for 18S0, just issued, wo find that the pupils were classified as follows : —Pupils in preparatory classes (meaning in considerable part iufauts who ought not to be in school at all), 32,0-1 i ; preparing for Standard I, 16.05S ; for Standard 11, 17,010: for Standard 111, 17,800 ; for Standard IV, 1-1,313 ; for Standard V. 9,791 ; for Standard VI, r>,-'22; pupils that have passed Standard VI, -,'291. ObNervo the drop that takes placo after Standard IV, and yet for the comparative few who aro iv preparation for Standard VI, a most costly part of tho system is kept up. In the session of 18SS, tho Minister of Education stated in tho House:—''Although the House and tho country generally recognised that the public school torching ceased, or should cease, at the Sixth Standard, it was a fact that the country was at the present tiuio spending between £7000 nnd £8000 in continuing tho education of children iv what was called the Seventh Standard. It was not tho children of the working classes who were receiving gratuitous instruction in that standard. On the contrary, it happened that in somo cases the schools wero crowded with those children, and wero crowding out of the schools the children of tho working man who wero in the lower standards "