Evening Post. FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 1922. AN IMPORTANT PRINCIPLE

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 152, 30 June 1922, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 1922. AN IMPORTANT PRINCIPLE

The trouble between Miss Park and the Caarterton School Committee has developed in a way of which neither the teaching profession nor the public can have had the faintest idea when it began. The Minister of Education has been still more egregiously out in his calculations. A controversy which in ordinary course would have been concluded in a few weeks with no more serious results than the reprimand of a competent and loyal teacher for a not very grave indiscretion has been kept alive for months, and developed into a leading case of the first importance. That Miss Park has been able to add to her original victory over the School Committee a far more striking victory over the Education Department is a result which must be highly satisfactory to her, and in which the feeling that she was being harshly treated guarantees her a very large measure of sympathy. But the public importance- of the case is something entirely indepen^ dent of its personal aspects. A great question of public policy was at stake. Though Miss Park and the Minister of Education were the nominal parties in the Supreme Court, the issue was really one between the Education Boards and the Education Department, in which Miss Park was fighting the battle of the Boards and of the teaching profession. The question was whether the State school teachers, who ai%e the servants of the Education Boards, are also the servants of the Crown in such a way that the Minister of Education, through the disciplinary powers contained in the Regulations, can overrule the decision of a Board and disqualify a teacher whom it desires to retain.

We -use the term "■ disqualify " advisedly. It was not in terms the power to dismiss that the Minister of Education was claiming: The statutory jurisdiction of the Boards on this point was not in dispute, and was laid down by Mr. Justice Salmond with the clearness which pervades his whole judgment:

The teachers of public schools under the Education Act are not the servants of the Crown. The Minister or Department of Education has no authority in respect of the appointment, promotion, transfer, suspension, or dismissal of such teachers. They are the servants, of the Education Boards, and are appointed, promoted, transferred, suspended, or dismissed by these Boards without any control on the part of the Minister or of the Department. The Education "Act contains elaborate provisions designed to protect teachers against any arbitrary or unjust exercise of the powers of Education Boards in this respect.

But of what avail would the approval of the Education Board or a victory id the Teachers' Court of Appeal be to a teacher if in. effect the Minister of Education could make himself a sort of Privy Council, a final tribunal to revise and reverse the decisions of the inferior tribunals which had previously dealt with the case ? \ It was this overruling power that the Minister was in substance claiming^ under clause 58 of Regulations which had been made as long ago as the 13th February, 1912, in .the following terms:

The Minister of Education shall have power to cancel any certificate or license to teach if the holder of the certificate or license shall at any time be proved guilty of immoral conduct, or gross misbehaviour within the meaning of the^ Education Act, 1908. Ha shall also have power for sufficient cause shown to suspend any certificate or license to teach for such period as he thinks fit.

There is here, it will be observed, no power to dismiss a teacher, but only to cancel or suspend his certificate. The distinction is, however, as we said, one of form rather than of substance. As Shylock says, You take my life, When you do take tho means whereby .1 livo. To deprive a teacher of his certificate would be, in effect, to deprive him of his livelihood, even though the sentence was, in effect, one of cancellation but not dismissal. It is true that one of the • anomalies revealed by Mr. Justice Salmqnd's judgment is that, though no teacher may be appointed without a certificate, the subsequent loss of the certificate would not ipso facto invalidate the appointment. But it .would at least render the teacher's f tenure of office -highly precarious, .and it would absolutely prevent his

and even his promotion or transfer within the same district. It was, therefore, in substance a power of dismissal that the Regulation in question purported to confer, and the issue was raised by the Minister in the acutest possible manner. He proposed to exercise the power in a case in which the teacher's employers—the Wellington Education Board—had, after a full inquiry, taken the only action that they considered necessary, and regarding which the Minister himself had publicly expressed a strong opinion.

This hostile attitude of the Minister, which made a deep impression on the public, was one of the grounds of Miss Park's action for prohibition. The Minister had written to her: " The letter convicts you of grave breaches of discipline, and of serious misconduct." He had also- said to the Chairman of the Education Board: "If you don't suspend her, I will have it out on the floor of the House." There has indeed been a little too much of the polemical and the spectacular about Mr. Parr's administrative methods. He has more than once inflamed controversy, and unintentionally injured a cause which he has very much at heart, by brandishing his big stick before the public eye when tactful handling might have effected an amicable settlement in private. Whether in the present case the Minister's partisanship had disqualified him from an unbiased exercise of the discretion, which the Regulation in question purported to confer was not decided by Mr. Justice Salmond. •His decision in Miss Park's favour on the main issue rendered the con-1 sideration of this minor point superfluous. There was no need to say whether the Minister had shown predetermination or bias in the matter, since the Eegulation under which he proposed to act was held/ to be ultra vires and void. j