TECHNICAL COLLEGE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 44, 20 August 1925, Page 11

TECHNICAL COLLEGE

HOME SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

MINISTER CASTIGATES BOARD

A lengthy reply wag given by the Minister of Education (the Hon. Sir James Parr) to Mr. B. A. Wright (Wellington Suburbs) regarding the question of provision for home science accommodation at the Wellington Technical School. Mr. Wright asked when it was intended to proceed with the erection of an additional wing to the Wellington Technical College for the housing of the home science department, and whether it was intended to introduce a new scale of fees to be charged to pupils attending technical schools (other than j free place pupila). The Minister replied that the Government recognised that the buildings formerly used by the Wellington Technical School were inadequate tnd in some respects unsuitable. The out-of-date, dilapidated cookery-room in Mercer street was undoubtedly among the worst sections of the old accommodation. It was surprising to'find, therefore, that when the Government in the last few years provided a sum- of £58,000 for the erection of a new technical school the school had so far neglected to find apace in the new building -for this cookery :room. The domestic science wing in the new building should surely have been among the first to be provided out of the very Jarge grants made, | or, pending the erection o! such a wing, surely one room, even a temporary one, could have been provided. An application was recently made by the Technical | School Board for the provision of a complete domestic science wing requiring a further grant of more than £15,000, arid necessitating a grant of about £7000 for connecting-rooms to join the home-science department with the rest of the building. The application would thus involve an expenditure of at least ] £22,000, and this was made on the plea of replacing one cookery-room in Mercer street which should have been provided for long ago in the new building as a matter of greatest urgency out of the grant of £58,000 already made. The Jpepartment was not prepared to recommend the large expenditure referred to, but the Technical School Board was of-1 fered about two years ago a separate •cookery-room to replace the one in Mer- j cer street. The board, however, refused this offer, and it was responsible for leaving the cookery class in its persent unsuitable quarters up to the present time. The Department certainly could not be held responsible for the present position, nor could it be regarded as reasonable that after refusing perfectly I suitable accommodation, equal in extent to the Mercer street room, and subsequently failing to find place for at least one cookery-room in the new building, the board should on the plea that they have to abandon the unsuitable cookery-room in Mercer street expect the Government to grant an additional £22,----000, .