EDUCATION REPORT

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 23, 26 July 1930, Page 11

EDUCATION REPORT

ITS END AND AIM

STRONG DENUNCIATION

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

TIMAEU, This Day

"It has remained for a committee wholly composed of laymen to strike fhe deadliest blow that lias been administered to local control of education since the national system was introduced," declared Mr. A. E. Lawrence, one of the members of the Primary •School Syllabus Revision Committee, in a statement to-day on the Education Report. "An ironic aspect of tlio report of tho recess Education Committee is that ten laymen whoso collective experience in the local administration of education is almost negligible have considered themselves qualified to evolve a new education policy which, in effect, declares that all lay educationists from end to end of New Zealand, thousands of whom have devoted a lifetime to tho public service in the administration of education, are unfitted to •tie entrusted with the least measure of local control. The report itself■ literally bubbles over with tho views of the professional, educationist, but the considered views' of experienced education authorities are wholly ignored, although extensive extracts of evidence are- quoted in which the Director of Education is well featured. The only persons outside tho charmed circle of the teaching profession whose views aro considered of sufficient value to have their evidence quoted in the report aro the. Hon. -H. Atmore, who brought out clearly several .important points, and an ex-school teacher who is now a farmer."

Mr. Lawrence suggested that the explanation wits' obvious. "Tho report," he said, "may be the voice of the committee, but the hand is all too clearly the hand of the Department."

One significant omission, Mr.' Lawrence suggested, should l>o noted. There was no report from the Director of Education on the estimated cost of the junior high school scheme recommended by the Committee. It was -known, that Mr. Strong had already made- this investigation; why then deny a group of laymen guidance of the- information already in the possession of the Department and permit them to make the foolish blunder of reporting that the initiation of the new scheme need not be delayed on the ground of additional expense when the Director of Education holds other views. "It is true, added Mr. Lawrence, "that the report sugars a bitter pill by saying that high school boards of governors will find in the important sphere already entrusted to them every opportunity of maintainino' their characteristic individuality and the best traditions of their schools, that tho education boards would occupy a dignified and important place in the new system. Moreover, sixteen thousand school~committcemen throughout New Zealand will no doubt be thriled to learn that they will gain rather than lose by being relieved of useless and unreal powers, but everyone who takes the trouble to read the report of the recess Education Committee and road it carefully, will be forced to the conclusion that the recommendations do not aim at unification jof local control but favour the crucifixion of local control of education and glorify bureaucracy centralised in the Department ot Education in Wellington." •