REDUCED POWERS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 39, 16 February 1933, Page 5

REDUCED POWERS

EDUCATION BOARDS

PROTEST AGAINST BILL

(By Teregraph.) . (Special to "The Evening Post.") DUNEDIN, This Day. Tho fear that the general trend of the Education Amendment Bill was to take power frpm education'boards and gradually lead up to a.' centralised scheme, with the Department in complete control, was expressed at the meeting of the Otago, Education Board, which set up a committee to-frame a protest to the Minister of Education, Otago'and Southland members of Parliament, and members of the Education Committee in the House of Representatives, i . . The chairman, Mr. Wallace, said that power was being taken from the boards and added to the senior inspectors. Tho greatest, blot of all in the Bill was the 'clause giving school committees power to suspend teachers. It would be a case of "God help the teachers," if this scheme became law. The Department'should be ashamed, of pven suggesting that that clause should become, law. • Mr. Wallace sail he meant nothing against the school committees; in fact lie felt sure they themselves would want to have nothing to do with such a scheme. In regard to a suggestion that .finesi should be inflicted in certain" instances, he believed that without any such impositions the boards could make teachers feel that they had been sufficiently punished. In the matter of the: Training College, they had been bluffed. The land on which buildings were erected belonged to the board and should revert to its previous owner and not to the Crown. Mr. Wallace deplored the fact that there was a proposal to undermine the boards' authority in regard to special schools. ' If the clause went through the power'of the boards would be gone.-