PRAYERS IN SCHOOL

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 107, 1 November 1940, Page 8

PRAYERS IN SCHOOL

THE LEGAL POSITION

STATEMENT BY DIRECTOR

OPERATION OF ACT

Neither the Education Department, nor an education board, nor a school committee can authorise religious instruction within school hours, or force any teacher or child to take part in religious instruction in school buildings at any time. This was emphasised in a statement made last night by the Director of Education, Dr. C. E. Beeby, who, in view of the misunderstanding that had arisen in the public mind as a result of the Wellington Education Board's resolution regarding the opening of school with the Lord's Prayer, said he wished to make the legal position

clear

"As the chairman of the Education Board stated at the meeting of the board, the question is not moral or religious but purely legal," said Dr. Beeby. "i would stress that the Education Department is not, and, as the law now stands, cannot be, concerned with any other aspect than the legal one. Its only purpose in coming into the matter at all is to see that the law as it exists is not broken.

"The Education Department is charged with administering the education system according to the provisions of the Education Act. and the Act is quite definite on the points here involved," said Dr. Beeby. "It gives no power for the Department to make regulations, or the board to make bylaws, or for ; either body to issue instructions with direct reference to religious instruction or religious observances in schools. Both bodies are charged with the duty of administering a system of free, compulsory, and secular education.

USE OF THE SCHOOL,

"Section 49 (7) of the Education Act gives the local school committee the power to grant, as it deems fit, the use of school buildings for the purpose of moral or religious instruction outside the hours of secuiar instruction. This is an absolute power conferred on the school committee, and one with which neither board nor Department has any concern.

"However, no body at all may direct or permit the giving of religious instruction by any teacher during school hours, or require a teacher to be present at the giving of such instruction within or without school hours. Nor can any child be compelled to attend during any religious instruction at the school which can, by law, be given only outside school hours.

"A school committee may, however, permit the school building to be utilised, outside school hours, for the giving of religious instruction, even though it cannot demand that either teachers or pupils attend.

"So a school committee, while it may provide, .buildings in. which, children can, if their parents so wish, be given religious instruction before the school day starts, cannot order that the school be opened with the .Lord's Prayer.

"A school legally opens only when compulsory instruction begins, and such instruction must be secular. Any teacher taking part in religious exercises in a school building before the school day opens does so not as a teacher but as a private citizen. As for the Education Board, it has no standing whatever in the matter beyond the power to fix, within the limits allowed by the Act, the hours of opening and closing school.

"There is one other aspect I might mention. Quite apart from religious instruction, over which neither board nor Department has any jurisdiction, the Education Act gives the boards no power to determine the curriculum of the public schools. Such powers lie entirely with the Department.

NOT EFFECTIVE

"From any angle, therefore, it is obvious that an instruction issued by an education board to committees or teachers concerning religious observances in the schools can be of no effect," Dr. Beeby continued. "It is, I presume, open to an education board to express the opinion that certain religious observances in schools would or would not be desirable, but such opinion does not alter the legal position at all, any more than would a similar expression of opinion by any other group of citizens. No board knowing the position would, I am sure, wish any such expression of opinion on its part to be wrongly interpreted by school committees, teachers, parents, or children as an instruction having any legal force.

"Whatever either Education Department or education board may say cannot affect the absolute right of a school committee to determine whether or not school buildings be used outside school hours for religious instruction, and neither Department nor board nor committee can authorise religious instruction within school hours or force any teacher or child to take part in religious instruction in school buildings at any time. •

"The point has been made by some newspaper correspondents that no objections have been made to opening' religious exercises in post-primary schools. The answer to this is that such exercises are quite legal in postprimary schools, which do not come under the section of the Education Act that makes similar practices illegal during * school hours in the publio primary schools."