SWIMMING GRANTS

Evening Star, Issue 17922, 18 March 1922, Page 12

SWIMMING GRANTS

WITHDRAWN BY GOVERNMENT.

Reference was made by the Hon. C. J. Parr (Minister of Education) at Wellington to tho question of State grants for swimming classes. Some misconception, the Minister said, appears to exist in regard to the effects likely to follow the present curtailment of the capitation for swimming and life saving classes in the primary and secondary schools. .These classes are usually taken by the permanent staff of the school, and often in ordinary school hours. Where outside instructors are employed the appointments are mainly honorary, except in some of the secondary schools, where the part-time instructor in physical culture, paid by the Government, may do the work. The capitation has in practice been really a subsidy to the funds of the school for incidental purposes, and has usually been employed to meet expenses in connection with sports generally. Since the teachers will presumably still continue to take the classes in swimming and life saving, either in school hours or voluntarily out of school hours, as they have done in the past, the withdrawal of the capitation allowance should threaten the existence of the classes. Interest in swimming has now become so widespread that tho classes, will no donal bo continued without any artificial stimulus by way of Government subsidy. Of course, Mr Parr added, the Education Depart-

mcnt has nothing to do with the- withdrawal by" the Department of Internal Affairs of the annual votes on the appropriations in favor of the Royal Humane Society, tho New - Zealand Amateur Swimming Association, and Royal Life Saving Society.