EDUCATIONAL

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 4591, 17 May 1922, Page 2

EDUCATIONAL

STATEMENT BY MINISTER BARR, (Per Press Association.) Wellington, May 16. The Minister of Education, speaking to-day at the annual meeting of the New Zealand Educational Institute, remided delegates that all educational movements were goverened by the question of finance. Tho expenditure on education this year totalled three and a half millions, of which salaries accounted for lwo millions. The three and a half millions were allocated as under: Primary education 78 per cent; secondary education 9 per cent; technical education 3 per cent; university 3 per cent; special schools 2 per cent; boarding out 5 per cent. This expenditure of three and a half millions, was, he held, justified. He was prepared to stand by that in Parliament. We certainly were not spending too much on education. In America, junior high schools had sprung ahead with alarming success Ten years ago there were only 14 of such schools. Now there were over 1000. Australia was also taking up this movement, and lie thought the time was now ripo for New Zealand, at least, to make an experiment’in this direction, and that the best step would bo to establish intermediate schools, bridging the gulf between tho primary and secondary systems. It had been reported that 40 per cent of the pupils left school without attaining tho proficiency certificate. This was a positive danger. They should gather in the loud-mouthed demagogues who were loitering at street corners, and give them a clianco to make good by the medium of these schools. They should not bo allowed to prey upon others. America was spending money like water on education.