SCHOOL COMMITTEE FUNDS.

Hawera Star, Volume LII, 16 November 1932, Page 4

SCHOOL COMMITTEE FUNDS.

The discussion which took place at the conference of school committees in Wellington yesterday on the illegality of euchre parties promoted on behalf of primary school funds draws attention to an anomaly in the Education Act, besides an anomaly in our gaming law’s. The discussion arose as the result of a delegate drawing attention to a warning from the Commissioner of Police that euchre parties at which prizes are given are illegal. The Commissioner is not, of course, to be blamed for administering the law r as he finds it and it is no reflection on him to declare that the law, in this connection, is very much “an ass.” Euchre is played foi prizes in every country hall in New Zealand and in many suburban halls too, right under the eye of the police. This breach of the Gaming Act has. however, been allowed to pass without comment in the main; it is only when some enterprising individual promotes euchre parties for handsome prizes—and his own benefit —that the police give any forcible reminder that it is possible for a respectable suburban hall to become a “gaming house” within the meaning of the Act. Ministers of the Crown have wrestled with this question in the past, but without r.rcli result, and the anomaly survives. It should not be beyond the wit of Parliament to devise means of surmounting the difficulty. At present, however, tliis farcical provision of the gaming laws is serving the useful purpose of drawing attention to the fact that our socalled State-provided system of free primary education is not epiitc so “free” as it would appear to the casual observer. Indeed, a great many of the smaller primary schools could nevei carry on if public spirited citizens were not willing to suffer the indignity ol serving on school committees. iiidig nilv is not too strong a word, for com mil tees have often to organise all manner of money-raising stunts which are distasteful to them in order to ensure that their schools are properly heated in winter, cleaned and maintained in a reasonable state of repair. Secondary schools, on the other hand, receivt such a generous allowance that some of them can actually save money on it. It is a matter for perpetual won-dor that all the machinery that exists for the administration of the education system —from school committees education boards, right up to Parlia-*

ment itself —can do nothing to repair this unjust and unbusinesslike state of affairs. Perhaps the spectacle of the Commissioner of Police threatening to throw school committeemen into gaol together with Chinese fantan players and other illegal gamblers may galvanise our legislators into action.