SECONDARY EDUCATION.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume IX, Issue 1663, 30 June 1887, Page 2

SECONDARY EDUCATION.

-♦ Now, when there is a demand for retrenchment and some politicians are advocating an attack upon the primary system of education, we may as well renew our protest against the public fund, and the public lands being used for the support of the various institutions for imparting what is generally called secondary and higher education. Our readers will be aware that this is not a new subject with us, and we take to ourselves a share of the credit of suspending one of these institutions ou this coast, which was being run to some extent by funds taken from the primary education coffers, as, indeed, most of them are either directly or indirectly. Many people, whose opinion? we very greatly value have tod us that we are on the wrong track in this matter, and that the goal of true liberalism in this respect is the making of the high schools as free and accessible to all classes as the primary schools are at the present time. That may be all very well as a theory, but practically it does not work out, and it will not work out for many years to come, as every settler in a country district knows Meantime all are paying for the education of children whose parents as a rule are perfectly well able to pay for the higher education of their offspring ; and what is more, the cost of teaching the pupils at these establishments is, relatively speaking, enormously high. The capitation grant from the State to the Education Boards is «£4 per head per pupil ; and Sir Robert Stout, while emphatically declaring that the system must not be touched, is, it seems from the experience of the Wanganui Education Board, gradually cutting down the grant — quite without Parliamentary authority, we believe — to 15s. But the cost per pupil at secondary schools — we learn from a report published in New Plymouth as to the working of the High School there — is as follows: — New Plymouth School, hi pupils, average cost £\2 ; Thames School. 56 pupils, ,£l6 ; Napier Boys, 94 pupils, .£l3 ; Waitaki School, 55 pupils, £18 ; Timaru School, 94 pupils, and the average cost per pupil of the twenty-two High Schools of the colony is £13 10s. Now it seems to us that these figures are suggestive of tbe point at which economy should begin, it' the education system is to be touched. Keferriug to the New Plymouth High School, we find that, of the £1117 spent annually to educate 56 pupils, £296 is provided by fees, and the balance c-ouies from reserves and Government grant. It may be said that the total income of these schools from the State is not large, but it amounts already to £20,000 or £30,000 a year, and not a session goes by without some addition being made to the sums voted by Parliament. At a time when there is &o much talk about retrenchment, this is a branch of expenditure which Bhould not be lost sight of ; and we believe it can be lopped very considerably without any disadvantage to the colony. We are not quite sure that it would not be to the advantage of the colony, for it would no doubt lead to the establishment by private enterprise of schools which must be made excellent in order to be attractive, and would probably offer greater diversity of subjects taught and method of teaching than can be hoped for from schools all leaning on the Government for support, and all conducted under one system and after one pattern.