QUIET SERVICE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 227, 23 August 1935, Page 3

QUIET SERVICE

EDUCATION BOARD’S WORK. “Unfortunately, the general public have very little idea, or none at all, of what tho Wanganui Education Board is. or of what it does,” said Mr E. F. Hemingway, the board’s chairman, in addressing the quarterly meeting of the Manawatu-Oroua School Committees’ Association.

After explaining the proceedings of the board’s meetings Mr Hemingway said they would realise a great deal of the board’s work was of a highly confidential nature, dealing with the characters of teachers and children, and so forth, which had perforce to be taken in committee. It all that tho board did at its table was fully reported it would occupy at least half a dozen columns of a newspaper, and yet he could assure them that not a superfluous word was spoken. Putting all personal reference aside, the Wanganui Education Board was a body of whom the committees could bo justly proud, said the speaker. He had never met a more unselfish, hardworking. conscientious and strictly honourable body of men. It was an honour and a privilege to be counted one of them, and a double honour to lead them. There was not the slightest trace of parochialism in any one of them. They would find the members from the Main Trunk district supporting a proposal for tho benefit of schools in Palmerston North if they deemed the work necessary, just as keenly as tlie Palmerston North members would support the Main Trunk members for work in tho Main Trunk area. Another thing he was proud to say was that in the whole of his period of service on the board, now going on for 20 years, he had never yet found politics or religion to enter into any discussion. There were few bodies, he should imagine, with so fine a record. The board had always had a high reputation for the thoroughness of its work, and he hoped it would always continue to hold it. One secret of its success with regard to its deliberations was the fact that it adhered strictly to the rules of debate. No local body could hope to succeed if it departed from the rules of debate which, after all, were the outcome of centuries of experience. No member of the board ever spoke without rising, and cross-table talk was never heard. The members, from the time they entered the meeting room to the time they left, concerned themselves with the matter before the meeting and did not utter a superfluous word. As a consequence they went through their business in record time and were free to return to their homes, most of them at a good distance, tho same day. Continuing, Mr Hemingway said the board was guided in its delilierations by the advice of experts and the local knowledge of members. The senioi inspector attended all meetings and also the secretary and the architect. Very naturally the local members’ knowledge was a big help to the hoard. If they and the hoard’s experts did not know what was the right thing to do with regard to a school then no one did.

There was another question that was not fully appreciated by the outside public, and that was the board’s attitude towards deputations. There was a resolution on the hoard’s, minute book that no deputation be received unless and until the matter the deputation wished to bring before the hoard had been discussed, and even then the question of receiving a deputation or not was left to the chairman. Their wisdom would be appreciated when the vast extent of the board’s district was taken into consideration, and the innumerable bodies there are that have dealings with school committees. If the board made a practice of receiving deputations it would have to sit for days, whereas often a matter that a deputation wished discussed could be dealt with in a few seconds. In consequence of the lack of knowledge possessed by the outside public of the board’s work there were many people like the members of the National Expenditure Commission who thought it would be a good thing to abolish education boards. Their chief reason for the abolition was on the score of expense. They did not know that the total cost of all the education boards and high school boards in the Dominion was a little over one per cent of the cost of education. When one considered the vast amount of work done by the education boards and their staffs they would realise how inexpensive they really were. Did they think the Education Department could do the work that was done by the secretaries and clerks under them more cheaply? And what about the vastamount of work done by tho members of the boards for nothing? It reminded one of a farmer with a herd of 50 cows who employed five men at £5 a week each and a boy at 10s, the boy chopping the wood for the house, feeding the calves and pigs and taking the milk to the factory and doing odd jobs all day besides. The National Expenditure Commission had come along and said, “What’s this? Milking 50 cows and your wages hill is £25 10s per week! It’s far too high. We recommend that you get rid of the hoy!”