FEMALE EDUCATION.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 5, 17 February 1872, Page 9

FEMALE EDUCATION.

The example set last year by Otago in providing a superior education for the daughters of New Zealand settlers, by their Provincial School for girls, has been followed by Canterbury, where the Provincial Council are taking active measures to promote a similar institution. As our readers are aware, the importance of the question has not been unfelt in our own locality, and a spirited effort has been made to enlist public support for a High School for girls, to be placed under the management of the College Board. In another column we have printed the latter correspondence on this subject, by which it appears that the Governors of the College are not prepared to assume the responsibility of the proposed school. While we regret that they do not see their way to act as leaders in the matter of female education, we cannot but allow that the heavy losses formerly incurred, but still felt, in the boys' College, are calculated to inspire, and go far to justify extreme caution on the part of the present Board. There is no reason to doubt the existence of a cordial desire on the part of the Governors to forward the object, though such action has not yet found practical expression. We venture to hope, that while the College Governors shrink from the entire risk of launching the proposed school, they may well consent to render it some help if undertaken by others. By so doing they will indirectly subserve the interests of the present College ; for unless female education be adequately provided for here, it is not to be expected that families not absolutely bound to Nelson, and iv which there are daughters, will send their boys to our College when they find a superior education provided for both sexes in adjacent provinces.