EDUCATION BOARD METHODS. Does Kissing go by Favour ?

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 97, 10 May 1902, Page 8

EDUCATION BOARD METHODS. Does Kissing go by Favour ?

THE position of affairs at the Thorndon and Porirua public schools is a bit peculiar. In the small district of Porirua the headteacher is laid up with illness, her pay apparently is stopped during her enforced absence and the Board says it 'has no funds for sick leave or for paying a substitute to take her place. In the populous city district of Thorndon the head-master has virtually severed his connection with the school and yet has been granted six months' leave of absence on full pay. Why this thugness ? Is there one law for Porirua and another for Thorndon ? * * Let us go a little further into this matter. Take the Thorndon case first. The facts, as we understand, are as follows :— ln February last Mr. Mowbray (head-master of the Thorndon public school) sent in his resignation to the Board of Education along with an application for six months' salary by way of retiring allowance. If the Board had accepted the resignation it could not have entertained the other application and therefore Mr. Mowbray was advised to withdraw his resignation and did so. He applied merely for six months' leave of absence on full pay. Now, the Public School Teachers' Salaries Act, which was passed last session, places teachers' salaries more directly under the control of the Government, and the Board is a kind of distributing agent for the money. Therefore the Board applied to the Government for payment of Mr. Mowbray's salary during his leave of absence and the Government refused on the ground that it had no statutory power to make such a grant. + *■ ■* In the meantime Mr. Mowbray had retired into private life and his connection with the school had ceased. Since February the first assistant has been carrying on the school. The Board, by way of public advertisement, in\ ited applications for the headmastership and required them to be sent in by the 22nd April. A large number were received and laid before the Board at its last meeting, but no action was taken. Why? Because, failing to get a salary for Mr. Mowbray out of the Government, it has started to pay that gentleman on its own responsibility and can't, therefore, take on a new headmaster until it stops paying out to Mr. Mowbray. Very funny business altogether. •* * * Last week the Board assured the Porirua deputation that it had no funds wherewith to pay teachers on sick leave or to employ substitutes to take their place. As a consequence Porirua has to carry on as best it can without a head teacher and that sick head teacher has to live as best she can without salary. Yet at that very same meeting the Board authorises the first payment to Mr. Mowbray on account of that six months' leave of absence for which the Government says it has no power to provide a salary. And, in order to make this feasible, the Thorndon head-mastership is to be kept vacant until Mr. Mowbray gets the full measure of six months' pay after retiring from the school. For that period Mr. Webb, the first assistant, is to act as head-master without either a head-master's appointment or salary. Quite possibly, somebody else may get

the appointment alter he has done the work. In addition to all that, the school is to be kept under-manned and the applications for the head-master-ship are to be hung up so that Mr. Mowbray may continue to draw his monthly cheque for a position from which he has practically retired and has no intention of resuming. It is a most anomalous, unfair and undignified proceeding. Mr. Mowbray is a very old public school teacher and is deserving of generous treatment. But public bodies must be just before being generous. If the Education Board can find six months' salary for Mr. Mowbray — who is understood to be in comfortable circumstances — after he has retired from scholastic duties, then, surely, by all that is right and seemly, it need not plead the miserable excuse of want of funds for stopping the pay of that Porirua teacher who is stretched on a bed of sickness or decline on the same score to find a substitute to take her place. This matter of sick leave and relieving teachers demands the attention of Parliament next session. Full provision ought to be made for it or else cases of hardship must ensue. As for teachers' retiring allowances, if they are to be granted at all, either by that name straight out or in the guise of leave of absence, it should be on some settled and well-understood basis so that equal treatment may be meted out to all.