THE EDUCATION REPORT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20650, 23 August 1930, Page 8

THE EDUCATION REPORT.

SCHOLARSHIP FUNDS. CRITICISM OF PROPOSALS* GRAMMAR OLD BOYS' VIEWS. Features of the report on the educju tion system made by the Parliamentary, Recess Committee are reviewed in a state* ment issued by the Auckland Grammar School Old Boys' Association. Dealing with the scholarship funds the statement! says r The committee recommends a draslio alteration with reference to scholarships., All senior and junior national scholarships and the university national and junior scholarships are to bo abolished, and the funds, amounting to £16,000 a year, which are now disbursed to these scholarship holders, are to provide bursaries for the purpose of assisting country children and the children of parents in moderate and straitened circumstances. Under other recommendations of the committee tha country high schools are to have the besfc teachers, so that only children living be. yond the radius of a district high school require special concessions so far as national scholarships are concerned. But the piain objection to the committee's recommendation is in the method of allocating the bursaries. There are to be no competitive examinations lest the besfc schools and the brightest pupils secure tha bursaries. They are to be awarded. by ( the local education boards on the recommendation of the senior inspector. Each; i district must therefore be allotted a certain number of scholarships on some basis of population. And who is to be the dominating factor in selecting the fortunate recipient ? The committee speaks in one place of the board* allocating the bursaries in consultation with the senior inspector,, but its final recommendation requires that) the cases must be recommended by tha inspector. The appointment of secondary teacher* by local boards is condemned by the committee as patronage, in which personal* social, and even religious considerations are not necessarily excluded. Then why introduce this new and pernicious form of patronage and apply it not to adults, bub to school children? Instead of being given a healthy incentive to do his very best at school and to look for neither fear nor favour, the prospective "deserving child'! is to be encouraged to make himself persona grata to the inspector or the local board. It is inevitable that by a series of regulations the central department will possess itself of "effective supremacyii in dispensing this form of patronage.