COST OF EDUCATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20960, 25 August 1931, Page 8

COST OF EDUCATION.

The question as to what reduction can be effected in the cost of education, a question raised by the urgent neer< for national economy, is not helpfully discussed by those correspondents who expatiate on the thoroughness with which teachers earn their salaries. All that is said in that way may be true enough, and it is very interesting, but it does not touch the practical issue. A case may conceivably be made for treating teachers as deserving of the highest rate of pay that can lie given to any servants of the State, yet the proving of that would still bo necessarily qualified by the cited proviso, "that can be given." Admittedly, where the product is so incapable of quantitative measurement, precise assessment of the value of service on a commercial basis is impossible; this impossibility, however, cannot reasonably exempt teachers from salary decreases when the State has to make ends meet. It may be acknowledged that the curtailing of expenditure on education is the last thing that should be done, but the times demand that everything, first and last, must lie done. There has been a very rapid rise in the cost of education, and the country is compelled to ask whether it can afford, at the present time, to devote £4,500,000 annually to this purpose. There is only one reasonable answer: tho pruning knife must be used and it is idle to protest against the "cut." The tSachor is not entitled to differential treatment, and the relative security of tenure enjoyed bv the profession is a considerable compensation for any hardship suffered in common with others. Everything in the education vote calls for overhaul with a view to economy. It may be necessary to raise the age of entry to the primary school, to limit the right to free-place privilege in the secondary school to those passing a more exacting examination test, and to cut off the "extras" that have recently been added to the system, such as medical inspection, dental service, and special instruction given in physical culture. The necessity to abandon the organisation of instruction in music has already been realised. No avenue of possible saving should remain unexplored. This general curtailing of outlay entails regret, but that does not remove the obligation to economise. The usual argument about "false economy" cannot be applied in this sphere, for there are no measurable returns to be compared with the saving. An examination of the ways in which the outlay has so rapidly increased reveals that tho national expenditure can be considerably reduced with a minimum of injury, and that is all that ought to be hoped even by the most ardent educationist.