THE COST OF EDUCATION.
Criticism of tho mounting cost of education cannot be dismissed as "unwarrantable attacks" and attempts to belittle the teaching profession, which is the defence issued by tho Auckland branch of the New Zealand Educational Institute. Nor can the increase in public expenditure be attributed to the fall in the value of money, and to the natural increase in the school population, as the secretary of the institute stated in a letter published on Wednesday. According to the official returns, the total expenditure on education in 1922-23 was £3,214,348 and in 1030-31 it was £4,095,323. That is an increase of £880,975, or 27 per cent, in a period of eight years in which the value of money was not falling. Those figures do not include interest on loans for education buildings. If expenditure on buildings and subsidies to the superannuation fund are also excluded from the •comparison, the increase in virtually the current cost of education is shown to have been £772,070, which is equivalent to 28 per: cent. That ratio is enormously greater than the increase in the school population, which, 1922 to 1929, the latest year for which returns have been published, was less than 9 per cent. There has never been any suggestion in responsible criticism that education is the only department in which drastic revision is necessary, but no responsible critic of public expenditure will concede the entix-ely unjustified claim that the magnitude of the cost is a proof of the quality of the education service. It is because the cost of education has been increasing so rapidly and so disproportionately to the school population that on this as on previous occasions attention has been directed to it. The demand for rational economy is not an attack on teachers' salaries, but if the Educational Institute persists in obstructing any attempt to discover waste or extravagance it will merely prejudice the interests of the teaching profession.
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New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20969, 4 September 1931, Page 8
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322THE COST OF EDUCATION. New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20969, 4 September 1931, Page 8
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