ISOLATED FAMILIES

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 10957, 20 July 1921, Page 5

ISOLATED FAMILIES

THE EDUCATION PROBLEM. SOLUTIONS SUGGESTED BY MINISTER. “The problem of providing education in the case of the isolated families with three or four children of school age, occasionally found in the hack blocks and in the lighthouses along our coasts is a difficult one to deal with,” stated the Minister for Education (the Hon. C. J. Parr) to a “Times” reporter yesterday. ‘Where there are eight or nine children within a radius of ten miles or so, it is not so difficult, as a household school, can he established, the Board of Education finding .the teacher and the department paying a salary of £ls per pupil. . It is the single families that one is concerned about. The department has circularised the education boards throughout the Dominion with a view to ascertaining in each district the probable number of such families; ‘ but the replies, have* been disappointing, the boards evidently finding it difficult to get the necessary information. I have,, however, asked the department to reiterate its request to the boards for information, and suggest that an advertisement might be inserted by the boards in the weekly newspapers. The department has some reason to believe that there is a fair number of these isolated families 'getting no education. It seems to me that there are two possible methods of with the problem. Ono is the appointment of itinerant teachers who shall be certificated men getting a special salary and who shall go to each family for two or three days in the week, each family making provision for his accommodation in turn. We would probably have to pay a salary aof £220 to £230 a year to get a suitable type of man and offer Jum some promotion in recognition of his special service. It is found that instruction by a first-class teacher for two or three days in the week is much more effective than instruction given by an uncortificated, untrained man for five days a week. The other method is by correspondence classes, which Mr Caughley (the Director of Education) reports is largely in use in. Australia, and, according to my reading, in the prairie districts of America. It, is wonderful how tho father or mother of a little family, with tffio departmental monthly letter and .budget as a guide, can do for those little families. The Government desires that no child, no matter how isolated, shall be without elementary education at the least.”