THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1906. EDUCATION ENDOWMENTS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13518, 15 February 1906, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1906. EDUCATION ENDOWMENTS.

The principle of the proposal of tlie ] Government, outlined in a circular which was road at a meeting of the Marlborough Laud Hoard on Tuesday, to set aside a million acres of Crown lands as an endowment for education purposes, will meet with general approval. It is distinctly a matter of colonial importance that such provision should be made for the support of our education system as will render its maintenance independent of any embarrassment by which the Colonial Treasurer may, through fluctuations in the public revenue, be Assailed. At the presenttime the' amount which has to be annually devoted out df the Consolidated Fund for education purposes is £635,000. With the exception of the interest charge, which must of necessity he mot, and of the cost of maintaining the railway service, the appropriation for education is the largest that is made

out of the public account. Now it i 9 ■ quite conceivable that, with the perma- . nent charges for which the colony has I to make provision constantly increasing, 1 a sharp shrinkago in the revenue, such as is certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility, might, cause a temporary dislocation of the public finances of sufficient , gravity to induce - a Govern- ; mont not specially impressed with the need of maintaining the education 1 system at practically nil costs to seek I economies by a reduction of the vote I for this service. The, adoption of any plun which will tend' to decrease the risk that an Administration might aim at a' restoration of financial equilibrium by emitting down tjie rost of education must, therefore, be welcomed by every person in the colony who is interested, as all should be, in the preservation and, where practicable, the extension ami .improvement of the system. The reserves that have in the past been set apart for education purposes yield only a comparatively small proportion of the total cost of maintaining our schools, primary and secondary, and our university colleges. The area that is vested in School (.'ommfeioners as an endowment for primary education comprises approximately ■ three-quarters of a million of acres, of which the capital value is £1/112,1115, returning an annual income of about £-f(i,(r>(>. For secondary education purposes the area held by School Commissioners or vested in the governing bodies of secondary schools is :-lighily under 275,000 acres, of a capital value of jCß<i7,27fi, produeiii» about £2G,2fifl per annum ■ and the I'liiversity endowments comprise, in all, lc!= than half a million acres, of a value of about- £300,250, yielding in rentals the sum of £'17,.'J00. The total income derived from education reserves at the present timo is not much more than £U0,00l) a year, or only about oneseventh of the amount which has to he provided out of current revenue for defraying the cost of the educational institutions that are supported by the State. Tiie proceeds of the permanent endowments set apart for education purposes represent, therefore, as will, he seen, but a modest instalment of the total cost to the colony of the maintenance of the system; and it is a commendable and patriotic policy that will, by increasing the extent of the endowments, diminish that proportion of the cost of the service for which provision must annually be made upon estimate? of expenditure that are necessarily framed with some regard to the fluctuations of income from Customs duties and tile other main sources of revenue of the Consolidated Fund. But. the details of the plan which the Government has decided to adopt may be less unexceptionable than the principle is. The scheme upon which the endowment is to be provided is, it 'seems, that the basis of distribution of the reserves among the several land districts is to be proportionate to the number of children in each education district, ana that one-half of the revenue obtained from these endowments shall be devoted to the purposes of primary education, <iie other moiety being equally divided between the purposes of secondary and of technical education. The settlement of details of this character is, indeed, n matter for Parliament,, white constitutionally, as it seems to us, even the affirmation of the principle must- be expressed by legislation. Wo have no doubt- that Parliament will acquiesce readily in the proposal that endowments to the extent the Cabinet has in view shall be set apart for educational purposes. The project is, in fact, not a new one, for it was mooted nearly a : score of years ago, when a resolution on 5 the subject was submitted in the House of Representatives by l)r Newman, then member for a Wellington seat, who, ! however, made the mistake of asking 1 for reserves for too many objects, and • so amused opposition wliicli would not ; have been offered to a simple proposi- ' tion for the reservation of areas of ( Crown land for education and charitable I aid purposes. ] '..... i— i