PUBLIC SCHOOL PROBLEMS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16964, 28 March 1917, Page 10

PUBLIC SCHOOL PROBLEMS

HOME AND OVERSEAS SCHOLARS. COMPARISONS BY MAJOR BELCHER. (From Our Own Oop.ehspondent.) . LONDON, January>26. Striking differences between the public schools of England and of the dominions were given by Major E. Av Belcher (late head master of Christ's College) before a recent meeting of the Royal Colonial Institute. *

Most English public schools, ho said I existed for boarders, and where day boys were present the tendency was that thev should conform in every possible respect to the boarding life of the school. Overseas, the day-boy element was always strong and the tendency was to draw very definite distinctions between the life of the boarder and the life of the day boy. So far as government was concerned. Major Belcher pointed out that an English governing body concerned itself almost purely with finance, and the result was that the head master was an autocrat, and had a free hand.' Overseas they met with a curious paradox. The governing bodies met frequently, lived as a rule near the school, and 'in very many cases were the parents of day boys.- The result was obvious. They were disposed to regard tho head muster as the man-aging* director of a comnany, and the head master never really got a free hand. His policy and reforms were judged, net by their ultimate results, but bv their immediate effect on local opinion. Coming to the question of masters. Major Bclcher said that the overseas public school master was not generally the intellectual equal of his English brother but his experience was wider. He nrarlv always knew something of England, and the fact that he lived in tho wide spaces of the earth made him recoptive of new ideas and impressions. He suffered from one serious drawback. He was nearly always underpaid—sometimes scandalously so,—and the consequence was he was ncarlv always discontented with his lot. Major Belcher oxpressed the opinion that tho overseas schoolboy suffered almost invariably from a lack of_ grounding,- good preparatory schools being the exception.. He developed much earlier than the English boy. and was far more independent in his judgment. He was more concerned with the facts than th« theories of life.

THE MOST URGENT PROBLEM. We wanted an absolute equality of opportunity for Imperial service. Not only must the Imperial Army and Navy be open to every overseas scholar, but so also must the India, Egypt, Soudan, and Colonial Civil Services.- Put into plain language, equality of opportunity had no meaning unless it involved the assignment of a deff nit,G number of vacancies in each of th« services to the dominions, and the selection and examination of the candidates in the dominion concerned. Major Belcher pointed out that a limited number of vacancies for Sandhurst had been assigned to New Zealand candidates, who were selected and examined in the dominion, and. so far as he knew, that was the first instance of anv oversea public school boy proceeding direct into Sandhurst. The most urgent reform was m the scale of salaries paid to assistant masters: In England they had remained almost stationary for 20 years, but there were some compensations. Overseas, things were worse. A small proportion of public schools under Government control paid their masters reasonably well, and treated them as civil servants m retirement, but those were the exception rather than the rule Ho knew of cases where men of undoubted abilil y a , nd eolation, after 12 years' service at the best type of overseas school, were receiving no more than £250 per annum w'th no particular prospects of ever getting anv increment. He had no hesitation in assort ing that no reform in public school education was worth oiscussing unless it was ac companied by a complete revolution in the salaries paid to assistant m.i,st"rs Sir Frederick Konyon, IC.C.'b'., who presided, voiced the thanks of the meeting to Major Belcher for his paper.