COST OF EDUCATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18556, 17 May 1922, Page 6

COST OF EDUCATION

THE MINISTER’S VI^WS. (Pan Un:mtD Pres a Acpootation.) WELLINGTON, May 16. The Minister of Education (the Hon. C. J. Parr)., when speaking to-day at the annual meeting of the New Zealand Educational Institute, remitided delegates that all educational movements were governed by the question of finance. The expenditure on education this year totalled £3,500,000, of which salaries accounted for £2,000,000. The £3,500,000 was allotted as under: Primary education, 78 per cent; secondary, 9 per cent.; technical, 3 per cent.; university, 3 per cent.; special schools, 2 per cent*; and bourding-ont, 5 per cent. This expenditure of £3,500,000 was, he held justified. He was prepared to stand by that in Parliament. We were certainly not spending too much on education. In America junior high schools had sprung ahead with alarming success. Ten years ago there were only 14 such schools, now there were over 1000. Australia was also taking up this movement, and he thought the time was now ripe for New Zealand, at least, to make an experiment in this direction, and that the best step would bo to establish an intermediate school bridging the gulf between the primary and secondary systems. It had been reported that 40 per cent, of the pupils left school without attaining proficiency. This was a positive danger. They gather in the loud-mouthed demagogues' loitering at the street corners and give them a chance to make good by the medium of these schools. America was spending money like water on education.