BOARD v. DEPARTMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22065, 22 September 1933, Page 6

BOARD v. DEPARTMENT

The fact that a difference of opinion between the Otago Education Board and the Department of Education is no new thing would not justify the suggestion that the Board derives satisfaction from being at logger-heads with the administrative authority under which it functions. Departmental methods are not infrequently tive of righteous indignation. In respect of the grounds upon which it is now bent on addressing an emphatic protest to the Education Department the Board is entitled to sympathy. The issue which produced some resentful discussion at its meeting yesterday is an outcome of the raising of the school age, which, by reducing attendance, has entailed a reduction of school staffs. After some backing and filling the Department recognised the reasonableness of representations, in the making of which the Otago Board was prominent, to the effect that permanent teachers whose services would be dispensed with shortly before the end of the year should be retained right up to the Christmas vacation, so that their holiday pay would be safeguarded. But the Board has been not less anxious to secure that relieving teachers who have been filling permanent positions in its service should not be retired, as the regulations provide, before the end of the year. Its object in this has been to ensure that there would be no disorganisation, or need for reorganisation, of the school work during the final term. Against this request the Department has set its face, but the Board still hopes by dint of protest to induce it to change its mind. Its indignation at the departmental attitude is kindled by the belief that it has deserved better consideration, and is based on the argument that it has done the State some service in mitigating the effect of the raising of the school age in throwing teachers out of employment, and has actually saved the Education Department some £-600 in salaries. Unfortunately, however, for

the Board, whatever moral obligation there may be on the Department, there is a weakness in its own position in the admission of the Chairman that, when it adopted the course it did in calling so much upon the services of relieving teachers, as vacancies occurred, it trusted to what the Chairman describes as the good sense of the Department. The Otago Board might perhaps have been expected to be less trusting. The Department, which is not impervious to considerations of public finance, may elect to stand firmly upon the letter of the regulations in terms of which its instructions have been issued. The relieving teachers affected had to be withdrawn at the end of the second school term. In the words of the Chairman of the Board, ten Otago schools are being “ victimised.” This is to be regretted, but it is to be feared that Mr Wallace has been shrewd in his surmise that the Department will put the blame on the board and say that it committed the initial mistake.