SCHOOL COMMITTEES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22964, 20 August 1936, Page 10

SCHOOL COMMITTEES

While it is a relatively humble function which school committees discharge in the sphere of education, nobody would have the hardihood to suggest that the country could do quite well without these bodies, which are part of its educational tradition. Nor has the present Government shown the least disposition to include them in its little list of graduates for "running shoes." The Dominion Federation of School Committee Associations has been able to hold its conference in Dunedin this week free from any anxiety respecting the maintenance of the integrity of these locallyelected bodies, and imbued with considerable confidence respecting the outlook for their activities in the future. The past generation has seen school committees in the Dominion declining perceptibly from their earlier estate. At one time they exercised an important voice in the appointment of teachers. The fact that they have been bereft of some of the powers, always limited, which they once possessed, seems, however, to render it only the more creditable in those who now act as members of these committees that they should give their time and energy to the fulfilment of the duties that remain to them. If the task undertaken by school committees is on the whole a somewhat thankless one, the community has very good reason to be grateful, whether it shows it or not, for the evidence that is afforded of a strong survival of the local interest in the welfare of the primary schools for which no centra] supervision could be an adequate substitute. At all meetings of those engaged, in one capacity or another, in the administration of education there seems to be an indication of a disposition to regard the existence of the present Government as a dispensation of Providence that enables an increased expenditure to be made in this sphere It cannot be said that the Government shows any reluctance to be regarded as trailing clouds of sympathy and benevolence. But, intentionally or otherwise, those who look at it in this aspect all seem to forget that the revenues of the country declined so heavily during the years of the depression that it was impossible to maintain expenditure at the level to which it had been brought—incidentally a high one—and that it was an unfortunate necessity that the cost of education should be curtailed. Perhaps it has been politic on the part of bodies concerned to assume that the educational winter is over, and in their attitude of expectancy to appear to give a new Government all the credit for the beams which seem now to be relieving their professed despond-,

ency. But the increased buoyancy of public and private finance, for which the present Government is in no' way responsible, would have admitted of an expansion of the expenditure on education, no matter what political party had been in power. When Labour was wooing the country, and after the elections, there were many vivid pronouncements concerning its intentions in the direction of educational reform. The conception of urgency in the matter, which was then suggested, seems now to have subsided. But the Government has been fortunate in being able without embarrassment to increase grants to school committees and restore them to other deserving educational bodies. Speaking at the Free Kindergarten Association Conference at Wellington this week, the Minister of Education struck a note which should be quite encouraging tj those who have done so much, m an altruistic spirit, to establish the Kindergarten system' in this country. The value of the service they have rendered needs no demonstration, and the system itself is one that should wherever practicable be brought within the State scheme of education.