EDUCATION GRIEVANCES.

Southland Times, Issue 14372, 19 March 1910, Page 7

EDUCATION GRIEVANCES.

GOVERNMENT’S POXICY CRITI-

CISES.

At yesterday’s meeting of the Southland Board of Education the subject of Capitation Grants was discussed. The Board’s annual report Included the following remarks : School Committees have this year a very substantial grievance against the Education Department in the matter of the withdrawal of the special grant of 9d per unit of average attendance paid during Some years past. These grants should either have never been made at all or they should be continued. Boards have been accused of abusing the trust reposed In them as agents for this distribution of the Government's bounty, by proportionally reducing the amounts paid to the School Committees in their Districts for Incidental expenses. This Board desires It to no Known that no reduction whatever was made In its scale of contributions to School Committees throughout this District In consequence of this special capitation paid direct by the Department. Mr J. C. Thompson, M.P., strongly objected to the withdrawal of the Del capitation grant. If Boards were not to be trusted to allocate funds properly then the day of Boards had passed away.

Mr G. J. Anderson remarked that he would have preferred tne 9d grant to have been continued instead of free text-books being given. It had been asserted by the Minister of Education that some Boards had misapplied the <KI grant, but he believed that the real reason for its withdrawal was that the Government had not sufficient money to continue the payment. The Chairman (Mr T. Mac Gibbon) regretted that the state pf the funds of the colony should have necessitated the withdrawal of the grant. He resented the suggestion of the Minister of Education that some Boards had been guilty of fraudulent practices. On the strength of the Minister’s statement the public might think that the Southland Board had defrauded the School Committees. Such was contrary to fact and they had handed over all the money they had received and had not curtailed other grants.