The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. THURSDAY, JULY 13. 1916. TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

Southland Times, Issue 17784, 13 July 1916, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. THURSDAY, JULY 13. 1916. TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

At the recent meeting of the Council of the Southland League attention was drawn to the parsimony of the State with respect to technical education as compared with its generosity to other branches of the national system. It appears to us that technical education has an unanswerable claim upon the State for a greater degree of liberality. At the present time most of the technical colleges are living from hand to mouth. Their income is in nearly all cases inadequate, and the State dole has to be supplemented by contributions from public bodies. Not only is the Income inadequate, but it is also uncertain. The governing bodies cannot estimate their revenue with any degree of certainty, and consequently they are always more or less troubled with financial anxieties and embarrassments. Why there should be so marked a contrast between the treatment meted out to technical education and that which other branches of the system have enjoyed it is difficult to explain. Yet the contrast is there, and it could not well be sharper. With respect to primary education, secondary education, and higher, or university education, the expenditure per head for each student has steadily and substantially increased. In 1898 the expenditure out of the public revenue on primary education was £3 4s lOd for each pupil; !

in 1908 the amount was £4 15s 2d, and in 1914, £5 10s 4d. Similarly the expenditure upon secondary education increased from £4 2s 6d in 1903 to £lO ISs Sd in 19M; while as regards higher education the expenditure has almost doubled since 1903, the figure being; 1903. per student £9 4s 3d, and 1914, £l7 6s 3d. Contrast these large increases with the experience of technical education. In IS9B the expenditure from the public revenue per pupil was £1 2s lOd. In the next five years this increased to £1 13s Sd. From 1903 to 1908 there was a further increase to £3 4s 4dThe expenditure upon technical education was then within measurable distance of that upon primary education, and had the increase continued the next five years would have brought technical schools into a satisfactory position. Between 1908 and 1913, however, State support for technical education decreased from £3 4s 4d to £2 4s 9d per head, and between 1913 and 1914 there was s further decrease to £1 19s 9d. While technical education is thus niggardly treated the expenditure upon all other branches is increasing rapidly, with the result that the technical school boards find it difficult to meet the necessary annual expenditure and provide salaries that will attract and retain highly qualified and capable teachers. Technical education should not be thus hampered and retarded. It is a most important branch of national training, and the schools certainly .have an equal clahn in the matter of capitation with the primary and secondary schools. We understand that when the Hon. J. A. Hanan was a private member and the Hon. J. Allen was The Minister of Education the member for Invercargill urged strongly the claims of the technical schools to capitation payments equivalent to those paid to the secondary schools. Mr Hanan is now Minister of Education himself, and he has the opportunity of giving the technical school equality of treatment in this respect and of putting an essential branch of the national system of education upon a much more stable financial basis.