EDUCATIONAL POLICY.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 November 1929, Page 8

EDUCATIONAL POLICY.

Possibly the responsibility of office has proven to the Minister of Education (Hon. H. Atmore) how exceedingly difficult it is to counter the intangible but very real influence of “things as they are.” On assuming office the Minister stated with some directness that he considered the policy of the Department needed overhauling, and that its shaping was the duty of the Ministerial head. He asserted also with a good deal of public support, that, the existing educational system needed reorganisation. New Zealand was not, he said, getting the value for the three million pounds she spends on education. Pupils were being trained principally for “collar and cuff” occupations, and agriculture, which should be the chief of subjects, was merely a sideline. Throughout the session that has just closed anticipations of the new educational regime were keen, but with the exception of the restoration of a subsidy to the university as a permanent grant, instead of an annual one, little alteration in policy has. been made public. The; community is as convinced as Mr. At- • more that .an overhaul of the system of education is needed, and it is beginning to ask what is causing the delay in: bringing it about. The latest action of; the Minister is to set up'an education committee of the House- of Representatives to sit during the recess, and, presumably, assist the Minister to arrive at a policy. However wise this may seem from the political point of view, it seems difficult to see how it can assist in the framing of a policy that will be acceptable to experts on the one hand, and the taxpayer, who must find the money for any new departures, on the other. There have been many inquiries into the education system of New Zealand. They have cost quite a considerable sum of money, yet, if the Minister is correct, they have not prevented the system getting into a rut, or at least, from failing to change as circumstances demand. It is to be hoped the Parliamentary Committee will produce something more substantial than a small subsidy- for girls’ and boys’ agricultural clubs. That is the extent of the efforts so far made to give an agricultural bias to the national system of education.