The Taranaki Herald. DAILY EVENING. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1919. SCHOOL BUILDINGS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16591, 13 November 1919, Page 2

The Taranaki Herald. DAILY EVENING. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1919. SCHOOL BUILDINGS.

Possibly the greatest hindrance to progress in New Zealand is the system which has grown up of bureaucratic government by the heads of departments in Wellington. ' Generally ' speaking they are hopelessly out of touch with the real requirements of the people, and in some cases their chief aim seems to be to prevent as far as they can the expenditure of money out of Wellington. Whether it is that they fear there will not be enough money to maintain their own executive establishments or whether they dread the idea of the work and worry consequent upon expenditure further afield we cannot tell. The fact remains, however, that some of the departmental officers at Wellington display a rooted objection to keeping pace with progress and requirements in the country. We could furnish recent illustrations in more than one department, hut for the present wish only to refer to that of education. For many years the schools in and around New Plymouth have been a reproach and a by-word. Our readers are familiar with the struggle the High School Board of Governors has had to obtain due recognition of its needs. They know that in order to secure the inclusion in the new Boys’ High School buildings of that very essential feature, an assembly hall, the public of New-Plymouth provided some

£3OOO ■which' the Department of Education ought to have found. Now it is the turn of the Education Board and the primary schools. For years past the Central and Courtenay Street schools have, been grossly inadequate and unfit for their purpose. Years ago they were condemned as insanitary and it has only been by the exercise of the greatest care that they have been kept at all fit for occupation. The Central School is a thing of patches. Part of it was a fairly old building in 1883 when it was shifted from Cameron Street to its present site and some new class-rooms erected round it. From time to time additions and alterations have been made and a few years ago a fire occurred which, unhappily, did not make a clean sweep, but left sufficient standing to cause the Department to order repairs instead of a new building. The school is overcrowded and inconvenient and ought to be pulled down. The infants’ school in Courtenay Street is somewhere about forty years old, also grossly overcrowded and altogether inadequate for the requirements, and it too ought to be pulled down. The West End School is almost as bad and dates back forty years or so. But the Department of Education, in its apparent anxiety to husband its funds, insists that buildings must continue to be occupied, however, insanitary, overcrowded, and inconvenient they may be, until they will no longer stand up. That at any rate seems to be the departmental attitude, and the Department is always aiming at centralising administration and control more and more at Wellington. The people exist for the Department’s convenience, not the Department for the convenience of the people. Something of tfip nature of a bombshell is wanted to “shake things up.”