EDUCATION GRANTS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19759, 28 March 1934, Page 8

EDUCATION GRANTS

REDUCTION CRITICISED.

By Telegraph—Press Association HAMILTON, March 27.

The action of the Government in cutting education grants and allegedly failing to face its obligations to teachers was criticised by Mr H. G. Hall, headmaster of the Hamilton West School, at the annual meeting of the Parents Association last evening. "Education is the last department on which we should economise,” said Mr Hall, ‘‘yet coincident with the cutting of education grants there is ample money for palatial buildings of all kinds —new railway stations and new picture theatres. Such a policy is crippling the children’s future. Under the new rationing scheme teachers are badly underpaid. Four of his own staff were receiving, after the deduction of various dues, considerably less than £6O a year. It was particularly disheartening to these teachers, most of whom are in the early twenties, to have to give a full day’s work on less than £1 a week.” He instanced the anomally by stating that several boys in Standard VI. were earning more by selling papers than were their teachers.