Hints to the Party of Reform.

Observer, Volume X, Issue 603, 24 January 1891, Page 9

Hints to the Party of Reform.

We trust that the proposals that have been mooted to have three progressive members elected to the Board of Education, in place of Messrs. Upton, Monk and Carr, who retire this year, will not be lost sight of. The jusc administration in the past, of which these members boast, has resulted in the growth of a system of gross jobbery, abuse and illegality, and radical changes are imperative. We therefore hope that a trio of new men will be elected, and that the country school committees in particular will mark their disapproval of past blundering and plundering, by rejecting the members who brazenly solicit re-election. While the redress of country grievances ought to be the principal aim of the party of reform, it is to be hoped their programme will embrace other steps for the sweeping away of abuses. We will mention a few reforms that are clamantly palled for. 1. The abolition of the iniquitous, extortionate and illegal tax levied on parents under the name of * quarter money.' 2. The abolition of the system of 'confidential reports' by headmasters to the Board of Education. Such reports are a disgrace to a democratic system of education, and an insult to people calling themselves free. 3. An alteration of the practice of shifting assistant and pupil teaohers, without consulting the head-master or School Committee. The School Committees ought to haye a voice in this, as in the appointment and removal of head-masters. We believe that in all these particulars the Auckland Board follows a rule of its own — and a most pernicious rule it is in each case— such practices being unknown in other education districts. If the Board will agree to these reforms, and bind itself to an equitable system of promotion and salaries, it will redeem its character, and perhaps cause itself to be tolerated, if not respected. If not, there will be no alternative but to reconstruct the whole system by sweeping the Boards out of existence, and conferring their powers upon Sohool Committees.