CONSOLIDATING THE RURAL SCHOOLS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17906, 23 July 1926, Page 10

CONSOLIDATING THE RURAL SCHOOLS.

TRANSPORT PRESENTS GREATEST DIFFICULTY. (Special to the “Star.”) WELLINGTON, July 22. The consolidation of small schools is regarded by the Education Department as a most important factor in improving rural education in New Zealand. The Department’s annual report shows that only the difficulty of securing economical transport is retarding this movement. The consolidated school must, however, it states, be introduced gradually. The transport problem in New Zealand is more difficult than in America. School buses are double and petrol treble the cost in America. Roads are more primitive and population more scattered. Again, the Government cannot scrap useful buildings, nor can it in a few years find the cost of providing new central school buildings to replace them. The policy is, therefore, to confine consolidation schemes to places where the establishment of a new school or the rebuilding of an old worn-out school can be avoided and conveyance to a central school over good roads provided at a reasonable cost. che present time there are about a hundred conveyances, mostly motorbuses, employed in the conveyance of children, and as roads are improved and the cost of transport reduced the policy is to extend the system. The Department is receiving numerous unreasonable requests to pay the full cost of conveyance of children to school where distances are not great and the number of children is small and the cost high for the service to be performed. In all such cases the present a 1 lowan re of 6d per pupil per day, plus half the reasonable cost above that capitation, is considered all that the Government should be called upon to provide. The Department wishes to do all it reasonably can to offer the !. rn child the best educational facilities-, but it cannot undertake to provide motor-buses, at whatever cost, to convey to school every child whose home is distant over two or three