TOWN v. COUNTRY SCHOOLS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4764, 23 June 1900, Page 2

TOWN v. COUNTRY SCHOOLS.

It cannot be possible, in the face of the facts which have been brought under his notice, that the Minister of Education can become the unconscious instrument of those members on the Board who are striving with such misapplied energy to destroy secondary education in the country districts. What might have happened, however, is very clear were it not for the promptitude with which Mr Thomas Mackenzie and the Rev. Mr Fraser applied themselves to the correction and refutation of the recklessly misleading statements with which the Minister was supplied "on the authority of the Board." Mr Fraaer especially has rendered an invaluable service to Ihe cause of education, and it is not at all improbable, as the result of the information he has put the public in possession of in connection with the administration of education, that good instead of evil will come out of this attempt on the part of the Board to inflict an irreparable injury on the children of country Battlers. Mr Fraser, during I the course of his admirable and ex* \ haustive address in Lawrence on Monday evening, showed that the country high schools, in comparison with the privileges enjoyed by such educational institutions as those of the Dunedin and Waitaki High Schools, have been treated with gross injustice, and the question now should be, not whether the fees in our district high schools should or should not be increased, but whether, there is any reason why those schools should not be placed on an equality, as far as it is possible now to do so, with those more favored establishments. Those schools have in the first place been fortunate in having been provided witb rich endowments, and they are in addition treated with an open-handed generosity by the Education Board that contrasts strangely with the hard conditions imposed on country schools of all classes. As Mr Eraser said, the Board is prepared on tbe slightest pretext to close the small country school, which costs the State £5 to give the necessary rudiments of education to the children of the struggling country settlers, while tbe children of well-to-do people receive a State contribution of £16 per pupil per annum for children who have not yet passed the sixth standard at tbe Waitaki High School. The tendency all along tbe line has been to indulge in a lavish expenditure of public money ou any and every pretence on town schools while those in the country districts are made the object of financing experiments harsh and oppressive to the teachers and of serious detriment to the efficiency and usefulness of the schools. And in this connection it is instructive to note that the country members of the Board have been and are at present the worst enemies of the country schools. It is also worthy of notice, as an instance of the unintelligent methods of the Board and their disregard of the interests of country settlers, that while they have been engaged devising schemes for starving tbe schools in the country districts and thus limiting the educational advantages of children of the struggling settlers, the salaries of the Board's officials have not only escaped reduction bub have been largely increased. As Mr Fraser pointed out, though the school attendance had fallen by over 3,000, office salaries were increased from £927 to £1,133, and inspectors' salaries were similarly increased every year from £1,360 in 1896 to £1.618 in tbe present year ; while in the same period teachers, salaries had been reduced to the extent of £6,000 and school committees' grants by £1,000. Attention is now being called to this feature of the financial question affecting the Board's administration, and though we do not approve of the salaries of the Board's officials being liable to periodical attack, still if there are to be economies the public interests demand that if the exigencies of the Board's financial position necessitate that, there should be a reduction in expenditure, there must' at least be equality of sacrifice, and that only in the last resort should education be penalised or its. efficiency be permitted to suffer. :