EDUCATIONAL.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XLIX, Issue 12599, 13 September 1905, Page 8

EDUCATIONAL.

(Per Press Association),

WELLINGTON, September 12. A conference of delegates from the Education Boards of the colony met in Wellington to-day. Mr. G. W. Russell, a member of the North Canterbury Board, was elected chairman.

It was decided, that inspectors and secretaries should havo full privileges of speaking and voting. Some discussion took place concerning tho position of departmental officerrj at the conference.

Mi 1. T. Mackenzie: If you have the Department here you will have the whole thing overshadowed, and it will bo r. joint conference between the Department and. tho Boards. Tho Rev. W. Barclay (South Canterbury) : If this is done, our conference ceases to be a conference of Boards. It ii not good tactics to take in some persona against whom Aye have very grSye .complaints and doubts for blunders committed in tho past. I strongly object to them coming' vn.

It was decided to allow the officers olf tho Department to be present. Mr. T. Mackenzie, M.H.R. (Otago), moved, "That in the opinion, of this oonferenco the Education Committees' recommendation regarding the expenditure of the ordinary building vote, adopted by the House two years ago, havo proved unsatisfactory in practice, and this conference recommends that tho same bo repealed, and that the powers formerly enjoyed by Education Boards regarding the erection of new schools or additions, be restored."

Mr. Mackenzio said they should have restored to them discretion as to additions and new schools. The Education Committee's recommendation had, he believed, been acted upon since. Tho Chairman said what had been happening lately in respect to new buildings showed the necessity for such r. conference. There must be something wrong when some committees thought it necessary to ask the Minister to make ft personal visit in order to see if an additional room was required or not. Everything should tend to increase the pcweTa of Boards, so as to give the purest form of local self-government possible. . Tho Re?. G. Barclay (South Canterbury) said there was not yet any school at Rosewill settlement, although it had been settled two years.

Sir William Russell (Hawke's Bay) said tho question Avas one of the independence of Boards from departmental control. In Hawko's Bay, Avhere settlement was extending back into the btf shj the Board had never for twenty yean been in anything but. a state of helpless impecuniosity. In one place Avhero they wanted a school for the natives, the Board was actually overruled by ?, road overseer.

Mr. Wado, (Taranaki) said the experience in Taranaki was quite in favroui" of the Education Committees' recommendation, from which Taranaki had received considerable benefit. He would object to going back to the old system. During the last two years they had not onco asked a member of Parliament to intervene.

Tho discussion on the question lasted tho wholo 'afternoon.

Tho motion Avas carried unanimously. The order paper for the conference is of formidable length.

Tho conference Avill last over a AAeek