KEITH STREET SCHOOL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 301, 21 December 1945, Page 3

KEITH STREET SCHOOL

“STILL SUBJECT OF DISCUSSION”

‘•We regret that our new school is still only so much discussion in the newspapers,” said Mr. W. P. Williams, headmaster, in his report at the break-up of the Keith Street School yesterday morning.

Thanking the school committee and parents for their work, he described them as ‘good fighters,” who had done much to get a school more adequate for their needs.

“We are pleased to have Mr. Hemingway with us on this happy occasion,” said Mr. Williams, and then addressing Mr. Hemingway, “but the occasions on which we have dealt with you in the past have not always been so happy.”

Mr. Hemingway, standing close to a chalked sign on the wall which indicated that there was a leak in the roof just above him, said he thought many were inclined to forget the circumstances which had led up to the present demand for improved schools throughout the Dominion. THE PAST RECALLED

“You are apt to forget that we had a terrible slump, and one of the worst things ever done at that time was that all new school buildings and school building sites were shut down for more than three years,” declared the speaker. State subsidies for school buildings and sites before that amounted to about £500,000 annually, but the Minister of Education cut them down considerably.

“The architect of our board, who should have been preparing plans for new schools, was instead mixing concrete for repair work,” said Mr. Hemingway. “After that slump came six years of war, and in spite of all the efforts made by the Ri. Hon. P. Fraser when he was Minister of Education, and the present Minister, Mr. H. G R. Mason, the leeway has not been made up. I’m wondering when we will be able to recover. If they doubled the education grant, there would be a bigger outcry about it. “We have friction. Everybody is growling, and I think the reason for that is because education authorities throughout the world have concentrated on putting something into the minds of the children that will put something into their pockets in the long run, instead of concentrating on teaching,” added the speaker. There had been a tremendous amount of absenteeism at Keith Street during the year, apparently without much reason, commented Mr. Williams. It was to be regretted that the Education Board had ordered all the children at the school who lived outside the school’s district to go elsewhere next year.