"Bill" Groves

Probably New Director of Education in Papua-New Guinea

IT appears as if the Directorship of Education in Papua-New Guinea will be taken over by Mr. W. C. Groves, senior inspector in the Victorian Depart ment of Education, who left Sydney on a hurried visit to Port Moresby in May.

If this is so, the announcement will give general satisfaction. There is none better qualified for the job than “Bill”

Groves; and he is one of the few anthropologist-eucationists who are held in esteem and regard by non-official Territorians.

Mr. Groves served from 1915-1919 in World War i; was supervisor of native education in New Guinea between 1919 and 1925; did a great deal of anthropo logical research in the Pacific between iQ°n and 1936: attended the Pacific Education Conference in Honolulu in 1936; was in charge of native education in Nauru in 1937-38; and, from 1939 until war came, he was in the Solomons, work ing out a plan of native education for the British Colonial Office. During the Pacific War, he served in New Guinea with the rank of captain, then major, and he has been closely connected with Army educational activities.

He will have a man-size job, if he takes it. But he also will have a won derful opportunity, with the added ad vantage that he will be starting de novo.

Apart from work done by the missions, native education has been the Cinderella of the Territories Administration —they simply had no money for it.