Cost Admin. £45,000

NG’s 280 Students Cost Admin. £45,000

From Our Own Correspondent

Port Moresby, Oct. 24.

rE annual allowance paid by the Administration of Papua-New Guinea for all European children who attend secondary schools in Australia, has been in creased from £lOO to £ll5. And what is additionally pleasing to parents, the new scale has been made retrospective to the beginning of 1953.

In addition to the allowance, each child is entitled to one free air passage to and from New Guinea each year.

About 280 children are benefiting this year and will cost the Ad ministration about £45,000. The number of children in 1954 will likely be 300.

Although this is not the full cost of sending a child to boarding school in Australia, it is a consid erable help, and in this regard the parents of Papua-New Guinea are among the most favoured in the Pacific. Parents in the British Solomons, Fiji, etc., must stand the full cost of educating their children and when there are two or three children it literally can drive the parents to the verge of bankruptcy.

The PNG education allowance seems likely to become a permanent arrangement, although when it was

instituted two or three years ago it was as a temporary measure only until such time as a High School was provided in the Territory.

The majority of New Guinea parents prefer the allowance in lieu of a local school, the general opin ion being that children are better out of a tropical native country during their formative years.

IT Mr. A. C. Reid, District Commis sioner Southern, has been appointed Acting Director of Education in Fiji. His position as District Com missioner will be taken by Mr.

W. V. C. Baker. if His Lordship Bishop Foley, SM., of Fiji, paid a short business visit to Auckland and Sydney recently.