Superintendent Carrington called meetings to discuss the possibilities of non-secular education controlled by an education board and financed by taxation. Little action was taken, but continual pressure on the Provincial Council resulted in the passage of another ordinance which split the province into two educational areas, one with headquarters in Pate a and the other in New Plymouth':' which had 14 schools in its area staffed by 16 teachers who received salaries of$10 a quarter. The New Plymouth board's first action was to introduce examinations for teachers, enabling them to qualify for certification, with salaries of$180 for men and $80 for women. William Morgan Crompton was the first official inspector of schools in the New Plymouth board's area, at a salary of$100 a year. He was an educationist with ideas well ahead of his time. He was 63 when he resigned from the board to take up his inspectorate in 1876. He had arrived in New Zealand in 1852 in advance of his family and built a house at Omata. He was qualified in law and languages and when the Taranaki Herald was started in 1852 he undertook the editorship, resigning three months later because exception was taken to some of his published views. When his wife and family arrived in February 1854 their Omata home was opened as a full-time school. Crompton was elected Member for Omata Block in the first Parliament of New Zealand. He was a member of the Taranaki Provincial Council from 1862 to 1865 and was at different times Deputy Superintendent and Speaker. During the fighting in the 1860s he moved into New Plymouth where he and his wife conducted a school in Fulford Street for about 14 years. On being appointed school inspector he spent seven years of strenuous work, riding on horseback over mud tracks and half-formed roads to visit schools. He was well-liked by children and by teachers who looked upon him more as an advisor than as an inspector. On his retirement in 1881 the board agreed to his suggestion that he should be able to visit schools when he felt like it. This he did until his death in 1886. He was buried in Waireka Cemetery, Omata. Later, Mrs Crompton carried on a 'finishing school' for young ladies in Fulford Street teaching French and the classics. Following the abolition of the provinces in 1875 an Education Act was passed establishing the national system offree, compulsory and secular education, and the first meeting of the newly-constituted Taranaki Education Board was held on May 13, 1878. School committees were elected by local householders' ballot. Board members were elected by school committees and in almost all cases school committeemen became board members who were in turn responsible to the central Department of Education. Although this new legislation improved the lot of education in most parts of the country, New Plymouth schools still held records for low percentage attendance and for low teachers' salaries.
Schooling was not a pleasant experience for pupils. It was a strict, over-disciplined process. To many it seemed that life revolved around the blackboard, the cane and work on their parents' property. For the parents there was castigation from official sources: When the Secretary of Education, John Hislop, visited 16 schools on a nine-day visit to New Plymouth, he reported to his Minister, John Ballance: 'Owing to the difficulty in many cases of getting a committee of sufficient business capacity and intelligence to manage local school affairs, the present board has got into the way of taking whole charge of the school business which in most other educational districts is managed by school committees ... in some school districts in Taranaki it is very difficult, if not impossible, to get committees competent to take the work in hand-that in fact the parents themselves are not sufficiently educated ... yet in other localities in the Taranaki district I met men who seemed quite able and willing to do all that is wanted of a school committee and who complained at the state of tutelage in which they had been kept by the board. I felt it my duty therefore to impress upon members of the boards the advisability of using greater efforts to encourage the parents and the committees elected by them to take an interest in school matters by giving more effect to their views and representations by entrusting them with the expenditure of money on local requirements.' Confirmation of this state of affairs had been given by the Daily News, with this brief paragraph: 'An official visitor to this town's school, whether a member of the committee or the education board we are uncertain, addressed the school thus: "Well, children, you spells well and you reads well, but you hasn't sot still!" '15 Comments such as these gave a rise to agitation for the abolition of education boards and school committees and to hand over their jobs to the central Education Department. This argument continued and as late as 1932 a National Expenditure Commission reported: 'We consider that education boards should be abolished.' But, boards and school com- mittees clung to life tenaciously and despite a succession of enactments, Orders-in-Council and departmental regulations designed to clip their powers and promote uniformities, they still remain of prime importance to the education scheme, as was intended by the framers of the Act of 1877. During the 21 years from 1878 to 1899 the country as a whole passed through a most difficult economic position. The gold boom in Otago and Westland, which burst in 1879, was followed by the severest financial depression; as the Government was forced to reduce the payments to all education boards, taxes were increased and in carrying out the work of administration rigid economy had to be practised. The Taranaki Education Board's interest was strictly limited to the continuance and furtherance of old policies. The board drew up its own staffing and salary schedules and made its own inadequate arrangements
for the training of teachers, but its main focus of attention was the provision and maintenance of buildings, together with the appointment and dismissal of teachers. There was much dissatisfaction from various quarters. One parent wrote to the press: 'I wish you would permit me to plead on our school authorities to give a little attention to the sitting position of the children under them at school--especially girls. A year or so ago two of my little friends were perfect models of correct physical formation, and now it is pitiful to look at their bent deformity, acquired by no other cause than that of projecting their chests over slate or copy. It is of serious consequence to health.' 16 A resurgence of the nation's prosperity resulted in a gradual change in attitude to educational theory and practice which has continued ever since, both in primary and secondary fields. However, there was still much to be desired in 1900. The senior inspector, W. E. Spencer, reported to the board that there had been in previous lean years a great increase in the number of uncertificated teachers. To cope with this problem Saturday classes were instituted for these men and women and later a winter school was established, providing a three-week course. With these moves, and the introduction of the Public Schools Teachers' Salaries Act in 1901, more competent people were encouraged into the profession. Teaching was still a very serious business at the turn of the century. Discipline was the keynote not only for pupils, but for female teachers too. The result was that the average schoolma'am held a somewhat isolated but highly esteemed reputation among her community. Strict rules were laid down by school committees as this list of 11 instructions reveals: 1. You will not marry during the term of your contract. 2. You are not to keep company with men. 3. You must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless attending a school function. 4. You may not loiter down town in icecream parlours. 5. You may not travel beyond city limits without the permission of the chairman of the board. 6. You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he is your father or brother. 7. You may not smoke cigarettes. 8. You may not dress in bright colours. 9. You may under no circumstances dye your hair. 10. You must wear at least wear two petticoats and your dress must not be any shorter than two inches above the ankles. 11. To keep the school clean you must sweep the floor at least once daily, scrub the floor with hot soapy water at least once a week, clean the board at least once a day, and start the fire at 7 a.m. so that the room will be warm by 8 a.m.
These instructions were typical of the times, and were still in force in 1915. The demands of World War One diverted public attention from further needs in the development of education services. But between 1919 and 1930 the gradual extension of services to Taranaki schools was highlighted by several developments, one of which was the appointment of itinerant organising teachers, O. J. Howarth, W. A. Curteis, D. G. Ball, C. A. McKinnie and H. W. Insull, to assist untrained and uncertificated teachers. At first their work was mainly in country areas and in 1923 it was reported the system had done much to uplift the general efficiency in the backblock schools. Of these five, all of whom were dedicated and knowledgeable educationists, perhaps Herbert W. Insull is best remembered for his services to education in Taranaki. Born in England in 1880, he came to New Zealand as a trained teacher in 1910 and for the next 12 years taught in various schools, including service as an organiser in the Ohura district. In 1922, from a list of 47 applicants, he was appointed secretary of the Taranaki Education Board, a position he held until his retirement in 1945. He was a born administrator, and his knowledge of Taranaki's history enabled him, for the board's diamond jubilee in 1934, to compile the first historical outline of the administration of education in the province. His interest in this direction continued until his death in 1962. Much of the material in this chapter is a condensation of his book, 'Retrospect of the Administration of Education in Taranaki,' published in 1978. Giving permission for use of the original manuscript, the editor, H. A. H. Insull, himself well-known in education, having been principal of Marlborough College for many years, said, 'It was a labour of love in memory of my dear old dad who was the board's secretary for nearly a quarter of a century.' (H. A. H. Insull died on the day he was to be presented with a special copy of the book at an education board ceremony. Publication was delayed as a mark of respect.) The IS-year period following World War One was one of quiet consolidation in Taranaki education. The depression of the mid-1930s brought problems (as is did to all other spheres of life) which continued until the end of World War Two. More than 100 male teachers were on active service during the war, and women, many of them married, took their place. The result was that for the first time 'juvenile delinquency' and 'truancy' featured prominently in reports to New Plymouth school committees. The major task of the first visiting teacher, Miss E. B. Cannell, appointed in 1945, and of her successor, Mrs D. Foster, was dealing with these problem children, co-operating with parents in their rehabilitation to full-time school life. In the decade following the war, the town's main education problem centred round the unprecedented rising tide of pupils, which required an increasing number of teachers, the provision of more classrooms, teaching equipment, and other facilities such as transport.