The major administrative change during the sixty-odd years after 1877 was the swing from local to central control, but it will be convenient to touch first on the history of the struggle that has been renewed from time to time during the whole of that period over the uncompromisingly secular provisions of the act. The story can be summarised by saying that every attempt to secure grants for denominational schools has failed, and that the same is true of the much more persistent efforts that have been made to page 50get legislative sanction for non-sectarian religious teaching in state primary schools, or, short of that, Bible reading and religious observances.

The Roman Catholic Church, faithful to the principles enunciated by Pius IX in 1864, has consistently held that as it cannot in conscience avail itself of the education supplied by the State, it is entitled to state assistance for its own schools. Alone among the major denominations, it has built up a separate school system comprehensive enough to provide for the education of the great majority of its children. But although there has always been a body of opinion outside the Catholic Church which has supported the claim for aid for the separatist school, Parliament has never shown any disposition to grant it. The increase of population in New Zealand and the vastly improved means of communication, together with the decline of inter-denominational strife, have, no doubt, weakened the force of some of the old objections to the subsidising of church schools, but there are other changes which have worked powerfully in the opposite direction—notably, the development of a secular view of life (as distinct from secularism as an administrative expedient), the wide extension of state activity in education, and, linked with both of these, the growing acceptance of the common school for children of all creeds and classes as a guarante of social cohesion or an expression of democratic aspirations. There is at present no page 51sign that New Zealand will depart from a tradition which, in some parts of the country, has now been entrenched for nearly a century.

Non-Catholic religious opinion has never been united, one section favouring the separatist school and another some form of non-sectarian religious instruction by the teachers, while a third has supported the secular compromise as the most satisfactory arrangement in the circumstances. The second group, which eventually formed the New Zealand Bible in Schools League, has campaigned with great energy, and although it has never succeeded in having the act amended it has made a certain amount of headway by devising methods whereby the intentions of the secular clauses may be evaded. The secular defences were first breached in 1897 when the ingenious scheme known as the Nelson system was introduced. Observing that whereas the Education Act required only four hours teaching a day the Nelson schools were actually giving nearly five, the Nelson City Schools Committee, under the chairmanship of a Presbyterian minister, arranged for religious instruction to be given by the clergy for half-an-hour a week within the usual school hours which exceeded the number required by statute. During this time the schools were legally closed for ordinary secular instruction, and no child could be compelled to attend, but teachers willing to help were present in their capacity as citizens to give unofficial secular lessons to children whose page 52parents had sent them to school but did not wish them to receive religious teaching. The teachers might, if they so desired, assist even with the religious teaching itself. The system was adopted in many parts of the country, though it never became general, partly for the reason that the Bible in Schools League hoped to have the responsibility for religious instruction placed on the teaching service.

There is no question about the legality of the Nelson system — nor is there now much serious opposition to it—but the same cannot be said of the introduction in some schools from 1936 onwards of daily devotional exercises conducted by the teachers. In this instance the move was made, at the request of the Bible in Schools League, by education boards, which took action designed to encourage teachers and school committees to adopt the practice. In 1938 the Minister of Education, while stating that he proposed to ask Parliament to make positive statutory provision for the Nelson system, said bluntly that in his opinion the exercises were 'impinging on and setting at nought the authority of the elected representatives of the people', and the Education Department has more recently said the same thing in different words. The matter must before long be brought to an issue, and Parliament will then have to decide how far, if at all, it is prepared to retreat from the secularism of 1877.