Debate on The Examinations (Amendment) Act

Official report · Assembly of SchwartzistanSession 1954 · col. 14068

The Speaker: The House will come to order. The Bill stands for its third reading. The Minister.

Egon Brenn (Minister of Education): I beg to move the third reading of the Bill, and I shall be brief. The Bill provides for the schools what the last Bill did not. The textbooks are the Ministry's and remain so. The Bill amends The Grauholt Examinations Act, which the House will remember passing, and amends it in one particular only. The Bill is in the hands of the House.

Magnus Marrow (The Capital District; The Reed Party): Speaker, The people of The Capital District will ask what it costs them, and I should like to be able to tell them. I speak for the farms. A Bill that does not touch the farms is a Bill I can vote for with an easy mind; a Bill that does had better say so. The Bill says so in terms: Applies to children between 5 and 14. The Ministry's textbooks are the Ministry's and I have no observation to make on their contents. We shall divide the House. [Interruption.]

Bruno Kolm (The Sudmark; The Reed Party): Mr. Speaker, I ask the Minister one thing: does the Bill send an officer out to the farms, and if it does, who feeds him? In The Sudmark, which I have the honour to sit for, the Bill will be read at the market cross and understood by half. I am for the schoolmasters, who are underpaid, and for the Bill, which does not pay them. The clause is short and I shall not read it. I oppose the third reading.

Gertrud Sendmann (Norrfeld; The Assembly Union): Speaker, I sit for Norrfeld. The clerks there are few and the roads are long, and any officer the Bill appoints will spend a week finding the houses. The Union stands where it has always stood: for the towns, for the trade, and against any clause that begins with the word 'licence'. The clause is short and I shall not read it. The Ministry's textbooks are the Ministry's and I have no observation to make on their contents. I shall vote against the Bill. [Hear, hear.]

The Minister thanked the House for a short debate and asked for a short division.

The Speaker: The question is that the Bill be now read a third time and do pass. As many as are of that opinion say Aye. [Ayes.] Of the contrary, No. [Noes.] A division was claimed.

The tellers reported the numbers to the Chair. The Speaker declared the Bill passed.

The House adjourned at half past 4 in the afternoon.