The Short Title of this Act is “The Education Reserves Act Amendment Act, 1882.”

It shall be read and construed together with “The Education Reserves Act, 1877,” (herein referred to as “the said Act”).

Section eleven of the said Act is hereby repealed.

The provisions following shall regulate the appointments and duties of School Commissioners under the said Act:—

For every provincial district there shall be five School Commissioners, who, with their successors in office, shall be a body corporate by the name of “The School Commissioners for the [naming it] Provincial District,” for the purposes of this Act:

The School Commissioners for each district shall be chosen from time to time as follows, that is to say:—

In the Provincial District of Wellington,—

In the Provincial District of Canterbury,—

In the Provincial District of Otago;—

All persons holding office as School Commissioners at the commencement of this Act shall vacate their offices simultaneously on the thirty-first day of March, in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-four; and thereafter the School Commissioners in any district shall come into office on the gazetting of their appointment, and shall retire simultaneously on the thirty-first day of March in the third year from their coming into office;

All Commissioners shall nevertheless continue in the exercise of the functions of their office until their successors come into office:

Every person elected as a School Commissioner to supply a vacancy arising during the term of office of a retiring Commissioner shall only hold office for the unexpired remainder of such term:

All School Commissioners heretofore appointed shall be deemed to have been validly appointed, notwithstanding any defect that there may have been in the time or method of their appointment respectively.

The School Commissioners for any provincial district are hereby empowered from time to time to make, alter, and revoke by-laws for the regulation of their affairs and the general conduct of their business, and for appointing the times and places of their meetings.

The lands described in the Schedule hereto are hereby vested in the School Commissioners for the provincial districts respectively wherein the same are situated, as endowments for primary and secondary education, as in the said Schedule respectively mentioned, and shall be deemed to have been so vested in all respects as if the arbitrators appointed under the said Act had included the said lands in their respective awards under the said Act.

All dealings with the said lands, and all matters or things relating to the same, made or done by any School Commissioners under the impression that such lands were vested in them respectively, are hereby validated, and shall be of full force and effect as if the said lands were so vested.

All reserves of land made for education purposes or school sites under the provisions of “The Land Act, 1877,” shall, from the time they are permanently reserved, and without any grant or conveyance, vest in the School Commissioners or Education Boards respectively in manner as is directed in “The Education Reserves Act, 1877,” and as if they had been made thereunder, and shall be subject to all the provisions of the said Act.

The Trustees of any high school, as defined in “The High Schools Reserves Act, 1880,” may from time to time appropriate or set apart any of the reserves or lands vested in them, or any portion or portions thereof, as sites for public schools.

All lands whatever reserved or set apart under or by virtue of any Act as sites for public schools, and all sites for public schools so set apart by any School Commissioners, or by any High School Trustees, shall, from the time of the making or setting apart thereof, vest without grant, conveyance, or transfer in the Education Board of the district wherein the same are respectively situate.

AU reserves and endowments made or set apart for primary or secondary education under or by virtue of any Act, and vested in any School Commissioners, shall, from the time of the making or setting apart thereof, vest in such Commissioners without any grant, conveyance, or transfer.

The District Land Registrar of the district, where any land becomes vested as in this Act mentioned, shall, on the deposit with him by any Education Board or School Commissioners of any Gazette or other instrument of authority by which any such lands become vested under this Act, together with a copy of this Act, enter the same respectively in his register-book as a folium thereof, which shall be deemed to be the title to the land which has become vested as aforesaid.

The Governor may remit any award of arbitrators made under the said Act back to them for rectification or correction, where he shall find that any errors or omissions have occurred therein; and, in case any such award cannot be referred back to the arbitrators making the same, he may appoint other persons to review such award, and such persons shall be deemed to have been appointed arbitrators under the said Act.

Whenever, under the eighteenth section of the said Act, an Education Board shall sell or exchange any school site having thereon any buildings or other erections, a separate valuation of such buildings and erections shall be made by some person appointed by the Minister of Education, and so much of the proceeds of any such sale or exchange as shall equal the amount of such valuation may be applied by the aforesaid Board towards the cost of erecting other school-buildings, in the stead of being invested as proceeds from land, as required by the aforesaid section.

All moneys received by any School Commissioners, either as compensation or in payment of any land taken from them for public works, or otherwise sold by them under any special enactment, shall be expended in the absolute purchase of other freehold lands within the colony, to be held for the purposes for which the land was held from which such moneys arise.