School Closed Until Easter: Emergency Scheme To Carry On Work

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 17, 30 January 1948, Page 5

School Closed Until Easter: Emergency Scheme To Carry On Work

Schools are remaining closed until Easter, according to a joint statement by the Ministers of Health and Education. Detailed arrangements for carrying on school work by radio and correspondence are expected to be announced within the next few days. Mr I. B. Hubbard, headmaster of the Whakatane District High School, who is at present at Auckland, expects there might be more definite information for parents here by the time he gets back but it is clear that children will have to be kept in touch with the school by mail, which is going to represent a substantial job for teachers, parents and the Post Office. Broadcast Lessons Broadcast lessons will start next Monday on the following schedule: Every week-day from 9.30 to 10 a.m., for infants and junior standards; from 11 a.m. to 11.15 a.m., for Standards 111. and IV.; from 11.15 to 11.30, for Forms I. and II.; from 1.30 p.m. to 1.50 p.m., music and literature programmes for Forms I. to IV. The Ministerial statement added that consideration would be given to the earlier opening of the schools if circumstances warrant it. The present restrictions would be continued. “Experience from previous epidemics has shown that the peak is to be expected about March,” said the Ministers. “Although the present outbreak, which began in Auckland in November, reached its peak in December and then began to de-' cline, this is only following the historical pattern of this disease in New Zealand.”

Correspondence Work

The Minister of Education, Mr McCombs, has stated that the fortnightly correspondence assignments, which are to be available later next month, are entirely independent of text books in the case of both primary and post-primary schools. They would be distributed by the Education Department to Education Boards, which would in turn distribute them to schools under their jurisdiction. The work would be conducted ■from the schools by the pupils’ own teachers. In most cases the schools would have the addresses of pupils and the correspondence lessons would be distributed by post and returned the same way to the pupils’ own schools for correction. Detailed arrangements would be made by each school to suit its own particular requirements.

Suspect Case Rumoured

There is a rumour, not confirmed by either the hospital or the Health Inspector that another suspect case, a girl aged 16, has been admitted to the district hospital.