TEACHERS FOR COUNTRY SCHOOLS.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13337, 1 February 1909, Page 6

TEACHERS FOR COUNTRY SCHOOLS.

School teachers were probably never in greater demand than they are just now. The experience of tho North Canterbury Education Board, which wants nineteeni ; assistant teachers, and l of the Wellington Board, which -was lately inviting applications for .thirty minor positions, is no doubt that of most of the Boards in the country. The sudden demand is probably largely, if not solely, due., as Mr Fowlds explained 1 , to the new Education Act, which gives an assistant teacher to schools with an average attendance of 36, whereas an average of 41 was formerly required. As this position is the lowest grade in the service, there is naturally no competition for it by teachers already employed, and the vacancies must therefore be filled by those -who have just emerged from the pupil-teacher stage, or by outsiders. It is quite probable that Mr Fowlds is right in his opinion that the difficulty is only temporary, but its existence even, far a time directs attention, to the desirableness of a reform which has been urged! on several occasions

and which formed the subject of representations by the local inspectors in their annual report two years ago. Owing, in part, to the general decrease of school-going .population in many of the earlier settled portions of the district, and in part to the dearth of qualified teachers ■willing to accept appointment in the lowest gradtee of schools, the establishment of central schools, to -which pupils could! be conveyed from surrounding districte, was, they declared!, becoming increasingly

urgent from year to year. There is no reason to believe that the conditions which prompted this assertion have altered in the last two years. The adoption of tho system would- be beneficial in many respects. In the first place, though not of first importance, it would be more economical, since the closing of several small schools in a district would mean a saving in the cost of upkeep which would more than counterbalance the expense of convey-' ing the pupils of these schools to a central school. But the great value of tho system would lie in the means it would provide for the better education of the children. A large central school supplying the educational requirements for a radius of, say, five or six miles would need a large staff, better salaries could be paid, and. consequently a better class of teachers would be available. The children in small schools under the present system have all to be taught by one teacher, with perhaps an assistant, and classification according to their montal capacity is therefore impossible, but in the central school it could be carried out as in a town school, and therefore not merely the quality but the mothod of the teaching would be improved. Canterbury, with its good roads, is peculiarly adapted to the carrying out of the centralising system. Possibly local iealousies would make its adoption difficult, but in some localities public opinion is already ripo for putting it into practice, and in these it would, no doubt, be as successful as has been the case in Now South Wales, where even in places in which it was. at first orvposed it is now admitted to work well.

A scheme which hae so many advantages is well worth a trial.