ACCREDITING SYSTEM

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 39, 10 November 1942, Page 4

ACCREDITING SYSTEM

Changes In High School Education CONSULTATIVE COMMITTEE APPOINTED The appointment of a committee to consider and advise on the far-reach-ing changes in high school education, which are expected when accrediting supersedes 1 the present tests for entrants to the university was announced last evening ‘by the Minister of Education, Mr. Mason. The committee, which will make recommendations re- . gardiug the. choice of subjects for the school certificate examination, the content of those subjects, and any subsequent modifications of the public service entrance examination and the free place regulations, is as follows : —> j Mr. W. Thomas (chairman, sometime rector of Tiaiaru Boys’ High School; , Wing Commander E. Caradus, chief inspector of secondary schools; Mr. A. E. Campbell (joint secretary), director of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research; Dr. Elizabeth Gregory, dean of the Faculty of Home Science, University of Otago; Mr. 11. O. Gross, president of the Auckland Society of Fine Arts; Miss E. M. Higgins, senior mistress, Christchurch Technical School; Mr. E. N. Hogben, headmaster of Dannevirke High School; Dr. Selwyn Morris, surgeon, Auckland; Mr. F. O. Benyard, superintendent of technical education; Mr. It. G. Bulling, principal, Wellington Technical School; Miss E. E. Stephens, principal, Girls’ High School, Palmerston North; Mr. H. C. D. Somerset (joint secretary), director; Community Centre,Feilding; Miss I. Wilson, headmistress. Queen Margaret College, Wellington. “At present the influence of the tests imposed on entrants to the university tends to cramp the syllabus of all high schools, and the accrediting system gives scope for a long desired opportunity of modifying the high school curricalum, said Mr. Mason. “A turning point in high school education, one of the most important changes in education iu New Zealand for many a year, will result if my hopes in relation to this matter are realized.” , . The Minister said that, the university entrance examination, which was originally intended for the specific purpose of testing a candidate’s fitaes for university studies, had come to be the general qualification demanded of youths -by the business world. The result had been that generations of young people with not the slightest intention ,of entering the university had been forced into a narrow mould unsuited to their future working lives, whether in their economic or their cultural aspects. - “Freed from the burden ofa narrow and irrelevant examination, the schools will be able to devise courses having more relation to the-lives of the pupils and the changing needs the adult world,” said Mr. Mason. “To meet the requirements, of parents and employers it will still be necessary to have some assured standard to indicate the satisfactory completion of a high course. This will be provided by the school certificate, which was introduced bv the Government some years ago,, but which has-never proved a strong competitor to the well-established ‘matnculaU Because of the present difficulties of travel the committee would not be able to take personal evidence on a very wide scale, bat it would be required to receive and consider carefully any evidence or statements that individuals or organizations might care to submit in „ dressed to the chairman, cSttee on Education, Education Department, Wellington, 0-1.