TOO ACADEMIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 156, 30 December 1938, Page 7

TOO ACADEMIC

SECONDARY EDUCATION

THE TECHNICAL SIDE

REPORT IN BRITAIN

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received December 30, 11 a.m.)

RUGBY, December 29. In ils report on an inquiry which has been proceeding for five years, a consultative committee expresses the view that secondary education in the past has been too exclusively academic. It recommends a new type of school, to be called a "technical high school/ to take selected,- N v - boys at 11 years of age and provide '.l--a five years' course. ' " In the first two years the curriculum^ • > i would be similar to that of other .' /- secondary schools, and later the course - "~ would follow more modern lines, with „•;" science as its central feature. A new type of internal examination, with tha' „;• leaving certificate to be taken at 16, ; is suggested. The technical schools are to be de- ; veloped out of the present junior technical schools in building and engineering, and they will be equivalent in V 1 status to grammar schools. The committee considers that gram- ' "' mar schools should continue as hitherto • ;.; to provide education mainly for boyg and girls who are likely to go to the ■':■ university, and urges that greater free- f dom be allowed schools in shaping their curriculum. DEVELOPMENT OF INDIVIDUAL TASTES. Suggestions for ensuring that pupils shall be allowed to develop their individual tastes and capacities are made, and the committee stresses the importance f of good teaching of spoken and written English as a central feature , V of the curriculum in these schools. • .'„ Looking beyond these ; immediate ■ '7 proposals, the committee favours a 1; ,1 single national system of schools for "' pupils between 11 and 16. In this system there would be grammar schools, technical high schools, modern l . selective, schools, and senior, schools. The committee thinks that ultimately all£2iese types should be sunder one ■ - secondary code. • ■;