ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. THE COMPARISON BETWEEN THE WAIAREKA AND X SCHOOLS FOR 1893.

North Otago Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8172, 2 May 1895, Page 1

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. THE COMPARISON BETWEEN THE WAIAREKA AND X SCHOOLS FOR 1893.

TO THE EDITOK. Sir, — When tho VVaiaroka School onquiry was set afoot Mr Frasor, foiling thiit his .school hud not been reported on ns itdosoivcd, asked mo 10 givo him tho detailed icnults of tho examination of my school, and tho rep >rt thereon, in order that he nngh ins'itnto a comparison. This 1 willingly did on tho ground that no obstacle should be placed in tho way of anyone seeking to find our whethor ho hdd been treated justly or othorwi-o. I placed tho cxiiniiiition register before Mr FiMsor, and allowed him to extract from i> what hn wantod. Tho figures dealing with the examination results of Standards 111.. IV., V., and VI. he presented in full at tho onquiiy, and i is much to bo K-gr. (toil that jou did not publish them in full as there presented, and sn have avoided doing unwittingly nn injustice to Inspectors Petrio and Taylor, who examined in 1893— 1 ho yeirfor which tho compaiisoti is made. Had you publishod tho figures in fu'l this lett r would havo boon unnecessary. Your report presents only one aspect of the examination iosuits -that of tho percentage of children passed to children presented, and it must l>e boinu in mind that thero is another aspect — that of perc ntago of passes in subjects. Looked at from tho lirst point uf view tho Waiireka School had 85 per cent, and the X School 74 por cent ; wlulo looked at from the second point of view tho results are tho other way about, tho X School having 85 por cent of pusses, and tho vVaiareki School 74 per cent, liow such a result can como aboub iniy bo easily shown. Wo will tako, sny (in one school) a class of 20 chi'dren, having seven pass subjects of examination. A child must pass in at least six of these to pass for his standard. Thus these 20 cluldtcn could fail in at least one subject each, and yet pass for the Standard, and under tho present system of reckoning Lho result would bo 100 per cent of passes. But reckoning by subjects, as w.is tho system som> years ago, the percentage would bo considerably different, as 120 passes in subjeots out of a possible of 140 would give a porcontago of nearly 8(5 i-i subject passes Now in another school with a class of 20 childron one child miy fail in two subjects, and tho others pass in every subject, so that tho percentage of passes of cluldrem examined would bo 93 per cent, but becau o 138 subjects wero passed in out of 140 tho peio ntago of subject passes would be nearly 99. No a', in such a case tho InspiO; r would havo to consider which of tho schoo's was tho better — a school which had passed 20 childron, but had 20 failures in subjects, or a school which had passed 19 children, but had only two failures in subjects. Of course tho case pu is an extreme one, and only used in illustration, but something of tho kind luppoiis in every school, and has happened in tho caso of tho Waiareka and X .Schools. Again in such subjects as geography and arithmetic five questions .ire, as a rule, given, and throe out of the livo must bo answered correctly in order to securo a pass. Now a child who answers only throe questions orroctly would count as much under the present system of reckoning percentages as a child who answered fivo correctly, but in their written report tho Inspectors would coitainly require to tako into consideration whether tho avor-tgo number of questions answered correctly was three, four, or live, and report accordingly, so that schools with oven tho same number of subject passes might receive c msi-loiably diflerent report". It will thus bo boou that tho mere bald figures of porcontago of pisses may bo very far from affording .i ti uo index of the stato of a sohool, and it is probably for such reasons as these that tho Eiucation Board has steadily discountenanced tho publication of percentages, going tho length of recommending committees, by circulars, not to publish tho percentage of pisses of their v.uious schools. lam oflctiug no opinion on tho matter uu 'cv disputo, hw I feel that tho public cau form no fair judgment with regird to tho comparison of tho Waiareka with tho X School without having placed beforo them ihesoaspeo's of examination results, which cannot bo githered from your report. — I am, etc , Hkai>m wh;r X School.

It is estimated Llikl about L 2,000,000 worth of Gorman toys are annually sold in Euglund. It can bo stated, with almost literal ex-icness, that nou a square yard of Hoihind is neghcted by tho sturdy people. 'Nii, judgo,' aaid a ne'er-do-well, who was bom» questioned by a mantra o as to his reasons for being ft vagrant, % I ain't never had tho advantage of parental guidance ; I'm an orphan by birin I 1I 1 Romo rcachi'd its greatest size du> ing the fourth century of our era, when iti population was estimated at 3,600,000. A church in London still possesses an income oii^inally given to it for ho purpose of buying faggots for bu>ning heretics.