SCHOOL CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26631, 29 November 1947, Page 9

SCHOOL CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION

Sir, —I wish td endorse very definitely the opinions of local secondary school principals and teachers as reported in this morning’s Daily Times, concerning the history paper set for the school certificate examination. As father of one of the pupils who sat this examination, I feel that the students are being very unfairly treated in having papers such as this placed before them when they are naturally nervous and " keyed up ” after weeks of intense concentration and study in preparing themselves for an event which is to grade them for their future careers.

It is obvious to one who studies the papers that the examiners appear to have lost touch with the degree of development reached\,by a pupil attending secondary school, as a number of questions in both history and geography would be more applicable to university students. Further, the time of two hours allowed for the arithmetic and algebra paper appears to me to be quite inadequate for the average pupil to do justice to the questions which require answering in order to qualify. In view of the opinions expressed by competent teachers in your article, it is apparent that had the papers been sub* mitted for* criticism to a committee or similarly experienced and qualified persons before they were adopted as the official examination questions, a more reasonable and equitable test would have resulted. It is to be hoped that due allowance will be made by the examiners and marks accredited when they are correcting the papers where unreasonable questions have been included. I trust that full publicity will be given to this matter to ensure that more “ practical minds ” will be entrusted with the important task of setting examination papers for the school certificate in future. —I am. etc.. Fair Play.