WAITING FOR THE RESULTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 262, 26 January 1928, Page 10

WAITING FOR THE RESULTS

ALL over the Dominion young people are anxiously waiting for the results of the matriculation examination held early in December. One or two of the examiners were late in reporting to the University, Wellington explains, and delay therefore has been unavoidable. The delay is to be regretted because of the unnecessary suspense in which candidates are being kept, hxxt more particularly because so much depends upon the result of the matriculation test to a boy or girl who, in the event of a successful pass, has to make educational plans for the immediate future or arrangements for finding work. There can be no excuse for delaying the publication of results until the end of January. If examiners have been snowed under with papers that present difficulty in marking, it is reasonable to suggest that they be given authority to share the responsibility and “farm oxxt” the papers to other markers. In one respect the delay may serve a good purpose. It may emphasise the fact that the matriculation examination has been developed into a far too cumbrous piece of machinery, simply because it is expected to do work which, properly, it should not do at all. As an examination qualifying candidates for entrance to the University, which it once was and should he still, it is useless: the standard is too low and is, in practice, rarely accepted as sufficient. The majority of candidates take the examination either as a necessary step toward the Higher Leaving Certificate in their next year at school—this more or less satisfactorily qualifies them for study at the University—or as a step into employment of one kind or another. That is, matriculation is taken either as a useless academic formality or as a soi’t of leaving certificate; a label to he exhibited to prospective employers. Proposed reforms were in the air a year or so ago. The sooner they materialise the better it will be. Let the University raise the matriculation standard by a year's work and devote itself to its own business, first of finding out what adolescents are fit for University training and then of giving it to them. Let the Education Department take over the duty of supplying an intermediate certificate or whatever it choose to call it. The University and the schools will then he infinitely the healthier.