COMBINING SCHOOLS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 349, 9 May 1928, Page 13

COMBINING SCHOOLS

TAKAPUNA HEADMASTER’S SUGGESTION ASSISTANT MASTERS CONFER Press Association. WELLINGTON, To-day. A suggestion that Junior High, Secondary and Technical Schools should be combined under one head, with experts in charge of the three separate schools, was made by Mr. A. W. Short, of the Takapuna Grami far School, and president of the Secondary Schools Assistants Association, in his presidential address to the association’s conference to-day. Mr. Short said that from his own experience he thought there was need for care lest the secondary subjects be taken up too early at the expense of some of the primary ones. Of the three types of Junior High Schools in existence the _ thought that the type run in conjunction with the secondary school, such as at Whangarei and Waitaki, would he found ideal, because the syllabus of a j'unior school could be made to dovetail into that of the senior one, and there would be a complete course mapped out from the time the child entered the former till he left the latter. If the principle could be extended to a combination of Junior High, Secondary and Technical Schools under one head, with experts in charge of three separate schools, there would be a system where all the teachers concerned would be in closer touch with each other and would have more direct supervision over pupils from the start to the finish of the school course District high schools, if retained should direct attention more to agri-’ cultural pursuits or to those suited to the locality than to purely secondary work.