FOR WAITAKI SCHOOL

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 491, 22 October 1928, Page 9

FOR WAITAKI SCHOOL

PUPILS FROM BRITAIN RECTOR EXPLAINS PLAN (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) Reed. 9 a.m. LONDON, Sunday. Twelve British public school boys are going to New Zealand in December to become pupils of the Waitaki Boys High School at Oamaru, to take a two years’ course, designed principally to equip them for farming in New Zealand. A Press Association message says that Mr. Frank Milner, rector at Waitaki, informed the “Oamaru Mail” to-day that the arrangement is for a limited^ number of boys of about the age of 17 to come to Waitaki for two years education on the agricultural side. They will be able to familiarise themselves with the theoretical aspects of farming, and with New Zealand conditions by mixing with New Zealand boys, thus eliminating trouble of failure, to acquire the New Zealand atmosphere. The scheme was devised by the English Public Schools’ Employment Bureau. Waitaki has been chosen because it is a chartered member of the English Headmasters’ Conference of Schools and because it has an agricultural side, and facilities for such boys. Two British boys at Waitaki ard now doing very well. One has baer. ottered a good position in the Waikato. The boys are under the supervision of Mr. Milner and under the secretary of the Immigration Department, Mr. H. D. Thomson. They are carefully tested physically, intellectually and morally before leaving England. After the course here they have a period of probation or apprenticeship on farms. Some will have finance to enable them to take up farms. Canada thinks so much of the scheme that it gives free training and free land. “The material from English schools is some of the finest in the world,” said Mr. Milner.