EDUCATION REFORMS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 710, 9 July 1929, Page 10

EDUCATION REFORMS

PROPOSAL FOR UNIFRd CONTROL CALLING OF CONFERENCE (THE SUN'S Parliamentary Re portrr j WELLINGTON. Monday, ' Although further action ha* been delayed by his preoccupation with earthquake relief and restoration work, the Hon. H. Atmore, Minister of Education, is eager to proceed with his plans for the unification of education control. As soon as possible Mr. Atinore intends to call the promised conference of various educational controlling authorities to ascertain their views toward the proposals. Overlapping la the problem which the Minister is par. ticularly anxious to deal with. He believes in board ' control, but not in splitting up ’ among a number of boards the functions that could well be managed by one board. SAVING MONEY The Minister also believe* the sys. tem of unification he has in mind would result in saving money; indeed, the only additional expenditure be foresaw in his proposals for educa. tional reform related to the move to reduce the size of classes. As far as control was concerned, he was aiming at a system under which there would be one board for a determined district. Whether those districts should be approximately the same as the present education board districts he was not yet prepared to say. Education, says Mr. Atmore. is a continuous process. He also believed that by terminating the primary course at 11 years of age, or roughly Standard IV., a much better opportunity would be provided of discovering the child’s natural aptitude. A boy of 11 was usually full of originality and desired to do something, but if he were compelled to run through an academic course for three or four yean, after the primary stage a sort of artificial nature was superimposed on him and he was almost certain to seek a clerkship or some professional career, when his real natural bent might lie in a totally different direction. MORE PRACTICAL TEACHING A system better suited to the peculiar needs of New Zealand Mr. Atmore considers is needed. For instance, he did not hold with the view that the teaching of French was necessarily valuable to a New- Zealand child In order to give mental discipline. The Minister thought that a knowledge of Maori would be more valuable and would achieve the same disciplinary result. New Zealand wanted a system that was essentially practical—a system that met agricultural, commercial and Industrial requirements. The mind could be trained by dealing with things as well as with ideas, and cultural training and practical training should’go hand-in-hand. The relationship between the technical school and the secondary high school, Mr. Atmore says, should be scrutinised. He was very interested in the New Plymouth scheme, whereby the two institutions had been amalgamated. thus preventing the overlapping that had gone on by one school endeavouring to meet some of the educational requirements offered by the other. It was significant that a strong move for unification on the lines he had in mind should have come from the Taranaki Education Board, the one body omitted from ' the local scheme of unified control in force there.