EDUCATION POLICY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 899, 17 February 1930, Page 12

EDUCATION POLICY

MINISTER DISCUSSES N.Z, SYSTEM ’

IN STATE OF FLUX Press Association DANNEVIRKE. Sunday. Ttee addition to the Dannevirke High School which was completed soma months ago was officialy opened yesterday afternoon by the Minister of Education, the Hon. H. Atmore. The Minister said any district which was prepared to help itself in the furtherance of secondary education could expect the utmost help from the present Government. Education in New Zealand was passing through a state of flux, through an economic stage, and they would have to frame an education policy which would meet the needs of the changing conditions. Nothing was wrong with the teachers. It was part of the policy that had been wrong. It was his aim, and that of the Government, to give New Zealand the finest education system in the world. The primary school ages should end at 11 years or thereabouts and thereafter the school course should be framed to suit the children, to enable each to follow his own particular avenue in life. There should be no hard and fast syllabus, but education should proceed along the lines of the discovered aptitudes of the pupils. The Government was endeavouring to make the 'system of education a more national one, more in touch with the aspirations and needs of the people. He believed the report of the Select Committee at present being compiled would mark an epoch in the history of New Zealand education and would enable them to claim at least that they had a system not only equal to anything - in the world, but the finest in the world.