LESS EFFICIENCY FEARED

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1033, 25 July 1930, Page 16

LESS EFFICIENCY FEARED

EDUCATION CHANGES AND GRAMMAR SCHOOLS AUCKLAND’S OBJECTIONS “The efficiency of the great secondary schools of Auckland will i inevitably be gravely impaired by the proposed changes in the education system. The essence of the | system will be a levelling-down and a complete centralisation of authority in Wellington.” This expression of opinion is given ! by the Auckland Grammar School Board ih an official statement giving the board’s objections to the education changes recommended in the report ot the Parliamentary Recess Committee. “The results of the grammar schools of Auckland are the best tribute to the existing system of control.” the statement adds. “'While the report states that the desire of the committee is to increase local control and the powers of the boards, it proceeds to place the appointment of the secretaries of the boards and all teachers in the hands of the Education Department. The secretary to a board should be a business man and not an educationist.’* The statement proceeds: The report condemns the domination of the primary school syllabus by the needs of the proficiency certificate examination, and of the secondary school syllabus by those of the matriculation examination, and avers that “this state of affairs the separate organisation of the two stages under totally independent and differently situated local boards served but to confirm.’* In no case have boards —education or post-primary—been responsible for the syllabus. In the primary schools, the Education Department has been solely responsible; in the secondary schools, the department and the university. With supreme disregard of logic, the report assumes that the abolition of boards will remedy a state of affairs for which the department and the university are responsible. NO TEACHING DISTINCTION When recommending the establishment of intermediate schools, the report states that, in Standards V. and VI., the pupils in every school are taught by the best and most experienced teachers on the staff, all specially trained for their work, and then condemns the secondary schools for allegedly employing the best and most experienced teachers on the staff to teach the university entrance scholarship and the matriculation forms. The statement is not correct as a generalisation for secondary schools. The needs of all pupils and especially the slower pupils receive equal consideration. If any particular school is neglecting any one section of its pupils, it is the business of the department’s inspectors to see that the wrong is righted. The committee states that under the new system “there will be made to disappear the last vestige of the objectionable social distinctions which havo hitherto tended to divide those who have received a secondary education from those who have not.” All, or practically all, the pupils in our secondary schools have passed through the primary schools, and from the same home there may be pupils attending primary, technical and secondary schools. Where then can any social distinction arise? All classes are in the secondary schools. SCHOLARSHIP SYSTEM The proposal of the committee to abolish the existing system of scholarships and to establish a bursary fund to be administered in the interests of country children, is likely to inflict great hardship and great injustice upon the children going to our secondary schools from the poorer homes in the cities. The majority of pupils who have won distinction from the Auckland Grammar Schools, been assisted through their course by the junior and senior national and university entrance scholarships. Though the grant has been small it has been useful to poor pupils. The abolition of the university national scholarships would inflict hardship on poor pupils, who would often be debarred from the full advantages of a university career. They would be placed at a serious disadvantage in competing with the children of richer parents, who, by devoting their whole time to university studies, would have a great advantage in competing for overseas scholarships and higher prizes which the university offers. The new system inav lend itself to patronage that may have very unsatisfactory results. JUDGING ATTAINMENTS It is proposed that the bursaries should be awarded on the recommendation of local superintendents. How are they to determine the attainments of pupils in different districts without a competitive examination? It is proposed to substitute bursaries, to be available for private schools. for national scholarships. This would allow private schools to attract the children of the well-to-do classes and the elimination of many clever people in the poorer homes in the cities would enable the richer classes to obtain a larger proportion of university prizes. The recommendation of the committee requiring all the pupils to pass through the junior high schools in the Citv is not in accordance with the best educational opinion. A careful reading of the report leaves one with the feeling that the committee could obtain all desirable results at small cost, by the gradual reorganisation and modification of the existing system of schools and school control, without involving the Country in the expense and the unsettlement of an educational revolution, which may or may not prove successful. Embodied in the report is a table comparing the cost of education in Xew Zealand and three Australian States. The accuracy of the Xew South Wales figures has already been questioned by the chairman of the Auckland Education Board. If the departmental figures prove inaccurate, the whole case is invalidated. The cost of local administration as far as this board, with its five Grammar Schools, is concerned, is only II per cent, of the total money spent on those schools. The cost of administration a pupil is 6s lid, compared with 9s 2d for the whole of Xew Zealand.