"AVERAGITIS" IN SCHOOLS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 27 September 1907, Page 2

"AVERAGITIS" IN SCHOOLS

PREVENTIVE MEASURES. | Hie recent wholesale dosing of schools \ '■' i' the purpose of keeping up the aver- j ge attendance, it Ki-cin;, might liave 1 •on avoided in some instances by ink- ] iig advantage of clause 2, .sub-section of the regulation;. The Touchers' Election Committee of the Education )urd discussed this matter very fully lie other day, and in a report to the foiird on Wednesday recommended an iinendment of the clause to give committees even more relief. The clause i-)W reads:—''lf the average attendance it any school for any quarter is less lian two-thirds of the average weekly oil number for such quarter, or is such 3 to place tlie school ill a grade lower han that in which it would be placed >y the means of the averages attenduices for the other three quarters of lie year, or if there be any quarter ess than thirty half-days on which the ivcrage attendance is at least half the lumber of the children on the roU, th-m n order to find the yearly average atendance there may, in the opinion of he Hoard, be substituted for the averige attendance for such first-named marter either the average attendance tor the corresponding quarter of the •receding*year, and the yearly average '.licndanee for the quarter ending December 3lst of the preceding year, and the yearly average attendance thus iound shall do in lieu of the yearly avra'ge attendance as defined in clause 1 hereof."

The committee suggests to add the .vords: "For the purposes of this clause my successive three months shall lie deemed to be a quarter." The report goes on to state that while the clause at present fairly meets the case where an epidemic breaks out in the middle or at tit-: beginning of a quarter, it docs not when an epidemic breaks out near the end of a quarter and continues into the, following quarter. Thus the outbreak of an epidemic, say in June or September, is likely either to cause a school to lose grade or to induce the committee to elosc a school when otherwise it might have remained open, in order to avoid losing grade. By allowing' any successive three months to count as a quarter the clause would be made uniformly effective in its operation, for whiu was not infrequently a cause of injustice to a teacher or of a dimunitiou in the efficiency of a sehool would bo removed.