AN IMPORTANT PROPOSAL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9088, 13 May 1908, Page 4

AN IMPORTANT PROPOSAL.

Among the business to come before the Secondary School Conference which opens in Christchurch to-day is a proposal to substitute for the matriculation examination the principle which has just been adopted by the Education Department in connection with senior free places in secondary schools—namely, what Is known as the "accrediting system." Under this system the promotion of the junior scholarship holder to a senior place is not altogether dependent upon the credit with which ! he passes an examination, but largely upon the recommendation as to fitness by the principal of the school. This is the principle which is sought to be extended to matriculation examinations. There is a good deal to be said in favour of the proposal, for it is clear the principal of a school must have a better knowledge of tha fitness of a student than can be shown in all cases by the present system of matriculation examinations, in which many capable competitors fail, not from lack of knowledge, but' from nervousness. There is, of course, the possibility of favouritism in rare instances, but may it not be better that an occasional youth should slip through unduly than that many better-grounded and fully-qualified students should be "shunted" because sheer nervousness in the supreme test has caused them to fail? We think so.