CLASSES TOO LARGE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 294, 25 September 1935, Page 7

CLASSES TOO LARGE

DISQUIETING PROPORTIONS.

EDUCATION NEEDS.

(Special to the “Guardian”). STRATFORD, September 23.

“The evil of over-large classes in. the primary school is again assuming disquieting proportions/’ declared Mr C. Robertson, R.A., treasurer of the New Zealand Educational Institute, in an address to a combined meeting of teachers and committee-men held at Stratford yesterday. “During the past few years the employment of additional teachers under the rationing scheme resulted in a reduction in the size of classes, although hundreds of classes of 50 and over remained. Now, however, that these teachers are being absorbed into permanent positions the size of classes is increasing again, and in the cities at any rate the class of 50-odd is threatening to become the regular thing.” Mr Robertson said that no responsible person would 1 have the temerity to defend classes of this size. The institute was therefore asking that, as a first step, primary schools should lie staffed on peak roll instead of on average attendance as at present. In the secondary schools, Mr Robertson continued, the principle of the small class has been recognised, and it was a matter of justice that it should be extended to the primary school. A primary school with 380 children on the roll was given eight teachers; an intermediate school of the same size 11 teachers; and a secondary school of the same size 15 teachers. There were similar discrepancies between staffing of district high schools and 1 secondary schools. On the question of capitation, also the principle of average attendance worked to the disadvantage of the primary school. Here again theie were striking and unjustifiable dis orepancies in the treatment meted out to different, types of school. A primary school with an average attendance of 241 received £IOO ia capitation; a secondary school of the same size, i. 0., with a roll of 260, received £IOO plus 32s 6d per pupil on the roll, totalling £523 10s—over five times as much as the primary school. It could be granted that secondaiy schools needed somewhat more expensive equipment than was necessary in the primary school, but the fact iemained that the primary school' was starved' of real necessities. “It ‘has been said,” continued Mr Robertson, “that the work of the school should revolve around tne library and the workshop. Our primary school libraries, according to the recent Ozirncgi'C r©pori> on Now Zo&l&nd. ries, are so pitifully inadequate as to be scarcely worthy of the name of libraries at all; and, instead of well equipped work-rooms, we must scramble along with the merest odds and ends of apparatus.”