COMBINE SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 108, 9 May 1928, Page 9

COMBINE SECONDARY SCHOOLS

UNDER ONE HEAD. WITH EXPERTS IN CHARGE. SUGGESTIONS TO CONFERENCE. (By Telegraph—rre«s Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. The suggestion that junior high, secondary, and technical schols should be combined under one head, with experts in charge of the three separate schools, was made by Mr. A. W. Short, of Takapuna Grammar School, who is president of the Secondary Schools Assistants' Association, in his presidential address to the association's conference to-day. Mr. Short said that from his own experience, he thought there was need for care lest the secondary subjects be taken up too early at the expense of some of the primary ones. Of the three types of junior high schools in existence he thought that the type run in conjunction with the secondary school, such as at- Whangarei and Waitaki, would be found ideal, because the syllabus of the junior school could be made to dovetail into- that of the senior one, and there would be a complete coufse mapped out fiom the time a child entered the former till he left the latter. If the principle could be extended to a combination of junior high, secondary and technical schools under one head, with experts in cjiarge of the three separate schools, there would be a system where all the teachers concerned would be in closer touch with each other, and would have more direct supervision over pupils from start to finish of the school course. District high schools, if retained, should direct attention more to agricultural pursuits or to those suited to locality than to purely secondary work.