MATRICULATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 232, 2 October 1933, Page 6

MATRICULATION.

"SSENT SYSTEM DEFENDED

(To tie Editor.)

I trust tliat you will permit mo as a graduate of the University of New Zealand to reply to the attack on our entrance examination by Mr. P. Martyn Renner, principal of the Rongotai Boys' College. As the Royal Charter founding the University provided that the examinations were to be open to all, to attempt to confine the matriculation to those educated at secondary schools and so exclude the large and increasing class of private students amounts to a defiance of the Letters Patent. The University has never interfered with the "expression and development," whatefer these terms may mean, of any school, so that protest is not justified. That the matriculation examination causes waste of time is not correct. All the pupils at a school do not sit for the examination, and there is nothing to prevent those who do not being taught as usual. No professional body or employer would attach the slightest value to a "granted" leaving certificate, which Mr. Renner proposes as a substitute. It is safe to assume that collectively- the senates of British universities have more knowledge than Mr. Renner, yet they all insist on a matriculation being "passed. The University Senate should summon up courage and resolution to tcach interfering schoolmasters that matriculation is an academical matter with which they have nothing to do. That the secondary schools have not a properly-conducted entranco examination is quite true, and it is also duo to this fact that thousands of pounds of tlio taxpayers' money is annually wasted in an attempt to impart higher education to unsuitable pupils.' As the Minister of Education promised to look into this matter on his recent visit to England, where he would not find a single secondary school without an entrance examination, there is some reason to hope that this scandalous omission will be rectified. It is futile for Mr. Renner or any other interested schoolmaster to attempt to abolish our matriculation. "Accrediting" and "granting" have been condemned by a conference of British universities. I trust that this matter will be taken up by other graduates. The matriculation syllabus has undergone a dozen changes in as many years to meet the wishes of schoolmasters and Education Department officials, the stability that is necessary to a university has been destroyed, and the standard of secondary education has been • lowered to an extent that would seem 'ludicrous to any headmaster in England. B.A.