THE EDUCATION SYSTEM

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22017, 15 February 1937, Page 8

THE EDUCATION SYSTEM

VOCATIONAL TREND ADVOCATED

REVIEW BY MK T. 11. M'COMBS

A plan for the reorganisation of the education system in New Zealand involving a considerable lessening of the concentration on examinations and the disappearance of the distinction in curriculum between high schools and technical schools was put forward last evening by Mr T. H. McCombs, M.P., in an address to the Theosophical Society, on education in New Zealand. Mr McCombs said that it was most necessary at present to review the education system because the school leaving age would be raised in the near future, and before the children were sent further on their' course the syllabus should be examined to see if they would gain anything worth while. "If we can take the destination of pupils when they have left school as an indication of the course they ought to take when at school,** Mr McCombs said, "40 to 50 per cent, of the pupils ought to be doing an agricultural course, 20 to 25 per cent, training in trades, and, 30 to 35 per cent, a commercial course. Only a small percentage of the pupils at secondary schools go on to the university. In 1901, the then Director of Education said that the secondary school programme was framed to a large extent to lead up to the matriculation and junior scholarship examinations of the university, and yet not one boy or girl in 20 did or could go to the university. The same is true now, and yet 52 per cent, of the boys and 43 per cent, of the girls at secondary school last year were taking the matriculation course." Headmasters' Opinions Mr McCombs then quoted the replies sent by 20 New Zealand headmasters to a questionnaire from Mr Frank Milner, of the Waitaki Boys' High School. Seventeen of them advocated that subjects that should be considered compulsory were English, social science, art and musical appreciation, physical training and health, and general elementary science. Four of them added mathematics, and one added French. For social science they advocated a combination of history, humanistic geography, and elementary economics, and under general elementary science they included biology and arithmetic, drastically pruned. On a vocational course 13 of them favoured pre-voca-tional subjects only after three years of a cultural course.

As remedies for the present system Mr McCombs advocated leaving more to the teacher, a less rigid grading system, and the appointment of inspectors more sympathetic to change. External examinations should be, he thought,, only for those who had to sit them, and the syllabus for the school leaving certificate should be made more liberal still. He recommended, that the matriculation examination should be made harder to suit the university. ' His ideal system, Mr McCombs said, would be a core of cultural subjects in the curriculum as advocated by the headmasters referred to. Geography and history should have humanity as the basis of their study and not be studies of wars and kings and of purely commercial geography. The rest of the curriculum would be purely a vocational training, • treating matriculation as a vocational course. That would necessitate the disappearance of the distinction between technical and high schools. The result would be combined secondary schools as at Napier and Waitaki.