University Entrance

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22727, 3 June 1939, Page 14

University Entrance

Nearly all educational authorities in the country are interested in the present agitation over the University Entrance Examination, which seems at last to be on the point of decision. Teachers and • administrators will find their deliberations made much easier by the study of “ Entrance to the University,” the latest publication of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. The investigators, Mr W. A. Thomas, Dr. C. E. Beeby, and Mr M. H. Oram, recommend accrediting for all schooU interested, the privilege to be withdrawn if a school shows itself unfit. Accrediting is to be based on cumulative school records, and these should be reinforced by an increased corps of secondary school inspectors, by the specialised training of post-primary teachers, and by a liaison officer, attached to each'university college, who will visit the schools in his district. These recommendations should have the support of those who already favour such a system; all visiting experts who have studied the situation, the State post-primary schools, and the university colleges, which, with the exception of the special schools, have in the last 20 years tended to advocate accrediting. “ Entrance “to the University” is history, review, and criticism. The reports show that the pieoent entrance examination is a poor selective agency. Nearly every candidate passes if he persists; yet only 17 per cent, of the successful proceed to a degree. The hampering effect of the examination on curriculum and the futile way in which its prescriptions have been tinkered* with for more than 50 years are clearly exposed. The whole work is thorough, interesting, and informative. Its conclusions are irresistible; but it is the mysterious curse of New Zealand education that reforms initiated with the noblest motives have tended soon in precisely the opposite direction to that proposed. Accrediting, it is suggested, will confer a school certificate after three years’ satisfactory postprimary work. (An examination will be provided for those not accredited.) Matriculation will follow a year’s work after the award of the school certificate. But university teachers already bewail the general ignorance of firstyear students whose entrance examination tested four years’ secondary work. The proposed reforms will not raise this standard, unless the freeing of the curriculum encourages and facilitates a higher standard of attainment in the individual subjects. There is a final question, which experience must answer. Who knows but that parents, pupils, and teachers who are keen on examinations as goal, guarantee, and general qualification will not set their hearts on some sort of a pass in the Entrance Scholarship Examination, instead, and so begin to destroy the value of that examination as a tension at the top of the secondary school system? ‘