QUEENSLAND SCHOOLS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25089, 22 January 1947, Page 8

QUEENSLAND SCHOOLS

COMPARISONS WITH N.Z. " The Press ” Special Service AUCKLAND, January 21. A New Zealand Rhodes Scholar in 1925 and later a representative of the Dominion at cricket, Mr J. A. Dunning. who has been principal of Scots College, at Warwick, Queensland, for the last years, is visiting his parents at Leigh. He taught at John McGlashan College, Dunedin, until 1938, when he left to take up the appointment at Scots College, and in 1937 visited England with the New Zealand cricket team. Qiscussing secondary education in Queensland, during an interview at Auckland. Mr Dunning said that the State was still very much ruled by the system of external examinations, which were conducted by the University of Queensland. Under that system a great’ number of pupils considered their secondary education complete at the end of two years, when they had passed the junior examination. Although that corresponded to only about the fourth form in New Zealand, it was the standard which many employers required. In the years he had been at Soots College the number taking the senior examination, a four-year course, had more than doubled. “A great difference from the New Zealand system is the number of State Sscholarships in Queensland,” Mr Dunning continued. “They are awarded to about half the children leaving primary schools and are tenable at private schools. In my school, which is a boarding school with 210 boys, more than 60 per cent, of the pupils hold scholarships. The schools receive a grant of £l5 a year for each of them.” Private schools, of which Scots College was one,. were far more popular in Queensland than in New Zealand, and State secondary schools were in the minority there, said Mr Dunning. There had been no great changes in the school curricula in recent years, although he felt that, but for the upheaval which the war caused, there would have been developments similar to those which had taken place in New Zealand. It was expected that gradual changes would take place in the future. The school leaving age was to have been raised, but shortages of buildings and teachers would make it difficult to do that for some time. Many primary schools were already badb - overcrowded. In 1942 and 1943 Scots College was taken over by the Australian Army and the teachers and pupils had to take up a temporary abode on a sheep station. It was an historic place, being almost the first place settled on the Darling Downs but the teachers and oupils had to “rough it” while they were there. Classrooms were formed in an old shearing shed and dormitories and dining-rooms were in the station homestead and some temporary buildings.