SCHOOL CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25363, 10 December 1947, Page 8

SCHOOL CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION

TEACHER’S OBJECTIONS TO PAPERS (P.A.) DUNEDIN, December 9. In her annual report, the principal of the Otago Girls’ High School (Miss M. S. Fitzgerald) takes strong exception to the new style of school certificate examination as it was applied this year to papers in history and English. She says that the spate of protest which is flowing in to the Director of Education this month must be an indication that teachers, examiners, and the Education Department do not see eye to eye. “This year, the papers caused history teachers to despair of teaching ordinary third or fourth-year pupils enough facts to enable them to tackle such papers with confidence.” she said. “If facts are not to be taught adequately then only a dangerous generalisation can be made.”

Miss Fitzgerald says that whether a teacher makes a generalisation first and then teaches the subject, or whether a child is left to learn the subject himself from the few facts he does know the result is equally suspect. “It seems to me entirely wrong that children of reasonable ability who have nad the advantages of what was considered sound teaching in their examination subjects for four years should have final and irreversible judgment passed on their achievement after examinations such as have been conducted in geography and history in 1946 and 1947 respectively.” she added. “I do not consider that the Education Department has any right to victimise children, or to impose its will on teachers. If it is not trying to do this, then I can only conclude that it has a deplorable lack of control over its examiners, combined with a surprising ignorance of the psychology of candidates sitting their first examination outside a school/’