INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLS

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25917, 24 September 1949, Page 2

INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLS

CHANGE IN POLICY SUGGESTED

EDUCATION BOARD’S RESOLUTION

That the attention of the Minister of Education (Mr T. H. McCombs) be drawn to the very large expenditure involved in the provision of. intermediate schools being planned for Christchurch, and that the Minister be asked to consider the advisability of reviewing the aim of the intermediate school and to give consideration to the desirability of raising the status of those schools and their staffs, to ensure a more definite continuity of educational processes by providing in intermediate schools two, three, and. for some pupils, four-year courses which would enable the staffs to assess more accurately the bent and aptitudes of pupils going on to more advanced education. This motion was carried at a meeting of the Canterbury Education Board yesterday. The chairman of the board (Mr A. E. Lawrence), the mover of the motion, said that the proposition was not designed to promo'e a discussion on the soundness or otherwise of the intermediate school. The purpose of the proposal was to ensure, as far as the board was concerned, that the very large expenditure the schools were certain to involve would be applied to the provision of a sound unit of the system that would justifv the educational changes and the large expenditure involved. £500,000 Expenditure “Within the next few years this board will involve itself in an expenditure of something approaching £500.000 on the proposed three or four additional intermediate schools within the city of Christchurch area." ccntniued Mr Lawrence. “The fundamental educational principle upon which the intermediate school is founded is that provision be made to grade the punils according to aptitude and bent, and to provide better organised activities. Th° most incisive and generally well-informed criticism is that the pupil does not remain for a sufficiently long period nt an intermediate school to gain the advantage claimed for the change. In other words, the gap which the intermediate school was designed to bridge is widened rather than eliminated There are other criticisms equally em nhntic. as. for instance, the lack of coordination between thece schools and the post-primarv schools United States Opinion “The most searching survey of educational opinion in the United States shows that there is 9a per cent, in favour of a three-year course or even an extension. This opinion is based on the following advantages: (a) the three-year course accords with the facts of psychological, physiological, and social development of the child better than does the two-year course: <b> it gives better opportunitv for homogeneous grouping, specialisation of teaching, exploration and differentiation of courses: <c) it straddles the point at which many pupils leave, and hence retains more pupils at school, so raising the cultural level of the community: <d) it effects a more thor-ough-going reorganisation of the school system: (e) it provides a more reasonable unit of work, a two-y°ar course being considered too short for effective teaching and exploration of a subject field. “It is neither appropriate nor timely to indulge in criticising the intermediate school itself. The Department of Education has made the school one of its major policy changes where it considers changes should be myde. Thu responsibility of this board is to insist that any large evpenditur° on intermediate schools should yield th" fullest educational results. For that reason wo as a board should ask th? department to have another look, at thesp schools, because it is becoming increasingly obvious that all is not well with the intermediate school, the •-'stab!isbment of wMch is bero’mng in- . rreasingly costly,” concluded Mr Lawrence. After members had sno'-yoq tn th" motion, it was put and ca r rie r L M v F H. Dephoff di c He saH that he could not supnort th n motion b°cavs-' the Dronova] would myke intermediate schools into glo'ified high