EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26219, 16 September 1950, Page 2

EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA

OBSERVATIONS OF MR H. G. JOHNSTON

HANDICAPPED AND GIFTED CHILDREN Catering for the needs of the handicapped child and also for the gifted child was a specialty of the New South Wales education system, said Mr H. G. Johnston, the Canterbury Education Board’s senior inspector of schools, in an interview yesterdsy, when he returned from a visit to Australia. Mr Johnstoh was the delegate of the New Zealand Association of Inspectors of Schools at the recent Australian conference of school inspectors.

Mr Johnston visited th® Mosman spastic centre in Sydney. The Education Department supplied the teachers and equipment, but otherwise the school was run by donations and subscriptions, Mr Johnston said. A condition of the child’s entering the school was that the mother should assist with the work, such as the serving of meals. If the mother could not attend, she had to send someone in her place. Fathers were also expected to give free labour for such work as gardening and painting. No fees were charged for the children and even medicine was given free, Mr Johnston said. The children were trained to become as independent as possible. Special furniture was provided only for especially severe cases. The medical treatment was aimed at fitting the child to benefit from his school work: There was complete co-operation between the medical and educational staffs of the school. A pre-school class admitted children from the age of two years. They received no formal teaching in this class, but were able to benefit from physio-therapy. The Mosman school provided a field of research for a special officer of the Commonwealth' Office of Education, whose findings would be a very valuable contribution to work in both New Zealand and Australia, Mr Johnston said. Education of Immigrants Other fields of research being explored by the Commonwealth Office of Education included education of imigrants. Schools were established in the camps in which displaced persons were placed on their arrival. The children later attended ordinary school classes, but special classesmvere run for adults. As an inducement to foreign immigrants to learn English, those who did so were allowed a reduced period before naturalisation. The Commonwealth Office of Education had also undertaken to open schools for aborigines in the Northern Territory. In this connexion the office intended to send a man to New Zealand to study the education of the Maoris, Mr Johnston said.

To catpr for the above-average child a number of schools in New South Wales had special classes for children of superior intelligence. In one school which Mr Johnston visited there were four classes each of 35 children who had been selected from 20 schools in the district. No child had an intelligence Quotient below 125. These classes were able to offer the children a richer curriculum than they could have had in an average class. The special classes, however, were still a part of the rest of the school, so that the gifted children still mixed freely with other children of their own age. Secondary schools were very highly selective, said Mr Johnston. The child did not go to the school of his parents’ choice, but was placed in the type of school considered suitable for him. The placings were based on the results of intelligence tests.

“The general environment of city schools does not compare with ours,” Mr Johnston said. “They have not the grounds which our city schools have.” To help solve the shortage of schools. Victoria was importing 500 prefabricated aluminium class rooms. The whole of one school of eight classrooms, which he had visited in a new housing area was prefabricated, Mr Johnston said. He had seen tubular steel furniture in one school, but the old dual desks were still much more common than they-were in New Zealand. One school in Melbourne had experimented with hexagonally shaped rooms in which the children were spread out in a fan formation from the teacher, the advantage being that the teacher was not far distant from any child m the room. “This was an experiment only. I do not think it is likely to be repeated,” said Mr Johnston.

Although there was a scarcity of teachers in Australia, Adelaide was the omy place where a shortened course of training had been adopted to cope with the shortage, Mr Johnston found. Here one term’s training in teaching was being given to 50 persons, most of whom were married women. They would in the main, take positions as mfaiH teachers. Victoria had adopted a different method to deal with the shortage, by importing a selected group of men from England to undergo training in Victoria.

At the conference which Mr Johnston attended an association of inspectors of schools of New Zealand and Australia was formed. A conference of the assiciation will be held in New Zealand in two years.