CLASSIFICATION OF PUPILS

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27224, 16 December 1953, Page 9

CLASSIFICATION OF PUPILS

Strict Groupings “No Longer Justified”

HEADMASTER’S VIEWS

The existence of classes and standards in school as watertight compartments was no longer justified, said the headmaster of the Cathedral Grammar School (Mr R. R. Gibson), presenting his eighth annual report at the school’s prize-giving ceremony in Christchurch yesterday.

“Classes or standards are truly homogeneous when they contain children with common intellectual needs,” Mr Gibson. “In particular, if the child is in any way retarded, he needs the support and sympathy of a group with which he is thoroughly familiar.” Mr Gibson urged those present to forget the use of the word “standard,” which had so often signified a grouping of children according to age, but not ability or attainment. In the grammar school this year, the senior boys had been grouped according to ability, with encouraging results. “The boy with ability bas not been held back; the slower boy has been heartened by his success in a homogeneous group; and the general result has been an obvious raising of standard,” he said.

“I think there are three ways of dealing with the really bright boy,” Mr Gibson said. “You can give him accelerated promotion, which has' its obvious dangers, both intellectual and social; you can segregate him, again with obvious drawbacks; you can enrich and broaden his curriculum, at the same time giving him the opportunity for normal social development. I tend to the last method. We have started it in the school, and we will enlarge its application.”