NORMAL SCHOOL TRANSFER

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27225, 17 December 1953, Page 9

NORMAL SCHOOL TRANSFER

NEW BUILDING FOR ELMWOOD

ARRANGEMENTS FOR NEXT YEAR Elmwood will acquire virtually two complete new schools through fresh arrangements for education in the district which will begin to operate at the beginning of next year. The Normal School will be transferred to the present Elmwood School in February, and later in the year a new two-storey building will be erected. Also at the beginning of the first term the first block of 10 classrooms in the new Heaton Street Intermediate School will be occupied. This is the first of at least four such blocks. , The transfer of the Normal School

to Elmwood caused trouble among Elmwood parents a year ago, and after representations to the Minister of Education (Mr R. M. Algie), the Canterbury Education Board agreed to postpone the change until 1954. Mr L. S. P. Butcher, secretarymanager of the Education Board, summed up the situation yesterday. “We must have the cream of our teachers in their particular spheres at the Normal School,” he Said. “The positions carry extra payments and thus attract keen competition. It is true that the Normal School is used to give practical experience to teacher trainees, but this is always given under, the supervision and guidance of this expert staff. Another advantage is that the Normal School classes are arranged on the basis of one teacher to 35 pupils, compared with 40 (in practice often more) in an ordinary primary school. The pupils therefore can receive more personal attention.” The board initiated legislation, recently passed, which enables • normal schools to have their own school committee, and Elmwood will thus be the first normal school in the history of New Zealand to have an elected com-

mittee. - Elmwood Normal School became the accepted term in administrative planning, but yesterday morning the Education Board indicated that it did not mind if the simple name Elmwood School was retained for general purposes. Transfer of Pupils The present. Normal School now has a roll of only 156, plus two model schools. It was therefore decided to transfer to Elmwood where a more representative enrolment could be expected. The smaller children up to standard two will remain at Cranmer square so that they will not have to. travel farther to school, and about 70 or 80 will go to other*, schools of their own nomination. The biggest group of about 40 will go to East Christchurch. The pupils remaining in the old school will be formed into three model schools —two model II which will represent the lower division of a twoteacher country school, and one model I, which will represent a sole charge school—all to serve in the training of teachers. In 1955 the model I children will go to Elmwood, and over the next few years the others will go elsewhere as they are able. The old building will be used by the new postprimary teachers’ training division. Teachers at both the Normal School and Elmwood have been transferring, as is usual late in the year, and the new Elmwood staff is now being assembled. Mr W. J. Cartwright will transfer as headmaster to Elmwood.

The Elmwood School roll next year will be almost 500, up to standard fouY. Many of the buildings are old, and the bis new block is now being planned with architectural assistance from the Nelson Education Board, which has not so many projects on hand as Canterbury. The completion of the first block of the Heaton Street Intermediate School, coinciding with increased numbers at Elmwood, will permit form I and II Elmwood girls to be transferred. At Heaton street they, will join boys in similar classes from Elmwood, St. Albans, and Waimairi. For five years this group of boys has been diverted to the old Rhodes homestead to relieve congestion in their home schools. All these pupils will thus be initial members of the new intermediate school. The boys at Heaton street have numbered as many as 260,