SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION IN N.Z. AND U.S. COMPARED

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28257, 20 April 1957, Page 8

SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION IN N.Z. AND U.S. COMPARED

"The Press” Special Service

AUCKLAND, April 19. Differences in school administration in America and New Zealand were described by Dr. W. K. Kennedy, professor of agronomy, Cornell University, when he addressed the Hamilton Rotary Club recently. In the matter of the cane and strap, he said, there was the right to use both in the United States, “but it must be a long time since either was used.” “The principle is that control stifles development,” he continued, “but an awful lot of American children are very overdeveloped.” Dr. Kennedy, who has been working as a Fulbright Scholar at the Galloway street laboratory attached to the Rukuhia Soil Research Station, and who will return to America in two weeks, was a member of a school board in Central New York. The board had as its direct responsibility 1300 pupils and 65 teachers. It was responsible for the school’s building programme, its educational programme, which has to comply with certain minimum requirements, the extra activities, the “hiring and firing” of teachers, and the budget. Low Salaries Dr. Kennedy said it was a matter of regret that the salaries offering to teachers in the United States were such that recruitment had to be made from the lower grades of university students. “Fifty thousand teachers leave the profession each year,” he said, “and this means we would have to capture a quarter of a million

tudents each year to keep up with the rapid growth of the school age population. “Poor wages do not attract the best teachers. Not 50 per cent, of top pupils in mathematics and science go into the teaching profession, there are more attractive Salaries elsewhere. "Recruiting is done from the lower grades and so we have a vicious circle. There is also not sufficient between good and poor teachers. Teachers are accepted on three years’ probation at the discretion of the school board. After that period they are on ‘tenure.’ Once having reached this stage, the teacher has adequate protection —if his services are to be disposed of, the teachers themselves are asked for opinions on the offender.” Scholastic Comparisons Dr. Kennedy said that he found his own children, 13 and 11 years, more advanced in arithmetic than children of similar age in New Zealand and ’thought that this was caused largely through the use of decimal coinage in America. However, New Zealand was well ahead in English, particularly in writing. New Zealand had also a very strong point in that school activitives carried on the development of the child. “This lack in our services is part of the circle,” he said. “Our low wages attract poorer teachers, who do not put extra time into their school work. Half the men teachers have outside jobs as well as their teaching jobs.”