PROBLEM OF SLOW LEARNERS

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28840, 10 March 1959, Page 5

PROBLEM OF SLOW LEARNERS

Difficulty In PostPrimary Schools

New Zealand secondary schools were trying to tackle the education, in a "single stream,” of all post-primary schoolchildren —a task handled in England by diverting some children to secondary modern schools and others to grammar schools, the headmaster of Linwood High School (Mr P. A. Hickling) said last evening. , Mr Hickling was speaking at a meeting of the board of governors of the school. He said that in this country post-primary schools had children in the third forms who were slower than average and could not keep up with others in the class.

“The slow ones are no longer able to keep up with the class and they become a behaviour problem and a disciplinary problem,” It was a problem that postprimary schools would have to face in the next few years. “If you segregate them and put them in a slow learners’ class they tend to become stigmatised, but in regular classes the slow ones refuse to co-operate and this is a nuisance to the teacher and the rest of the class,” said Mr Hickling. Mr Hickling said there were not enough slow learners at the schools to make a special class. The Education Department was interested in the problem, but any work it could do to tackle it would be exploratory, he said. Mr G. N. /launders suggested the board should prepare a remit to be submitted to the annual conference of the Post-primary Schools Boards’ Association. By doing that the matter would come to the notice of the Minister of Education, he said. Mr Saunders said there should be special classes. If there were not enough pupils at one school, a special class eould be set up serving two or three schools. “At the end of two years the children could get some sort of certificate to allow them to take an apprenticeship,” he added. The board decided to have a committee, headed by Mr Hickling frame a remit outlining the problem to send to the annual conference.