Lincoln High School; A Unique Set-Up

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28906, 28 May 1959, Page 11

Lincoln High School; A Unique Set-Up

The Lincoln High School, which achieved full status this year, is unique in New Zealand for its service to a very wide area of small schools, its proximity to major agricultural education and research institutions, and its efforts to cater for pupils of such a back ground.

New Zealand has relied on two main methods of giving education to chidren living in the more remote rural areas. The Correspondence School caters for chidren living in isolated places and for those in sparsely-populated areas a vast organisation of transport by bus has been developed. Lincoln High School owes its existence to one of these systems of buses. It draws pupils from about twenty primary schools scattered over a wide area and including centres as far apart as Dunsandel and* Little River, Greenpark and Sockburn. By bringing children from these areas together, a school with a roll of about 300 has been developed at Lincoln. About 80 per cent, of these pupils go to school by bus.

The school was previously the secondary department of the Lincoln District High School but this year it was converted to separate post-primary status. There is at present a staff of 14 full-time teachers and two part-time. When the building programme set down for' the near future is completed, staff and facilities will be available to provide the children of this district with most of the courses that are available to children in urban areas and in addition, provision is made for courses in horticulture and agriculture. Consolidation The great advantages that consolidation brings in the way of greater variety of teaching strength and of equipment are to some extent offset by the disadvantage of - having practically all the pupils leave for home immediately school finishes so the extra-curricular activities that play an important part in secondary education are somewhat curtailed. The large amount of travelling involved also makes the operation of a parent teacher association rather difficult but some parents have been willing to travel a total distance of more than 50 miles' to attend a P.T.A. function. The school has to provide courses for pupils of widely different backgrounds and aspirations. Most of them come from farms but there is a very significant proportion from semi-urban areas such as Sockburn and Hornby and from townships such as Lincoln and Tai Tapu.

Curriculum This means that there is demand for a wide variety of courses; but the primary object of the school is scattered over a wide area, wide cultural background by a generous allocation of time to the “Core” subjects—English, Social studies, general science, elementary mathematics, art, music and physical education. In addition, all boys do woodwork and all girls dressmaking. After these, specialisation is provided for in an academic course for boys and girls to upper sixth-form level and courses (including school certificate subjects) selected from commerce, horticulture, homecraft, clothing, agriculture, woodwork, technical drawing and art.

As the school has no farm of its own its agricultural Tourse is

based on regular visits to selected farms and to Lincoln College. The school is administrated by an interim committee of control set up by the Canterbury Education Board and consisting of four members of the Education Board and three local representatives. This committee will function for three years. At the end of that time it will be for parents to decide whether a similar committee will continue or whether the school will havp its own local board unattached to the Education Board.