The Press SATURDAY, JULY 4, 1959. Wider Horizons in Education

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28938, 4 July 1959, Page 12

The Press SATURDAY, JULY 4, 1959. Wider Horizons in Education

An important policy decision on education is a rarity at trade and economic conferences.

That such a decision was taken at the Commonwealth conference in Montreal last September indicated a healthy awareness of the power of education to increase economic and social welfare. In their final communique, the delegates at Montreal affirmed that “ expansion “of education and training “ within the Commonwealth is “ an essential condition of eco- “ nomic development ”. With this in mind, the conference approved in principle a new and ambitious scheme of scholarships and fellowships intended to bind the Commonwealth countries more closely together by intellectual as well as economic ties. Details of the scheme were left to a special Commonwealth educational conference. This conference will meet at Oxford from July 15 to July 29. The New Zealand delegation will include the Director of Education (Mr C. E. Beeby ) and the Vice-Chancellor of Canterbury University (Dr. F. J. Llewellyn). Fittingly, the conference will assemble at Rhodes House; but, whereas Cecil Rhodes dreamt of training leaders for a colonial Empire, the delegates at Oxford will fit their plans to an expanding

Commonwealth in which colonial relationships with the Motherland have been supplanted almost entirely by the less formal bonds of a voluntary multi-racial society. Since Rhodes’s day the concept of the interdependence of

nations has become paramount in British constitutional thought; mutual aid has been recognised as necessary (and expedient); and newly-independent nations, eager for modern skills and European learning, have depleted the other countries’ resources of leadership. International projects such as the Fulbright and Colombo Plan educational exchange programmes have demonstrated the benefits to be derived from community of knowledge. In

the world of today there can scarcely be too many opportunities for spreading and sharing education. The Montreal scholarship scheme will therefore be a desirable supplement to existing Commonwealth agencies for promoting higher education. The Montreal conference hoped to arrange for 1000 Commonwealth scholars to study each year in Commonwealth countries other than their own. The United Kingdom undertook responsibility for half the programme, and Canada for a quarter. The Montreal delegates instructed the special educational conference to “ consider “ what might be done to expand “ and improve mutual assist- “ ance in this field between

“ Commonwealth countries, with “special reference to the sup- “ ply and training of teachers ”, According to Lord Home, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, the Oxford conference will initiate a new drive to advance education in the Commonwealth*The conference will decide the period for which the scholarship scheme will be organised initially. It will be charged with devising definite arrangements for training specialist .workers at a rate commensurate with the Commonwealth’s economic growth, and with determining what assistance governments and other agencies should offer toards recruiting university and other teachers for the poorer countries. Although substantial finance for the scholarship scheme already seems assured, much will depend upon the cooperation of the smaller Commonwealth countries. New Zealand, which has gained considerably as a result of similar schemes, stands to benefit particularly from the increase of academic contacts. So isolated a country can easily lull itself into intellectual complacency; Sd personal comparisons of ucational standards, either by Commonwealth visitors to New Zealand or by New Zealanders overseas, are the best safeguard against deterioration.