KRAUS-WEBER TESTS

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28983, 26 August 1959, Page 16

KRAUS-WEBER TESTS

Reply To Attacks On Validity

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 25.

Recent criticisms of the KrausWeber tests attacking their validity would appear to be nothing more than an attempt by the Education Department to evade action in the matter of fitness, said the vice-president of the Physical Education Society of New Zealand (Mr A. S. Lewis) in a statement issued today. “The results of the tests have been before the department for 18 months, and there has been no indication that they have been ‘studied’ at all,” he said.

Mr Lewis, who is attending the biennial congress of the society, which opened at Trentham today, said it was wf 11 known there were imprefections in the tests, as there were in any tests, but it should be emphasised that the claims of unfitness among the children were not based on the Kraus-Weber tests alone.

“The Kraus-Weber tests are tests of ‘minimum’ fitness,” said Mr Lewis. “It is because of this and the large failure rate, together with the relationship known to exist between failure and certain low-back disorders, that the Physical Education Society is pressing for departmental action. The high failure rate in New Zealand is merely a reflection of the lack of attention given to physical education in the schools. “Whatever the limitations of the tests, it should be recognised that these measure the same things with anv children in any country, and that the 38 per cent, failure figure with New Zealand children compares most unfavourably with the 9 per cent, failure of European children. The fact that our children are not quite as unfit as American children is no reason for complacency,” said Mr Lewis.