EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29278, 9 August 1960, Page 14

EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

“Long-Term Plan Made Difficult”

Long-term planning of educational research in New Zealand is made difficult by a perhaps unavoidable preoccupation with financial concerns, according to the chairman of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (Professor C. L. Bailey). In his annual report for 1959-60, Professor Bailey says that this preoccupation is “probably unavoidable in the period of rapid economic and social change that New Zealand, in common with a large part of the world, is passing through. “At the same time, the large number of immediate and pressing problems calling for research in such a period of rapid growth and development does not make it easy for us to take a long-term view of the research that would be of the greatest significance for the educational future of New Zealand,” the report says. “In the coming year, we are planning to approach commercial and industrial organisations once again for financial support. While the same tradition of private endowment for research does not yet exist in this country as it does in the United States, there is no reason to assume that the industrial and commercial interests of the country are not equally alive to the long-term advantages of educational improvement “Events abroad in the Last decade have re-emphasised very dramatically just how much a industrial and economic development -depends upon the quality of its educational institutions; it is not surprising then that the most rapidly developing countries have been increasing their support for educational research. “The year 1959 saw the completion of 25 years of research carried out under the sponsorship of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. The first council was set up by the Carnegie Corporation of New York at the end of 1933,” says the report