The Press WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 1961. Graded School Certificate

Press, Volume C, Issue 29557, 5 July 1961, Page 14

The Press WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 1961. Graded School Certificate

The decision of the! Education Department to show on each school certificate the subjects and the grade in which the candidate passed is sensible. Formerly a student’s certificate gave no indication of whether he had good marks in a well-rounded course or had scraped through in an ill-assorted, collection of subjects. The; change, which should benefit both students and prospective employers, gives effect to a recommendation of an expert committee that inquired into the whole question of the school certificate examination. It should not be forgotten that the graded school certificate was one of the least important recommendations of the committee. What has happened to the others? The really important recommendation was that a special board should be set up to define and maintain standards in the school certificate examination, because of a “gradual decline . . . “in the overall standard “of a pass ". The decline is not the fault of the Educa-] tion Department, of examiners, or of the method of scaling. It follows inevitably, unless some attempt is made to establish standards, from the increasing proportion of secondary school pupils that attempts the examination. The committee also proposed other leaving certificates (“ suitably differentiated”)

'showing the standard, other than school certificate, reached by a student after two years, after three years, or at the end of his schooling. No doubt the effideney of the “differentiation” is one of the reasons why the department hesitates about this. An even more controversial recommendation ( was for the institution of !an “honours” school certificate, not very different as an employment qualification from the old “matric. ”, in English, mathematics, and French to begin with. Here, in the guise of an amendment to the school certificate system, the committee suggested a radical depar- i ture in principle, somewhat j ‘resembling the attempts of! some New Zealand univer-l sities to set higher entrance standards. ■ No wonder the then Minister of Education (Mr Skoglund) remarked that some of the recommendations “ may require “ prolonged discussions ”. He might have added that such significant questions could hardly be dealt with i until the Royal Commission |on Education had reported. This prompts the question:why was the committee set up to inquire into part of the field to be covered by a Royal Commission? The graded pass certificate is the obvious kind of administrative reform that the department should have thought of itself without the waste of time in bringing together a group of experts.