Abolition Of Post-Primary Studentships Advocated

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30313, 13 December 1963, Page 25

Abolition Of Post-Primary Studentships Advocated

"Th* Press" Special Service AUCKLAND, December 11,

Entry to a free profession appealed more to the able pupil than an inducement to enter a protected one, said the headmistress of Auckland Girls’ Grammar School, Miss R. I. Gardner, at the prize-giving ceremony in the Town Hall.

Many really able girls wanted to go on to university but did not know how they could manage it, she said. “They may want to teach.” Miss Gardner said, “but are not sure enough to want to bind themselves at the age of 17 for the next seven or eight years. Post-primary studentships therefore make no appeal to them. “University scholarships are so hotly contested, and so few’ in New Zealand fall to girls that no one dare gamble on getting one.

“Higher school certificate will pay university fees and bring £5O a year. This, with holiday earnings, would be sufficient to scratch along on if the family could help, but not all families are in the position to do so, and not

all families will, where a girl is concerned.

“The temptation, therefore, is for the bright language girl to enter training college rather than university, and for the mathematics-science girl to reach for a technician's job instead of qualifying for a degree.” Miss Gardner said that each year she came more surely to the conclusion that the post-primary teacher's studentship should be abolished. The money saved should be put to increasing the value and the number of university scholarship awards, and giving financial assistance at university to all appearing high on the credit list in the examination.

“In this way,” Miss Gardner said, “more of the able w’ould be encouraged to enter university, the choice of

a career could be postponed till a degree was won, the feeling of being snared too early in the education net would be avoided, and the status of the teaching profession might rise since the bribe of any easy passage through university would be removed.”