School TV Trial Sought

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30736, 28 April 1965, Page 1

School TV Trial Sought

If member schools agree, the Christchurch Secondary Schools’ Council will ask the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation to inaugurate educational television trials in Canterbury in the near future. Programmes beamed to schools for about half an hour a day are envisaged.

Mr C. E. Fenwick (Hillmorton High School) said his board had been discussing the innovation at its last three meetings. It had difficulty in securing up-to-date information but understood that in Britain 2300 schools were

equipped to take 8.8. C. programmes in 1960 and that another 2000 were now taking LTV., each for about 10 half-hours weekly.

“Hillmorton is not interested in closed circuit television, it is not interested in tbe claim that television can save putting a teacher in front of the class; it is interested because it believes open telecasts to schools must come and that they could be of tremendous benefit” Mr Fenwick said.

Two secondary advantages were that parents would become interested in class work through watching the same programme as their children —what the Americans called “technical fall-out" rubbing oft on adults—and that children might learn to watch general television more critically. The time had come for some experimental area to be chosen in New Zealand andi

Hillmorton believed Christchurch most suitable because of interest in the project and the teachers and material available to help. The chairman (Mr W. J. Cartwright) said it was certainly time New Zealand made its own trials to suit local conditions. This move might also be timely as a new chairman of the N.Z.B.C. had just been appointed. When Professor G. Jobberns asked what proportion of the school day might be taken with television, Mr Fenwick said perhaps half an hour a day would be sufficient at the outset. If this was inconvenient in school time for the television authorities, perhaps longer sessions on fewer days might be tried. The council agreed to refer the question to its member schools (delegates seemed keenly interested) and decide on the next step next month.