Adult Maori Students Special Needs

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30737, 29 April 1965, Page 8

Adult Maori Students Special Needs

"The Press” Special Service HAMILTON, April 27.

An alteration in the School Certificate examination regulations to provide for the special needs of adult students was suggested by Mrs R. Sage, Dominion president of the Maori Women’s Welfare League. It would help these students, she said, if their course could be for a period of two years instead of one. This would definitely ease their burden. In some families both parents were attending the classes, said Mrs Sage. She had studied the courses they were taking at night classes and with the Correspondence School.

It appeared, she said, that for the average student the course was a very difficult one. It meant four night classes and correspondence study each week. To encourage students to continue their studies the period of preparation for the examination should be extended.

A proposal asking the Education Department to revise the examination regulations might come up for discussion at the Dominion conference in July of the Maori Women’s Welfare League. Mrs Sage commended the Maoris’ new attitude toward education.

“I congratulate my people most heartily,” she said, “for their obvious enthusiasm and for the shining example they are setting.

“It will stimulate our young people and early school leavers. It will show them the essential need for education in all the phases that are necessary for their future.”

Mrs Sage spoke in Maori to the hundreds of Maori adults seeking to improve their education.

“My earnest desire,” she said, “is for you to carry on and not be daunted.”