Religion: Presbyterian Education: Baptist

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30827, 12 August 1965, Page 18

Religion: Presbyterian Education: Baptist

“On more than one occasion I tried to make it clear to my New Zealand friends that although I am by religion a Presbyterian, in university education I am a wholehearted Baptist.” says Sir David Hughes Parry, chairman of the New Zealand Committee on University Education in 1959, in a New Zealand universities supplement in “The Times,” London. He explained that he believed that the education of the abler young men and women of a country called for toal immersion in the university educational and social pool and not for a casual sprinkling from jets offered course from different streams over a considerable number of years. He had been recalling the committee’s “startling discovery” that 50 per cent of students were part-time. Open Doors

“It is the national policy and practice in New Zealand to offer every qualified young person the opportunity to proceed to a university. And this practice seems to be justified having regard to the acute shortage of graduates in the country,” he says. “But New Zealand like Great Britain is a small country and has a mobile population. So it is important that there should be a common university entrance policy for the whole country. . . . “In view of the practical difficulties experienced in the United Kingdom when facing the problem of a common entrance standard for British universities I was particularly interested in the ‘accrediting’ procedure. "After studying recent reliable surveys of the results of the procedure the New Zealand Universities Committee reported that it saw no reason why the accrediting of university entrants by principals of post-primary schools should be rejected. They offered in general a fair judgment of the capacity of pupils to benefit from university education after observation over a number of years and tests of character and ability.

“The process had not been responsible for the admission to the university of poor students who might have been eliminated by an external examination. On the other hand the system had the outstanding merit that it was geared to reach a judgment on one issue, namely the capacity of a pupil to benefit from university education.

I “In that respect it could be i more reliable than the present system in the United Kingdom which is designed to test two things which are not ’ by any means compatible—- • namely the progress (so far ; as it can be tested by an examination) made by a pupil at school and the prospect of his benefiting from further education at a university."