“Farming Not Place For School Misfits”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31375, 22 May 1967, Page 1

“Farming Not Place For School Misfits”

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, May 21.

In five years the 15-year-old school leaver could face unemployment, said the general secretary of Federated Farmers (Mr J. G. Pryde) yesterday.

Considerable problems could arise if adequate steps were not taken to ensure the training of these children, he told delegates at the annual conference of the Wellington region of the Post - primary Teachers’ Association.

In the challenging times that faced the economy, it was unlikely that the state of overfull employment which had existed since the war would continue, said Mr Pryde. Society was demanding greater competence and skills from its labour force.

The challenge for schools was to provide a course of studies more adapted to the requirements of the pupils, “rather than to force them into the strait-jacket of the all-powerful school certificate requirements,” said Mr Pryde. A large percentage of the 3500 who entered farming each year were 15-year-old school leavers. “The trend will be to raise the age level of school leavers because the requirements of agriculture are increasing.” Mr Pryde said that Federated Farmers had so far not supported any move to increase the leaving age to 16 because it did not believe that compulsion could solve the problem.

“But farming cannot afford to be a repository for the misfits at school,” he said.