Unified Education System Urged

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32053, 30 July 1969, Page 16

Unified Education System Urged

New Zealand’s educational system should be reorganised into a totally unified service, in the opinion of a Fulbright professor from the University of North Carolina, Professor D. W. Russell, who last year made a study of the education of gifted children in this country.

“The education of New Zealand children from entrance classes through Form VI should be a system unmarked by cleavages from one level to another," he says in a report published by the University of Canterbury, where he was visiting professor.

Noting that there are two distinct divisions, primary and secondary, he says each has its own heritage, scheme of teacher education, administrative structure, salary schedule and professional organisation “It is recommended that a national study be initiated with the specific purpose of reorganising the educational system into a totally unified service, and that such a study not be swayed by previous organisational reports," he says.

“The final three decades of the twentieth century demand reorganisation if the national school system is to be a truly functional investment,” Professor Russell adds. “Hard Look” Advocated

He recommends a hard look at teacher education, intermediate schools, Forms 111 to VI curricula and school certificate examinations. He feels these points are significant in the education of gifted children.

“The preparation of teachers should be regarded as equally significant as the preparation of physicians, engineers, historians, economists, or any other career for which a university degree appears to be mandatory.” he says.

Both universities and teachers’ colleges must be willing to go to work on a functional and more unified programme for the preparation of the teacher, he says. “As long as the two programmes persist, so will the two professional organisations, neither situation promoting unity. “Difficult To Justify”

“Such situations as primary and secondary inspectors operating quite apart from each other, particularly teachers’ colleges that boast of two principals, and the disparity in salary schedules are difficult to justify,” Professor Russell says.

“At the base of such difficulties lies the preparation of

primary teachers on the one hand, quite separate from the preparation of secondary teachers on the other.” Dealing with intermediate schools, he says that in other nations a two-year educational unit has proved financially unsound.

“Moreover, two years as an articulative period between primary and secondary education is not commensurate with modem thinking and research in the area of child growth and development." Professor Russell says the concept of the three-year to five-year “middle school,” which demands closer working together of primary and secondary educators, is worthy of careful study in relation to its suitability to the New Zealand educational structure.

Trends abroad, he says, lean toward a 4-44 organisational structure with an idealistic goal of a nongraded organisation. School Certificate “Flexibility in the secondary school curriculum pattern, along with variation and innovation of instruction tend to be hindered by the pressures of school certificate examinations,” Professor Russell says. i “This has reached the stage of unwarranted pressure on students with altogether too much significance linked to the examinations themselves.

“This pressure has been transmitted to business and industry, where criteria of employment inevitably narrow the field to those who have passed the school certificate examination in specific areas.”

National statistics relative to numbers passing the university entrance examination and continuing successfully to the university demand a distinct leaning toward the comprehensive high school, with varied curriculum patterns. Effective accreditation of secondary schools and upgrading where necessary should go hand in hand with a move to the comprehensive high school, he says.

Professor Russell also emphasises that every school should be organised and constructed with the library as its focal point.