Major changes at Hagley H.S.

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32564, 25 March 1971, Page 12

Major changes at Hagley H.S.

(By our education reporter) One of the first attempts in New Zealand to break down the rigid system of secondary-school courses will begin next year at Hagley High School.

The decision to begin the new plan of secondary school courses has been taken in conjunction with the plan to limit the third-form intake of the school next year.

It is felt by school authorities that the school would provide a more worth-while education for all its pupils if it resisted the present tendency for secondary schools to grow larger. (The present roll of the school is almost 1000.) The new course structure, which is a radical departure from the traditional divisions of commercial, academic, technical, homecraft and vocational courses will mean that all new entrants will take a basic course covering all core subjects in the first year. . ' Alongside this the thirdform pupils, and later the fourth-form pupils will be allowed to choose from a list of subject options. These include social education, art, music, woodwork, metalwork, shorthand, typing, French, technical drawing, home economics, clothing and reading.

These options will be offered in a six-monthly semester system, every pupil being required to cover at least four options in one year. If fourth forms are eventually brought into the new general introductory course it is possible that the old divisions between the third and fourth formers will be removed altogether, third and fourth formers studying the different stages of each subject option together.

The new course structure means that prospective pupils must choose their secondary school courses within the next few months while still in Form n will no longer be required to do so. At present an 11 to 12-year-old pupil must choose a course, and this might restrict his later opportunities. Decision deferred The principal of the school (Mr I. D. Leggat) said yesterday that asking a Form II pupil to tie himself down to a secondary course almost a year before he entered secondary school was unwise.

“Such a scheme only pigeon-holes the pupil. They are too young at 11 years plus to make this decision. With this new scheme the

decision is deferred until they are aged 14 plus, and this then will be made after a period during which the pupils have gained Wider experiences from a more balanced curriculum.” Ideally the first two years of any pupil’s secondary school career, Mr Leggat said, should be involved in exploration, diagnosis and perhaps some remedial work. “We are confident that the new plan, different though it may be, will provide children with a better preparation for what they will have to face outside the school gates,” he said. “Sounder basis** It would give all new pupils a sounder basis than is now possible with the traditional secondary school course structure.

Accompanying the introduction of the new plan next year will be another move unknown in other coeducational multi-course secondary schools in New Zealand. This has been termed a “Volunteer Service Within.” Under this plan senior pupils, over 50 of whom have already volunteered, will give up one of their own free periods to act in a pupil selfhelp programme with younger, less experienced pupils. “It is surely one of the tasks of any secondary school to assist all levels of attainment to live with each other,” Mr Leggat said. The decision to introduce new course structures to Hagley High School and to limit the school roll comes after a time when some doubt had been cast on the future of the school. School’s future

With a declining "catchment" area caused by inner city industrial growth, and suggestions that the school might be used as a satellite technical institute, the school’s future was indefinite until late last year when the regional superintendent of education (Mr H. M. McMillan) gave the assurance that there was “absolutely no possibility” that the school would be closed—even after the next decade.

The new plans for Hagley High School, which is among the oldest schools in New Zealand, mark another sfage in what has been a colourful career.

The school began as a Presbyterian church school near Hagley Park in 1858 and in the last 112 years it has been a church high school, a State primary school, a normal school, an intermediate and district high school (the first of its kind in an urban area) and finally the high school to which the old Christchurch Technical College transferred in 1966. It was at this stage that the school changed its name from Christchurch West High School to Hagley High School.