Order of merit results wanted

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33534, 15 May 1974, Page 14

Order of merit results wanted

Scholarship winners should have their names published in order of merit with reference to their schools, the southern regional conference of the Secondary School Boards’ Association decided yesterday.

The conference voted 23-18 for this form of publication, after a motion to publish the names in order of merit without the schools’ names was lost on the casting vote of the president (Mr A. Sutherland). In his report, Mr Sutherland said that it could be wise to consider lowering the school leaving age from 15 to 13, or at the completion of the Form II year, but the time at which a child actually left school should be decided by the parents.

Mr Sutherland criticised “change” being used as an overnight cure-all. “The person with the best representation, or the best forum within the community, or both, and whose advocacy meets the unspoken desires of the Government will have his or her ‘bug’ acted on,” Mr Sutherland said.

“The prime approach seems to be to hear from the masses to the possible detriment of the voice of the experienced. We can have far too much I change. There is adequate | change under-way already and experimentation is an everpresent happening in the education system in New Zealand.”

Thirty-three remits were on the order paper at the conference. One proposed that the duties and position of careers advisors in schools be taken over by guidance counsellors.

A remit deploring the action of the Department of Education making maternity leave available to single

teachers was lost. The Temuka High School Board was concerned at the moral effect this policy could have on pupils and teachers. A remit pressing for the payment of amateur sportsmen and sportswomen on the basis of national representation, rather than on the basis of selected sports only, was passed. The Hagley High School Board said that a skier selected to represent New Zealand had been forced to take leave without pay because skiing was not a “selected sport.”