‘Flexible’ schools urged

Press, 21 May 1981, Page 7

‘Flexible’ schools urged

Secondary schools with “modular timetables,” catering for adult and individual interests, and keeping “flexible” hours, have been recommended to the New Zealand Secondary School Boards’ Association. Speaking to the Association’s regional conference in Christchurch,, the associate director of the Christchurch Polytechnic, Miss Jean Herbison, said that elements of a “new social order” were beginning to fall into place. The main change likely to occur in the 1980 s and 1990 s was the recognition and acceptance of education as a continuous process, affecting people all through their lives. Schools could no longer pro-

vide all the resources necessary for living, she said. Education had to become integrated more with Work and with life. Schools would necessarily become more informal and more accessible. They, would also become more meaningful and more relevant, acting aS learning centres available to the public. In another decade, Miss Herblson said, computerised learning would be available in the home, with terminals attached to television sets. The education system would be required to become dependent on supporting agencies, with a worth-while liaison between the school and the technical institutes.

“That is not crystal-ball gazing,” she said. “It is happening now.” . The curriculum would have to reflect the changing needs of the “big generation” of the 1950 s and 1960 s baby boom. Schools could no longer afford to turn people off from learning, or deny them the pleasure of going on with their learning throughout their lives. Schools should cease to be reserved for children but become places of learning for the future and for adults, she said. The school system no longer had a monopoly on information; teachers ,were merely channels through which pupils could get at the? knowledge they needed.