Hundreds missing part of education—claim

Press, 2 January 1985, Page 26

Hundreds missing part of education —claim

PA Wellington Hundreds of children were missing part of their pre-school education, said the principal of the Correspondence School, Mr Ormond Tate. He was speaking at the school’s break-up ceremony in Wellington which was broadcast on national radio. Mr Tate said there were so many positive things about learning by correspondence that it was easy to overlook the problems, or to accept as inevitable • difficulties that need not exist, and forget the need to ensure that correspondence pupils had equal educational opportuni-

■ ties as those in ordinary schools. Mr Tate said hundreds of primary correspondence pupils were not getting the same personal attention and teaching as pupils in conventional primary schools because the Correspondence School was the only one in New Zealand with a ratio of one teacher for 35 primary school pupils. Other schools had one teacher for 31 pupils and in rural areas it was one teacher for 25 pupils. It simply meant that a correspondence teacher spent less time teaching each pupil, he said.