FREE PLACE PUPILS

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 118, 12 February 1926, Page 3

FREE PLACE PUPILS

WHAT TO DO WITH THEM NEW POLICY TO BE CONSIDERED At the deputation to the Minister of Education yesterday with regard to provision for accommodating the large number of pupils enrolled at the Wellington College, Sir Janies Parr referred to the enormous demands on the Government for additional accommodation asked for throughout the Dominion, to provide for free-place pupils at the secondary schools, as well as for hostel accommodation. Of the seventy e -xt- ra pupils this year lie pointed out that fifty of them could be accommodated at the Technical College, and it could liardlv be expected that any Government could make provision at Wellington College for more scholars when the course he suggested was available. .About a quarter, or a third of the free-place pupils ought not to go to Wellington College at all. In that connection he hoped next year to be able to make very important proposals with regard to secondary education in New Zealand, and to provide for education to suit the children concerned. The late headmaster of the Auckland Grammar School (Air. Tibbs) had said that about half of the freeplace pupils only attended for twelve months. If the parents wanted secondary education for their sons they must undertake to send them for a much longer term. 'The figures showed that 25 per cent, of the free-place pupils left at the end of their first year. Air. T. R. Cresswell (principal of Wellington College) said lie would have no objection at all to administer regulations in the direction referred to if the Department would take the responsibility.

Sir James Parr said they had also to consider the effect of the junior high school to be built at Coutts Street, which he hoped to have going by the end of the year. It might be that the Department would try the. idea of a secondary school and a junior high school together there, a new type of high school, taking a boy at from 12 years to 18 years of age. Something of that sort was done at the Waitaki High School, and had been proved to be a great, success. The lads seemed to have greater alertness and brightness. than in the higher standards of the primary schools.