ACCREDITING LIST

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 124, 21 February 1944, Page 6

ACCREDITING LIST

Explanation By Director Of Education ANNUAL REVISION

Requests on behalf of the Northcote and Opotiki District High Schools, that they should be added to the list of schools for accrediting tor university entrance, made to the Auckland Education Board, cannot be granted 'before 1945. This was explained by the Director of Education, Dr. C. E. Beeby. who was present at the mcetiqg while th's matter was being discussed.

Dr. Beeby, made it plain that the fact of its not being placed on the list did not cast any slur on a school. The compilation of the accrediting list was the responsibility of the senate of the University of New Zealand, after it had consulted the Education Department/ In this particular the senate had been more generous than it had been expected to be, Dr. Beeby said. The great difficulty was that in a school which had only one or two entrance candidates each year, however admirable its record had been, it was very hard to fix a permanent standard. In the larger schools one could form a pretty shrewd judgment of where the line of qualification could 'be drawn. Mr. A. Burns: Would it not have been better to hold over the list till the liaison officers were appointed?

The director agreed that in some respects that would have been the preferable course, but the senate, could not be accused of haste: the_subject had been under discussion for 15 or 20 years. Another factor was the impossibility of specializing in Form VI work with a small staff. The purpose of the district high schools was to give the fullest possible course for the majority. This required different staffing arrangements and schools had very rften been diverted from their main purpose by the necessity for bringing a few pupils up to scholarship standard. The granting of bursaries was intended to obviate this difficulty. On the point raised by Mr. M. H. Priestley, that reports of senior inspectors should be made available to principals of schools, Mr. H. McChesney, senior inspector of the board, explained that he had obtained the permission of the Education Department for the publication of general comments. Mr. S. B. Sims said that for his part he was unable to understand the anxiety of principals to have their schools listed; he would have preferred scholars to gam university entrance the hard way.. . Dr. Beeby: “Accrediting is going to be the hard way; you believe me. .He added that as the list would be revised annually, the schools on behalf of which the application had been made could apply next year.