TRAINING COLLEGE PASSES. TO THE EDITOR.

Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 23, 14 June 1886, Page 4

TRAINING COLLEGE PASSES. TO THE EDITOR.

Sir— Yonr paper of the 10th instant contains a paragraph purporting to be a return of the passes mado. by tho studonts for tho six yoars onding May, 1886. The paragraph is a copy of a roturn supplied to me three weeks before the last meeting of the Board, thorefore, if your informant had been desirous of laying it beforo tho Board, ho had ample timo to do so, as it was prepared some weeks previouß. It waa upon this msitnly that I foundod my statements. I complained to tho Board that tho roturn was misleading, inasmuch as aotual passes, whioh ontitle the candidates to a certificate, and partial passes, which aro, in roality, partial failures, wero all ineludod, and it was quite impossiblo for me to separate ono from the other. I had thns to arrives at what I wanted, viz., tho number of certificates obtained, by a process of reasoning whioh, as I admitted, could only be approximately true. On tho subject of passes and partial passoH allow mo to make mysolf understood l>y tho general public. Tho Dopartmont of Education has hitherto given candidates who havo done fairly well in .oortain subjects, credit for the work they have done, -and the candidate is requirod to pasn in tho Bubjoots in whioh he failed, at a Biibsoquont examination. This partial pass does not ontitlo to a oortificato. Any institution thoreforo that takes credit for partial pauses as woll as certificates obtained, may mako a fair show on paper, whereas the actual numbor of certificates may bo small. An a very ainn.ll percentage of tho > students in our Training Collogo have obtained their certificates at one sitting it in plain to bo aeon that the majority of them havo been twice credited to the institution as passes. I will say no more at prosont, as I am pndoavouring to b,ring abqut an enquiry jntp {he working of the institution' to ascertain whether the results cannot be made in some degree commensurate with the large expenditure, lam, Ac, Joif>f Young.