PROFICIENCY CERTIFICATES

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 76, 31 March 1914, Page 2

PROFICIENCY CERTIFICATES

■«■ ' i<l»' ' ■»■■■» VIEWS OF WKUiINCSTON SCHOOL INSPECTORS. "There would appear to bo considerable confusion in the public mind as to thu tenure and privileges of free places in secondary schools, and recently the board and its olHcials were subjected to Botno censure ill a matter quite beyond their piovinco or control," state the Wellington School lnsjiectors, in their annual report. "The qualifications for, and the admission to, free places in secondary schools are entirely governed by tho Education Department's regulations^ No difficulty has been experienced with regard to the male fiee place holders, tho Boys' College now being .ible to provide for them all ; but trouble has arisen with the Girls' College, where accommodation is limited, and, as in 1912 the proficiency results were given out in each school at the close of the examinations, some of the girJs from the schools which were examined last, were, owing to the lack of accommodation, refused admission at the college. This, however, was not the fault of the board, nor was it to be supposed that the standard of proficiency should be conformed to the seating accommodation that might happen to be available at the CJ iris* College. We wish to make this point quite clear, as an idea has got abroad that, in order to reduce the number of free place holders, the proficiency examination was this year made more stringent than in previous years. The percentage of passes— 62.7 — distinctly shows that this was not the case, for, though these figures are lower than in 1912, thoy are only some 2 per cent, below the average for the last six years. The advent of the free place system in the Dominion, and of what is practically its equivalent in the Old Country, was originally viewed with great suspicion by secondary authorities. It was thought that the secondary school would suffer, if not in scholarship, certainly in regard to "tone." It is, theroforcj the more gratifying to find the headmasters of some of the most efficient! grammar schools at Home bearing voluntary testimony to the contrary. In the Dominion, however, there is a tendency on the part of secondary authorities to harp (mineccsNirily, we think) on the unfitness of (."Targe proportion of our free pupils to take up secondary y.ork. They maintain, moreover, that it does not ' pay ' the State to pioyide such pupils with free secondary instruction, and that the standard o"f requirements for the proficiency certificate should accordingly be raised. Now the four years' course of instruction in the average secondary school is practically dominated by the requirements of the University entrance examination. We are quite prepared to admit the unfitness of the average free .pupil to enter on the rigid text book and homework course which preparation for such an examination entails : and we are further prepared to admit that it may not pay the State or anyone else to provide tree instruction in such a course; but, fortunately perhaps for the State, there are other means of secondary education available besides thoso provided by the secondary school pioper The district high schools and the technical schools, in addition to meeting the requirements of the matriculation examination, provide practical secondary education in ruial, commercial, engineering, nnd trade pursuits generally. The benefit to tho country's commercial and industrial activities of these institutions is being more appreciated every day. We hear no complaints of the unfitness of the free pupil to enter them, or that it does not pay the State to provide free instruction in them ; and we 1 should think it a matter for very grave concern if, in the sole interests of a rigid grammar school course of questionable utility, there should be such an increase in the-«reqnirements of the proficiency certificates as would materially affect the interests of that large proportion of free pupils who now avail themselves of the facilities for secondary instruction provided by district high schools and technical schools."