TECHNICAL EDUCATION

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 57, 5 September 1917, Page 2

TECHNICAL EDUCATION

QUESTION OP EXTENSION

EVENING OR DAYTIME CLASSES?

Among the special topics dealt with by the Minister of Education in his annual report is that of the extension of technical education. Referring to this important subject the report says: —

"Of about fifteen thousand pupils returned as having left public schools last year, over five thousand proceeded to secondary education at district high schools, secondary schools, and technical high schools, while over two thousand were admitted to technical classes, many of the latter becoming at the same'time wage-earners. These figures must be regarded as only approximately correct, but it is probably safe to assume that about half of the pupils who left the public schools last year did not continue their education, Of this number, about 75 per cent reached the age of fourteen without having passed Standard VI., and hence left the public school without a certificate qualifying them for further free education. It is not unlikely that among this number there are many who would, if facilities for appropriate further education were placed within their reach, eventually fit themEelves to enter the ranks of the industrial workers of the Dominion. The recent extension of the regulations governing free places providing for free education at classes related to industrial occupations (including agriculture and domestic occupations) of pupils leaving the public school without the recognised qualification for further free education will enable the technical schools to move in the direction indicated. These provide, inter alia, for the free education of recommended pupils over fourteen years of age who have left the public schools not more than six months previously without obtaining a Standard VI. certificate qualifying for further free education. Pupils thus admitted must take subjects bearing upon a trade or industry, including agricultural and domestic occupations, but not including commercial subjects. An increase in the scale of payment is provided to assist the finances of technical high schools and also those of rural classes, tho maintenance of which ■ is generally more costly than that of urban classes. These new features are in the direction of making a differentiation between the test or qualification required for further admission to high schools, which will tend to give a bias toward technical and industrial training. In addition, parents whose circumstances necessitate the sending of their children out to work immediately they may leave school will be able to secure further free education for such children.

"It is recognised that the proposals under cpnsideratian, which do not involve more than an extension cf the present system of voluntary attendance, are but a step towards the solution of the problem of post-primary education, with particular reference to the adolescent wage-earner, and a problem which has been engaging the attention of educationists and social reformers for many years. Hitherto voluntary attendance at evening classes has for the most part been relied on. and, although large numbers of young people have undoubtedly benefited thereby, there is a growing conviction in tho minds of a large body of thinking men and women Hhat there 'is a Irmit to 1 the usefulness of the-evening class, and that that limit has been reached. It is now generally admitted that the instruction to be effective must be compulsory, aud must be in the daytime. Compulsory attendance at evening classes has been tried in Sootland, and has proved a. failure so far as the general application of compulsion is concerned. In Mew Zealand legislative provision for compulsory attendance has been in existence for. seven years, but the fact remains that last year 'compulsory regulations' were operative in only seventeen school districts, confined to four education districts, all in the North Island. Ac illustrating tho trend of thought in England on this important question, reference may be made to the report, -recently published, of the Departmental Committee set up by the British Board of Education on juvenile education in relation'to employment after the war. Of the twenty-one recommendations made by the Committee one of the most significant is as follows :—"That it be an obligation upon all young persons between fourteen and eighteen years of age to attend such day continuation classes as jjjay be prescribed for them by the local education authorities during a number of hours to be fixed by statute, which should not be less than eight hours a week for forty weeks in the year.' Certain exceptions are made which need not be detailed here. The Committee pointe to numerous examples of experiments in 'time off' by prominent business firms in England as evidence that the trend of thought amongst employers gives reasonable ground for the hope that a, more general i-eform in the direction in which they themselves point will be met with sympathy and co-operation. The recommendations of the Committee as a whole may well be kept in view here in New Zealand as constituting an ideal to be gradually worked to as local circumstances and conditions permit, not the least important of these being the attitude of the people as to what they intend to make of their boys and girls through the forces of industry and society."