TECHNICAL WORK

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 44, 20 August 1925, Page 6

TECHNICAL WORK

TYPE OF INSTRUCTION QUESTIONED

CONFERENCE RESOLUTIONS,

The annual conference of boards of managers of technical schools was continued at the Wellington Technical College, Mount Cook, yesterday. Mr. H. S. W. King presided. A remit from Stateford, urging that the Government be asked to consider placing on the land boys f who have taken an agricultural course at a technical- high school, was not carried. INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOL. An important question dealt with by the conference was that of the type of instruction being offered in the technical colleges. The conference decided that it was advisable that technological instruction should be further developed on the scientific side, and that this should be the principal aim of the technical colleges. • ■ Mr. J. R. Kirk, of Gisborne, pointed out that at present the learned professions were overcrowded, and that salaries earned in many professions were very' lowV' 'Yet plasterers were demanding 4s an hour, and were getting it on the ground that the work demanded a high degree of skill, and there were very few men qualified to do it. He said that .it was essential that in technical colleges it should be the care of the boards of managers that the proper type of men were,turned oiit. . He thought that the Apprentices Bill that had been passed by Parliament was necessary in order to overcome an acute position that had arisen in regard to apprenticeship. He said technical education in New Zealand was not getting as far as it should be for the money spent, and he recommended that the conference seriously consider ascertaining the cause. In reply it was asserted that technical colleges were being driven in some centres to substitute instruction of a general nature for that of technological nature by virtue of the fact that there were two serious obstacles to development of the technological courses. It was pointed out in the first place that every encouragement was being given to the pupils of secondary schools to take courses leading to a definite qualification. Advanced courses were therefore most common in secondary schools, and hardly existent in the technical schools. Matriculation, no doubt, supplied a qualification of a well-known and well- ' understood standard, both in respect to intellect and industry, and on account of its general value in this respect was often accepted as a desirable qualification in an entrant to trade or industry. Technical education had been pursued in this country for twenty years, and yet practically nothing had h'een done to systematise the technological courses and I provide qualifications for student*, who pursued the full course for three or four years. It was pointed out that thp efforts of the technical colleges to, provide higher instruction of the technological nature asked for was prevented by the';fact that the Education Department was apparently quite unwilling to grant the equipment necessary if technical schools were to provide technology , cal instruction of the higher .type. Con- ! stant reference, it was said, was made publicly to the tendency' towards the professions, yet the Education Department considered that grants of £5000 per annum to equip the higher courses of technical colleges, as against, costs of £20,000 to £30,000 per annum to encourage secondary school boys was a right measure in order to stop that drift. The conference- carried the following resolution : "That the policy of the Education Department with reference to the provision of equipment of technical colleges is not sufficiently liberal to 'ensure that adequate courses may be provided for apprentices ' attending the evening ■classes, and further, that the present system of obtaining funds for the purohase.of apparatus and materials for the use of students- in technical schools, is not satisfactory, and should be replaced by a system under which boards of managers could be given substantial and determinable amounts to be expended at their discretion. A committee consisting of Mr. Sage, Mr. Trimble, and Mr. Luxford, and Dr. Hansen, was set up to bring down' a report in regard to the new scale of fees for technical schools.