UNEMPLOYED NON-MATRIC. BOYS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 55, 8 March 1929, Page 8

UNEMPLOYED NON-MATRIC. BOYS

(To the Editor.)

( , r Sir,—l read with interest the article.■im, "lhe Post" of the 7th hist, concerning the unemployment of so many boys who have attended a secondary school for four, five, or six years, and have not passed the Matriculation . Examination. May I. state that I have a son placed in a similar position. He has been a pupil at Wellington College for five years. In 1927 he sat fbr^" the Matriculation Examination, and failed in Latin. He'again sat the following year, and although he passed in Latin, he came down in mathematics, which is one of his best subjects, and which he obtained 74 per cent, at the 1927 examination. I took him away, from college at the end of 1928, thinking that'his five years at college would find him employment. He is 18% years old. Many firms refuse to take a boy over 16 because he is too old to start to train. Others again want a boy who has a Matriculation. My Boy as weil as many others, have been trying for the past five or six weeks to find employment, but in vain. His five years.at college has been wasted, and he is now too old to start learning a trade. Now, sir, I think it is high time that things should be seen into, and every boy who sits for the Matriculation Examination should be prepared to enter the university. I suggest that a deposit of, say, £10 be paid by all candidates for Matriculation, the deposit to be returned when the candidate enters the university. The firms will then find it very hard to get a Matriculation boy.—l am, etc., PARENT. Petone, Bth March.