SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 117, 19 May 1937, Page 7

SECONDARY SCHOOLS

HEADS CONFER

ADDRESS BY MINISTER

Recognition of the work done by private schools was the main theme of a short address which the Minister of Education (the Hon. P. Fraser) gave yesterday to the annual meeting ii the heads of registered secondary schools. Mr. Fraser remarked that he realised that it was a good thing for the State system to have outside of it institutions which felt free to experiment for themselves and to launch out in new directions.

The outside institutions, he continued, could act more or less as a check on the general system of the country. Their work was particularly valuable as among them were some of the foremost educationists of the Dominion. "I trust the close co-operation existing between the Education Department and the registered secondary schools in the past will not only continue but will be intensified," said Mr. Fraser. "If any problems arise we will be pleased to meet you round the table and come to some solution that will be mutually beneficial and, above all, beneficial to.the children. I would like to express appreciation of the work you have done in the past, and I hope that your work in the future will be even more successful.'" Mr. Fraser promised assistance where possible in overcoming difficulties. The meeting was presided over by the Rev. Father J. W. Dowling, S.M., M.A.

Motions were passed expressing pleasure that the Government intended to remove the disabilities arising from the basic wage and related legislation; reiterating the association's conviction that there should be "set" books for English in the university entrance examination, and suggesting that the prescription for the English paper in that examination should be revised to read. "The questions shall, as far as practicable, be so framed as to require a fairly wide acquaintance w,ith good English literature, especially of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."

Questions closely affecting educational reorganisation were referred in the main to a meeting »f the executive committee to be held in Wellington during the coming school term. Among these were remits from Auckland proposing to ppint out to the Minister the convenient opportunity provided by the amalgamation of post-primary schools for extending the practice, .vhich they believed to be most desirable for the adolescent child, of educating boys and girls in separate schools and expressing the opinion that co-education ,vas not in the best interests of children who had reached/the ages of puberty arid adolescence, and should be curtailed rather than extended.

Another proposal was that the possession of a higher-leaving certificate, now a qualification for a university bursary, should be accepted as sn alternative to the" training college entrance examination. The special provision necessary for training college enhance examination subjects, it was

stated, unduly complicated the timetable of Sixth Forms It was suggested that no qualification in algebra or geometry be demanded of women students wishing to enter the training college, as these were not compulsory subjects for girls in the entrance examination nor were they essential to students wishing to specialise <n 'primary, and especially infant, work.