FREE PLACES AT HIGH SCHOOLS.

Evening Star, Issue 12874, 25 July 1906, Page 7

FREE PLACES AT HIGH SCHOOLS.

TO THU EDITOR, Sir, —A letter appeared in your paper of Monday on the subject of abolishing the age limit for free places in. secondary schools. Instead of advancing _ any reasons against tho proposal, the writer appears to have vented some pent-up grievances carried home by some disappointed child. I fully expected to see some abler pen than mine take up the defence, but to my surprise another correspondent comes to light with generalities of the same sort. As a parent who ia enabled by the liberal nature of our educational system ■to send a boy by means of scholarship to tho Otago Boys’ High School, I should like to challenge tho accuracy of- the statements of both these letters. I can fully trust the statements made to me, and these go to show that the discipline there is quite what is necessary; and that the teachers admire and approve of .those free scholars, who work as well as or better than many of the scholars who entered under former, conditions. That there are boys in any school who are lazy and cheat is only to be expected, but to say that this is increased by tho admission of the sons of tho poor js utterly uncharitable, and is also untrue in this instance. The boys are encouraged iu sports and pastimes, have their choice in these matters, and I am very pleased with the moral teaching both of rector and tho form masters as it is seen by me in the conversation of the boy about tho doings at the school. I am strongly in favor of the age limit being reviewed, so as to admit any deserving child who may now be shut out by the present _ interpretation, and think this would be attained by admission being given at the beginning of the year to any child passing the Sixth Standard under fourteen years of age and claiming a free place at the next February term. I would sign this with my name, but do not wish to have the boy associated wilh the dismission, ro claim to Know Correct. July 25.