SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 4592, 18 May 1922, Page 3

SECONDARY SCHOOLS

ASSISTANTS’ ANNUAL CONFERENCE. (Per Press Association.) Wellington, May 17. Tho annual meeting of the Secondary Schools’ Assistants’ Association of New Zealand commenced to-day. The President, Mr It. M. Laing, ' M.A., occupied the chair. The President said there could be no more reproductive expenditure than that upon education, Which always boro results. New Zealand deserved a system of education equal at least to any other system in the world. There was no reason why it should not strive for something better. Mr F. Mnrtyn Renner, of Wellington, was unanimously re-elected secretary and treasurer for 1922. The Conference proceeded to discuss a series of remits respecting tho grading of teachers and stalling of schools. It was decided to draw the attention of the Minister to congestion in various grades of secondary schools and to the difficulty which non-university centre secondary schools found in getting suitable teachers, and to urge him to amend the regulations so as to enable reasonable expenses to be paid to teachers moving from one school to another. The Chief Inspector of Secondary Schools, Mr Janies Drummond, thought tho remit would have little hope of, success at tho present time on the score of expense to tho Department. A resolution was passed urging that regulations for secondary schools he amended (a) so as to render it possible to have accelerated promotion within a grade, but especially in Grade D, in cases where, in tho opinion of secondary school inspectors such promotion was warranted; (2) so that a teafchcr graded higher than tlio grade of tho position held should receive the maximum salary of the lower grade. A Gisborne remit: That a year of war service should count as two years for grading and superannuation, was approved. It was agreed to- recommend that teachers who have appealed successfully against their grading should be allowed travelling expenses to . and from the place of appeal, as already allowed in the Public Service. Remits were passed: That each secondary school should bo governed by a board of its own; that all new secondary schools may be mixed schools. Tho conference substantially approved of the of the departmental .conference with the exception of a temporary board of managers of junior high schools during the experimental stage was criticised as undemocratic and of too centralising a tendency.