EDUCATION SYSTEM

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 August 1933, Page 3

EDUCATION SYSTEM

SIR J. PARR’S VIEWS. [FEB PBESS ASSOCIATION.] WELLINGTON, August 15. Criticism of the introduction of the intermediate schools was given, by Sir James Parr, Leader of the Legislative Council, in an address to School Committees and the Educational Federation. He contended that the intermediate school, with the two-year period, was not as satisfactory as the Junior High School, giving a complete finishing course of three to lour years. He considered that, the latter was the better equipped for a majority of the pupils for their life careers. He said it. was a world-wide principle that primary education should end at eleven to twelve years of age, and the child should then begin the secondary or senior education. The New Zealand system of six standards of primary education was unsound. Instead of taking standards live and six, the child' should begin life in the secondary school with some form of post-primary education. The twelfth year was the beginning of adolescence. It. was important to forestall changes in character and personality coming a little later than eleven years. The.fifth and sixth standards were wasteful because they did not provide for classification and differentiation between pupils of different types and capacity. The Department’s policy of making Junior High Schools merely preparatory schools for senior high schools was -wrong. It should be recognised that for economic reasons many pupils must leave school when fourteen to fifteen years of age. The Department’s policy should provide for gradual change-over, using the existing buildings and employing the existing senior teachers of primary schools, many of whom with a research course at training colleges, could specialise and do the new -work. In small towns, the Junior High School should be attached to the High School proper, thus enabling a child to begin secondary education at 111 years, some to go on to 17 to 18 years, others to finish at 15 after three to four years of the complete course. In the large cities, pupils showing an academic bent, who were able to continue at school till they were 16 to 17, should go straight to the High School proper. All others should go to the Junior High Schools of the Kowhai type for complete courses of instruction for three to four years, up to about fifteen years of age, and then go to farms or trades.