EDUCATION Community Centres And Schools

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 February 1947, Page 6

EDUCATION Community Centres And Schools

•Possible Development In N'ew Zealand [N.Z.P.A. SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT] 1 LONDON, Feb. 3. The possibility of developing combined schools and.community centres in New Zealand oh the lines of Impington Village College tin Cambridgeshire was mentioned in an interview by Dr. C. E. Beeby, Directot of Education, who is visiting Britain after representing New Zealand at the conference of UNESCO in Paris. Impington, which is a well known education experiment, might best be described in New Zealand terms as a consolidated intermediate school which is used after school hours as an adult community centre. Dr. Beeby said he was most impressed by the success of the Impington scheme, which he thought would have a definite application in New Zealand. In view of the Government’s approval of community centres as war memorials, he thought this aspect of the Cambridgeshire establishment would also be .of interest in the Dominion. Impington Village. College not only gave excellent, training, to children on consolidated intermediate school lines, but also was now well established as a modern community centre at which adults could combine recreation with instruction. He had found that even old age pensioners living in the neighbourhood treated the school as their club, and there was even a proposal under discussion to install a bar so that the centre would be able to dispense hospitality on the lines of the best type of British “local”—although, of course, he did not suggest this innovation should be considered in New Zealand. The college had a hall for producing plays and similar types of entertainment, an excellent library and club rooms,, a lecture room, and all the facilities necessary to make it a centre of community cultural and recreational life. Tremendous Problem. Dr. Beeby said that Impington was only one of a number of. interesting and successful education developments he had seen during his visit. The British educational authorities were confronted with a tremendous problem, not only in restoring schools damaged and destroyed by enemy action during the war and in catching up with the leeway lost as a result of the war, but also in coping with the problem of 370,000 extra children who would remain in the schools as a result of the proposed extension of the school leaving age from 14 to 15. He had been most impressed by the determination and progressive spirit with which the great majority of local authority education directors and their staffs were attacking their problems. .... Dr. Beeby said that conditions varied greatly in various parts of the country, but he considered the great majority of “modern secondary schools he had visited admirably administered and conceived. Particularly good progress had been made m devising plans for the training of the 14 to 15 age group, and for the special instruction of backward and handicapped children. He had found his discussions with British educationalists, primary, secondary, and in the universities most helpful, and had been gratified at the keen interest, shown by many of them in education development in New Zealand. Exchange of Teachers. Among matters Dr. Beeby has discussed in Britain have been the resumption of the exchange of teachers’ scheme which was interrupted by the war. He will report to the Government on this when he returns to New Zealand.. He also closely investigated British methods of trade training. Dr. Beeby will leave shortly for the United States and expects to spend a moftth there before returning to New Zealand.