“EXAMINATION BEST”

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22513, 17 December 1947, Page 8

“EXAMINATION BEST”

UNIVERSIT V ENTRANCE HEADMASTER’S VIEWS “I would like to see the examination for University entrance reinstated as the main test for entrance,” said Mr. A. E. Caddick, headmaster of the Christchurch Boys’ High School. Where the examining body thought it worthwhile to investigate, the accrediting of doubtful cases could be used. In such cases, the candidate’s record of work and achievement in his school would be the deciding factor, said Mr. Caddick. In spite of honest efforts by school principals and staffs, there remained the impression that accrediting was an easy means of entrance to the University. This was a disturbing thought, continued Mr. Caddick. It was quite obvious that any attempt to return to the examination as the sole test of.entrance would meet with solid opposition, but there were some good reasons for the examination, if accrediting were kept as a safeguard for border-line cases.

Examinations properly set and conducted, and properly prepared for and taken at the right stage, were not unduly difficult, nor in such circumstances did they impose undue strain, he said. The candidate who intended to take a University course would later have to face yearly examinations at a University college, and it would not harm those who really intended to follow a University course to become acquainted in an initial way, with conditions they would meet later on. • If a pupil was not going to a University, there was no need for him to enter for the entrance examination, said Mr. Caddick. He would have ids school certificate a year after that as a tangible proof of three or four years’ secondary education and achievement. It was felt that the impersonal nature of the examination was a better even if just as fallible a means of gauging a candidate’s fitness for University work.