SINGLE CONTROL SOUGHT

Grey River Argus, 17 May 1946, Page 5

SINGLE CONTROL SOUGHT

BY N.Z. TEACHERS’ INSTITUTE For Primary and Secondary Schools P.A. WELLINGTON, May 16. Unification of the control of primary and of secondary education in the Dominion is to be asked of the Government by the New Zealand Educational Institute. A remit to this effect was unanimously passed to-day at the annual meeting of the Institute. Mr. I. Buchanan (Hutt Valley), moved the adoption of the remit. He said that at present there was most harmful organic separation between these two branches of education. There was an urgent need to unite them.

The remit read: “That as a unification of the primary and secondary branches of education is essential to the efficiency of the Dominion’s educational system, the Government be asked to bring about this urgent reform at the earliest possible moment.” Mr. Buchanan said that recently the Education Department, with an insight into the needs of the times that did it credit, had recast the postprimary syllabus of instruction. It thereby improved its continuity with the primary syllabus. Mr. Buchanan said the next step, as practical as it was logical, would be to give vital reality to that continuity by bringing: all the teachers under one direction. It might be argued that, as these two branches of education were under one departmental control, there was unity. On the contrary, there was almost complete dualism, said the speaker. The inspectorate through which the Department worked was divided into primary and secondary. The two kinds of inspectors had next to no inter-relationship. Secondary schools had their own Boards of Governors for the purposes of local administration. These Boards of Governors had no relationship to the nine Education Boards, whose function it was to carry on the local administration of primary schools.