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Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 20 December 1927, Page 9

English papers in the matriculation examinations of the last two years were strongly criticised by Mr. H. J. D. Mahon, acting headmaster and English master of the Auckland Grammar School. In the course of his annual report presented at the prizegiving on Wednesday afternoon, Air. Mahon recorded his protest against the papers. They were of a type that had been obsolete in England for over 20 years, he said, while they contained no questions that tested the candidate’s knowledge and appreciation of literature. The papers seemed to have been devised so as to admit ot mechanical marking and to save the examiner’s as much labour as possible. They put a premium upon antiquated and unenlightened methods of teaching, and placed at a disadvantage those candidates whose work is based upon a syllabus that is both cultural and stimulating. Such papers, by discouraging the study of literature, may have a. pernicious effect upon the teaching of the mother tongue. Mr. Mahon said that he trusted that one of the first labours of the. recentlyconstituted Secondary Schools. Examination Board will be to devise for matriculation an English prescription similar to that issued hv the Oxford and Cambridge Schools ' Examination Board, in which due weight is given v * to knowledge and appreciation of literature.