EDUCATION PROBLEMS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 106, 18 April 1933, Page 11

EDUCATION PROBLEMS

RESEARCH WORK IN NEW ZEALAND. NEGOTIATIONS UNDER WAT. If negotiations now in progress are successful, educational research, hitherto almost unknown in New Zealand, will be established here on a sound footing, as it has been in Australia, with funds provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The corporation has a considerable part of its capital earmarked for assisting education among English-speaking people outside the United States, and already it has expended some thousands of pounds in New Zealand upon travelling fellowships and university extension work. The corporation is particularly interested in promoting educational research in the British Dominions; which have little money for such a purpose, while their needs are greater than the average owing to comparative isolation from the older countries. NEW ZEALAND COMMITTEE. The latest development is the result of recent action by leading educationists in New Zealand who got into direct touch with the corporation in New York and asked that it review the offer to establish an educational research foundation, made by Dr. L. D. Coffman when ho visited the Dominion in 1931 on behalf of the corporation. The Carnegie trustees readily assented and nominated a committee ol three to investigate the position. The three nominees are Professor T. A. Hunter, of Victoria College, Vice-Chan, cellor of the University of New Zealand; Mr. Frank Milner, headmaster of the Waitaki Boys’ High School; and Mr. D. M. Rae, principal of the Auckland Training College. The committee was asked in particular to ascertain what educational problems in New Zealand specially required investigation, whether the foundation would be assured of support from all educational agencies and from all parts of the Dominion, whether teachers would be readily released for approved research work and allowed reasonable facilities such as the right of entering schools, and whether there was a prospect of unanimity regarding the constitution of the research council. A grant waa sent to cover the expenses of the investigation. CO-OPERATION WITH AUSTRALIA. The committee held a preliminary meeting in Wellington recently, and has since been occupied in making known the details of tho scheme to tho educational bodies concerned and asking for their support and co-opera-tion. At a conference last month the Minister of Education, the Hon. R. Masters, and tho Director of Education, Mr. T. B. Strong, gave assurances that they would do everything possible to help the project. It has also the hearty approval of the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe. The scheme will be laid before the annual conference of tho New Zealand Educational Institute in May, and before the Dominion conferences of secondary, technical, and private school teachers in the same month, after which tho committee will meet to consider further action. If the Carnegie Corporation is satisfied with the committee’s report ou the prospects of the scheme, it is expected that a grant will be made covering work for a term of years, as in Australia. It was pointed out to Dr. Coffman years ago that it would not be practicable to carry on a research organisation in New Zealand as a branch of the Australian body. It is clearly understood, however, that there will have to be close co-operation between the two research councils, not only for mutual help, but also to avoid overlapping in the work.