DOMINION LAGGING IN EDUCATION NEEDS.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 11 July 1938, Page 2

DOMINION LAGGING IN EDUCATION NEEDS.

UNIFICATION ADVOCATED "New Zealand has nothing to com pare with the best in education over seas, but we have nothing as bad as the worst,” said Air. G. R. Ashhridgc, general secretary to the New ZealandEducational Institute, who returned to New Zealand by the Monterey, after an absence of 12 months in Europe, Canada and the United States. He added that educationists oversea found it difficult to understand why the Do minion, with its centralised administrative system, was slow in moving forward toward unification of control.

The primary, secondary and technical systems should never have been allowed to get so far out of step with one another, Air. Ash bridge said. The Now ‘Zealand system could be simplified con siderably when unification was effected. In the United States and Canada the teachers all belonged to one organisation, as was the case in the Dominion when the New Zealand Educational In stitute was established in 1883.

Teachers’ organisations throughout the world were unanimous that classes should be reduced to 30. In Toronto kindergarten classes were limited to that number, an innovation that would doubtless be greatly appreciated by infant mistresses in New Zealand.

“The purchasing of school supplies is an important function of school boards oversea," Mr. Ash bridge continued. “In Toronto the education board operates a centralised purchasing department, which- delivers supplies to schools in its own trucks. The system of free text-books, school and class libraries for children, typewriters and duplicators, and clerical assistance provided for Head teachers at oversea schools leaves the New Zealand system with considerable leeway to make up if it is to be considered among the best in the world.

“Nevertheless, I must say that the method of educating rural children in this country eclipses anything I saw in the United States,"

Salaries paid to New Zealand teachers were generally lower than those paid to teachers in England, Canada and the United States, Mr. Ashbridge added. This was true particularly of headmasters and the commencing salaries at the lower end of the scale. American teachers were required to show the authorities each year that they had spent a minimum of 30 hours in study of an approved kind to enhance their ability as teachers.

In New York the authorities had adopted the standard of “efficient or not efficient" as was done in England, he concluded. With unification of control and a different salary scale, it should be possible to classify teachers in New Zealand on a simpler basis