SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 217, 18 August 1925, Page 7

SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

QUESTION OF AMALGAMATION

Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, Aug. 17. In liis address at the opening of the New Zealand Technical School Teachers’ Association’s Conference the president said the question of what is the future of technical high schools in the larger centres was more complex than in rural towns, for here they found side by side the older established high school of an academic type and a technical high school of a directly vocational type. The question was: should those schools continue to exist side by side and true to type, or should the academic high school take up vocational training as well and offer after courses in commerce, engineering, agriculture etc. The real issue lay between the American and the British practice. He was strongly of opinion that it was in the interests of education that there should bo two separate schools, but if both were to be of a really high type they must receive their i\upils at an earlier age than now before the adolescent changes were in full swing. The Director of Education, Mr Caughley, welcomed mental contact with the teachers of schools, without which, he said, the machinery of the department was useless. The question of amalgamating technical and secondary schools was a pressing one, and he favoured it wherever it could voluntarily be come to. In small centres there was a difficulty in retaining staffs, and on that ground alone amalgamation was desirable. He could see no reason for differentiation between technical and secondary schools. There was nothing in the technical school day work that did not quite properly form part of tlie ordinary high school course in the medern point of view, and the provision of special schools for day pupil technical purposes was quite unnecessary. There was no doubt that in an institution specially provided for this class of work the principal could not be lost sight of.