SCHOOL INSPECTIONS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 226, 22 August 1935, Page 8

SCHOOL INSPECTIONS.

ONCE IN THREE YEARS. EXPERIENCED TEACHER’S VIEW. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, Aug. 22. In an interview, Mr William Gray, formerly a well-known figure in the New Zealand educational world, butfor the past 25 years the head of the Presbyterian Ladies’ College at Melbourne, one of the largest secondary sciiools in Australia, mentioned among other things the matter of inspection of schools. He said that his observations of the trend of education Ihe world over had led him to the conviction that far too much was made of the inspection system. A revaluation of tlie whole system of school inspection was long overdue, and was coming. This did not apply only to New Zeuland and Australia.

Mr Gray said that a triennial inspection should be sufficient. Once they had good teachers, properly trained, they should be left practically a free hand. This everlasting inspection tended to develop into routine work and had a deadening influence. The triennial system of inspection would certainly lessen administration expenses. Mr Gray holds the view that there should be in every large town a normal school staffed by selected teachers, and also that every large city should have a training college for secondary school teachers, not necessarily combined with the work of the normal school.

Mr Gray, who formerly taught in Palmerston North, is well-remembered among the older residents of the city. At the beginning of the century he w,as temporarily attached to the Boys’ High School and was also headmaster of the College Street School.