NEW ZEALAND EDUCATION SYSTEM

Northern Advocate, 19 March 1937, Page 4

NEW ZEALAND EDUCATION SYSTEM

“Education, like economics, is something; which everyone considers he has a working knowledge of,,’ said Mr L. J. Bloomfield, headmaster of the Onerahi School, on the former subject to }he Economic Group last night.

The greater part of the address dealt with the Atmore report, which it was explained, had caused a very considerable stir, for its adoption would cause sweeping changes in education control and would render obsolete a.great proportion of the multiplicity of boards at present in operation. That it would be adopted in the long run, the speaker was confident.

_ The. New Zealand system,- Mr Bloomfield continued, was radically different from any in the world. In New Zealand, it could not yet be said that there was a settled system. Much inefficiency .remained in the wastage caused by duplication of services and controlling bodies.

In the Early Days.

In the early days education was carried out by the missionaries and was chiefly for, the benefit. of the Maori children. There were' so few whites that it was hardly a matter of concern—their parents taught them, they went to’ a Tittle private school, or else they simply remained uneducated. This was particularly so in Auckland, and throughout many parts of the North Island, though in the South several fine schooling systems were working prior to the first Educational Act in 1877.

This Act came with the abolition of the provinces, for the centralised Government meant a centralisation of education and since then the Education Department had gradually assumed the powers of the former committees.

Up to that time, primary education was the only consideration, the question of secondary was nqt considered until 1902, since when had corhe a number of developments, the most notable being the establishment of junior high schools, which provided the “break” at the age of 11 or 12 years which was considered advantageous for the child by modern authorities.

Training Child For Community Life. Education, the speaker stressed, should be for the good of the child. It should not be so much a matter of “cramming” as one of training the child in community life, so that he would not leave the school to go out into a world which was Strange and unknown, where he had again to start from the very beginning. Other aspects were discussed at length—the effects of raising the school age, tile heed or otherwise for an agricultural bias in our teaching, the need for open-air schools; the possibilities of vocational guidance.