TRAINING OF TEACHERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19289, 30 March 1926, Page 12

TRAINING OF TEACHERS.

NEW SYSTEM DISCUSSED. WORK IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS. COLLEGE PRINCIPAL'S VIEWS.

Tlie new system of training teachers introduced by the Education Department by which probationers will serve their first and fourth years in primary schools and the intervening two years in the training colleges, was discussed yesterday by Mr. H. G. Cousins principal of the Auckland Training College. The chief advantage of the new system, said Mr Cousins, would be the opportunity it offered to the inspectors of grading the teachers on their practical work m the fourth year. At present the probationers are graded on leaving the training college almost entirely on the opinion formed of them during their training by the principal. But under the new system the inspectors will have an opportunity of judging them under practical teaching conditions before grading them for the first time.

In their fourth year, also, said Mr. Cousins, the. probationers would often prove extremely useful to tho headmaster of the school to which they were assigned. Their 'training would be almost completed and they would be much more experienced than in their second year, which has in the past been spent in the primary schools. The success of the new scheme would depend very largely on the assistance which the headmaster of the school was able to give the students in their last year. The scheme would be preferable to that at present in vogue if the headmaster was able to give the teacher the required assistance in the last year. One apparent defect in the scheme was that there did not seem to be any provision for the theoretical training of the teacher in the final year. There would also be a lack of continuity of training. A teacher would have a break at the end of the first year of training and another at the end of the third instead of only one at the end of the second year as at present. Then the headmaster would be compelled to make use of tho teacher in the fourth year, and the requirements of the school in this respect might not happen to suit the needs of the particular teacher concerned.

Mr. Cousins declined to express an opinion on- the question whether the new scheme -would be better than the old until it had been tried out. He stated that so far as he was aware the training colleges bad not asked for the new system, but-they were willing to put it to the test. • *