INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21454, 30 March 1933, Page 11

INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLS

NEW SYSTEM AT KOWHAI CONTENTIONS TO MINISTER THIRD-YEAR CLASS DEFENDED Correspondence between the Minister of Education, the Hon. E. Masters, and the chairman of the Auckland Education Board, Mr.- T. U. Wells, regarding the new plan of restricting to two years the period of tuition at the Kowhai School, was submitted to the board at a meeting yesterday. The chairman said, from the reply he had received, it appeared that the Minister had missed a principal point in the letter forwarded to him. This was that pupils staying for three years at the Kowhai School, who later went to secondary schools, had been shown, by examination results, to have done better than those who had only two years at the school before going to secondary schools. In his letter to the Minister, Mr. Wells explained the practice, referring to somewhat similar schools in America and Europe, and commented that it was difficult to understand why the director of education, Mr. T. B. Strong, proposed to take what was clearly a retrograde step. It could be concluded that he was out of touch with modern education practice, which was inconceivable, or he considered that the Kowhai School, as at present organised, had nob proved a success. Mr. Wells went on to contend that third-year training at the Kowhai School had been fully justified by results, and the benefit of such a 6emi-vocational course was indisputable. Over 50 per cent of the children did not intend to proceed to a secondary or a technical school. Those third-year students who had done so had been significantly successful at the grammar schools. The Minister, replying to Mr. Wells, said he was convinced that Mr. Wells had missed the whole point of the proposed two-year course at intermediate schools. The new system was not a mere extension of the Kowhai idea, and certainly was not an imitation of the English "central"' school or the American junior high school. The Kowhai School would have its place in the system as an intermediate school of the new type, one which was actually intermediate and not a terminating point in a child's education. The system proposed in New Zealand, and instituted by the regulations of December 15, was a provision for a new type of school in which children would be classified according to aptitudes, inclinations and abilities, and directed into the particular channel of post-primary education most appropriate in the individual case. The school was to be a branching-off place in a system which envisaged education as a continuous process. The Minister thought Mr. Wells had made clear that the third-year course at Kowhai constituted for many pupils the final year of their education. If such pupils proceeded to a post-primary school for special leaving courses, a3 under the new system, they would be enabled to continue their education as part-time students at a technical school. It -was better to have an unbroken course in a senior school than to make a transfer at the end of the first year of senior work. The new plan of restricting to two years the normal period at an intermediate school was calculated to be of greater benefit than the three-year period formerly adopted tentatively for junior high schools.