EDUCATION SYSTEM

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21515, 12 June 1933, Page 11

EDUCATION SYSTEM

INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLS CRITICISM BY INSTITUTE CO-ORDINATED CONTROL URGED [BY TELEGRAPH—PRESS ASSOCIATION] "WELLINGTON, Saturday The executive of the New Zealand Educational Institute has prepared a statement in which it expresses the opinion that the pursuance of the movement for establishing intermediate schools under the regulations recently published is inadvisable. The country is in a state of financial embarrassment and the establishment of an intermediate school system under the conditions obtaining could only be effected at the expense of the existing junior high schools and the already financially-strained primary system, it is .stated. The exclusion of five-year-old children renders reorganisation difficult. The substitution of a two-year for a three-year course is not regarded as being in the best interests of the. children, nor in accord with the accepted educational policy in England and other leading educational countries, and is inconsistent with the policy formerly advanced by the Education Department and approved by the institute. The removal of pupils from forms I. and 11. from the charge of senior teachers, it is stated, is not in tho best interests of the children. It is asserted that the regulations are inequitable and unjustifiable as regards tho proposed staffing and salaries scale. "Even stronger reasons against the pursuit of the present policy are to be found in the field of organisation and administration," the statement continues. "It has long been recognised by those concerned with education that the greatest hindrance to its effective working is the division of work under separate authorities. The barriers that exist between primary, secondary and technical schools are a source of many evils and make it impossible that the education system can be worked to the best effect. Education is, or ought to be, a continuous process. "The growth of the barriers referred to impose checks and hindrances to the process that ought to be removed. A first essential is the setting up of a single authority to control all the educational effort of each local area."