SCHOOL CERTIFICATE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22318, 16 January 1936, Page 8

SCHOOL CERTIFICATE

A sub-committee of the Associated Chambers of Commerce has expressed general approval of the school-certificate examination introduced by the Education Department about two years ago. The innovation was intended to provide an alternative to the university-entrance examination, which had become established as the ordinary goal of the normal period spent at a secondary school. This use of a test of university matriculation as the basis of a school-leaving certificate assumed that most of the pupils were going on to a university college —a very laudable theory up t-o a point but one at variance with fact and prone to misdirect the methods of the school. That it served its turn was little justification for continuing to follow it. The 'school-certificate examination, the adoption of which does not preclude preparation of many scholars for a university course, has met a need. It covers a wide range of subjects suitable for a course of practical tendency. Some of the criticism of it has urged that it does not sufficiently encourage early specialisation, but the sub-committee of the Associated Chambers quite rightly holds that a good general education is highly desirable, even when considered in connection with specialisation, and that specialisation may be injuriously begun at too early an age. The sub-committee is on good ground also in favouring the retention of English, geography, history and arithmetic as compulsory subjects. Sometimes it is said or implied that business men are at a disadvantage in discussing the aims and methods of education, but no convincing reason has been given for this opinion. In this instance, one closely related to workaday and not academic pursuits, they are well entitled to speak, and the report of the sub-committee deserves a favourable hearing.