EDUCATION PLAN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23053, 2 June 1938, Page 10

EDUCATION PLAN

DOMINION CRITICISED

ALLEGATION OF MUDDLE ELEMENTS NOT COHERENT DR. W. BOYD'S VIEWS [from our own correspondent] LONDON, May 14 The "muddle" of the New Zealand education system, caused by a "succession of political blunders," is the subject of an article by Dr. William Boyd, of GlasgoAV University, in The Scottish Educational Journal. "When Alice went through the looking glass to school the country she found herself in, 1 am sure, was New Zealand," ho says. "In the Wonderland of the' Pacific, more than anywhere else, things educational are not what they seem., The Educational Institute of New Zealand, representing the primary teachers, characterises them in a carefully documented statement as 'Chaos.' "That is obviously the wrong word to apply to an educational system in which primary teachers are mathematically graded for appointment on a 325 point scale and have their doings ordered in accordance with yards of regulations. Overlapping of Provinces "The schools are good, the children are good, the teachers are good, their departmental masters are good; but the system tinder which they work is a muddle/ Though seemingly different in its organisation from that of the Australian States, in actual working it has the same essential structure; but whereas Australia has managed to make the various elements in its scholastic scheme tolerably coherent, New Zealand has not. It is both centralised and decentralised, and it makes the worst of both worlds. "There is a powerful Education Department, • but the local boards and committees for which the department has no real use refuse to disappear, and for hick of a proper function are mainly effective in obstruction. Everywhere there is overlapping of provinces: primary schools, high schools, technical schools and colleges, university colleges all trespass on each other's ground. "Administrative Medley" "It is not difficult to see the reason for this confusion. It is the outcome of a succession of political blunders which have resulted in the imposition of a highly centralised administrative 6ystem on a country which ought to have remained, as it began, with decentralised education. "There can be no hope of a satisfactory organisation of the national education until some big-minded politician faces the issues boldly and works out a scheme of reconstruction without too much regard for the vested interests which have been created by the piecemeal legislation of the last 60 years. "After the politicians, the main responsibility for the situation rests with the Education Department. From being a mere bureau with functions mainly clerical, it has become a controlling /body with extraordinary powers, including the fantastic power of making regulations which are not invalid even when they contravene any and all of the Education Acts. "With such powers, the department might been expected to go a long way toward the co-ordination of education, apart from anything that Parliament might or might not do. Instead of that, the department has taken the line of least resistance and accepted the diversity of authorities as in the nature of the case."