FREE PLACES AT COLLEGE

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8367, 1 March 1913, Page 4

FREE PLACES AT COLLEGE

For the present the public will be somewhat relieved to know that two inquiries are proceeding into the circumstances revealed at the Wellington Education Board’s meeting last Tuesday with reference to free places at the Girls’ College. There certainly seem to have been irregular proceedings, through which some pupils secured unfair priority of promotion from the primary to the secondary institution. The suggestion that those girls who were shut out, because others possessing no superior claims got In at early doors, may go to the Technical School or the Normal School is altogether outside the subject matter of inquiry. This requires to he made plain, and in the interest of ordinary justice it is necessary for the gentlemen who are conducting the inquiries to completely divest their minds of that consideration. A large number of children qualified by hard study to enter the college. They had worked themselves to that state of proficiency laid down by the Legislature to entitle a continuance of education in its higher branches. There were, it will be admitted, more qualified aspirants than tho college could accommodate, and some method of meeting that difficulty became the proper concern of the authorities, It might have been overcome so far as possible by a pro rata distribution or some process of selection by fitness. That could have been understood and the embarrassments of all concerned duly appreciated. But to allow tho girls from one school —or from any number of schools to the exclusion ol others, for that matter—to go “in a body” and apply for places before large numbers of others had discovered their right to admission, as is alleged to have occurred, is a proceeding which merits the severest censure on the system, or lack of system, making it possible. The finance committee of the Education Board should certainly call for a report from the headmasters of all city and suburban schools as to the customary steps that are taken to carry out the will of Parliament in this very important matter. The Board ol College Governors are in duty bound to ascertain what measures, if any, are taken by those responsible to ensure an impartial distribution of free places among those who are eligible and who seek admission. The statement has been made that some girls who were refused free places were subsequently admitted as paying pupils 1 We, do not vouch' for tins, but we say emphatically that this assertion, and indeed the whole of the circumstances that have been made public this week, call for the closest examination. A very uneasy suspicion prevails in the public mind to-day that the administration of the free place system is lax, if not worse.