EFFICIENCY LIMIT

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 10898, 12 May 1921, Page 6

EFFICIENCY LIMIT

SECONDARY SCHOOL PUPILS. SCHOLARS AND THEIR TRAINING In speaking to the following remit: —“Seeing That the efficiency of a school falls off when the numbers exceed a certain limit, and as large schools are not appreciably more economical than small ones, np school should bd allowed to exceed 600, except as a temporary expedient, and by special permission of the department,” which was .presented from Dance virke to the annual of the Secondary School Assistants’ Association yesterday, Mr Rennes- said that the Minister had very wisely decided that as far as possible no secondary school should in future exceed 400 pupils under normal conditions. This, the speaker felt positive, was a step in the right direction, as efficient working of a secondary school depended largely on the principal having an individual and personal knowledge of every child turner him. More is effected by such close and intimate knowledge than by organisation, teaching ©r anything else. •‘lt is a practical impossibility," 'seated Mr Renner, ‘‘for any principal to have that intimate personal relation with every child once the numbers rise, above 500. In my years of teaching. I have learnt to see the excellent effect it has on boys when they feel that the headmaster knows them by name; knows what form they are in; what their weaknesses ' are; and what they wish tp become. In his' own eyes the boy himself at once becomes a person of importance. He becomes a greater' factor for good. Like the Puritan pf old, he believes _as Macauley putts it, “that he is a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belongs.’ Now, when a boy has that feeling, he may occasionally develop into an egoist, but more often he will .regard himself as ‘a citizen of no mean city,’ and keep his own record clean just because he feels that the head is sufficiently interested in him to be sorry if he did Slot keep that record clean-"