THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 1925. CONSOLIDATED SCHOOLS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19513, 23 June 1925, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 1925. CONSOLIDATED SCHOOLS.

The Minister of- Education is credited with having described tho new consolidated school which he opened at Oxford on Saturday last as the most interesting experiment ever tried in Canterbury. That is a somewhat comprehensive and sweeping assertion to make even perhaps when the application of it is limited to the educational held in Canterbury. That is, however, by tho way. The Minister is disposed to hail the consolidated school as “the true solution of the problem of rural education,” and it may bo that lie is right in so regarding it. To the layman unversed in educational terminology reference to a “consolidated” school may possibly conjure up a vague but none tho less awful picture of a school into which as many pupils and teachers as possible are tightly crammed for tho purposes of highly extensive instruction. Fortunately, no development of that kind is involved. Consolidation in its application to rural education means the substitution of one central school, of suitable, dimensions and conveniently situated, for a number of small schools. J t implies concentration of effort in meeting tho educational requirements of tho district that is affected. In New Zealand tho proportion of small schools is large. There are some 2d,000 children on tho rolls of sole-teacher schools with an attendance not exceeding thirty-five at any one of them. It has often been pointed out that tho children attending such schools cannot, for various reasons which need not bo recapitulated, receive in a general way the educational advantages enjoyed by the pupils who are able to attend the larger and undoubtedly more efficient schools. The small schools in remote districts do not attract the best teachers, and often the work of education must be carried on in them in circumstances of considerable difficulty. Tho validity cf tho argument that one good school would serve the educational requirements of a country district better than half a dozen small and relatively inefficient ones, provided there were no insuperable difficulties in conveying to it all tho pupils to be considered, lias never been seriously questioned. It is a fair contention that in the country districts the best educational facilities possible should bo given in order to make up to some extent for such disadvantages as tho country children labour under in comparison with children in tho cities. The country school represents, indeed, an educational problem of long standing, and the onus is upon the educational authorities to do something effectual towards removing the not unreasonable complaint of country settlers that adequate facilities are not provided for the education of their children. The plan of grouping the small schools wherever possible seems to represent the most hopeful method whereby the desired improvement may bo brought about. To quote a departmental utterance on the subject: “Instead of setting up small ineffective schools, generally under untrained, uncertificated teachers, there should be central schools wellequipped and staffed where inspectors could give more than double the time they now find possible.” It is possible that, among the settlors in country districts there may be a small minority who, for one reason or another, would not view with satisfaction the disappearance of the small school contiguous to their abodes, and the replacement of

it by a central school to which their children would have to be conveyed. But the great majority of the settlers should bo quite able to appreciate the advantages attendant on the centralisation plan. The consolidated school is merely in the experimental stage as yet in this dominion, but there seems to be no reason why it should not be successfully introduced on a considerable scale as an integral feature of the education system of this country. The main difficulty, as Bir James Parr has pointed out, is that of transport, and the cost of carrying pupils to a central school and home again must inevitably be heavy. On the other hand, the substitution of one school for several should make in the direction of economy in the erection of buildings and the acquisition of sites, while the value of the" increased educational efficiency to be secured under the consolidation plan should more than counter-balance all other considerations.