DOMINION EDUCATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23517, 4 June 1938, Page 18

DOMINION EDUCATION

A “MUDDLE” SAYS SCOT VIEWS OF DR WILLIAM BOYD (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, May 11. 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 Glasgow University, in the Scottish Educational Journal. “ When Alice went through the looking glass to school the country she found herself in, I am sure, was New Zealand,” he 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., . “The schools are good, the children are good, the teachers are good, their departmental masters are good; but the system under 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 refute to disappear, * and for lack 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 f “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 system on a country which ought to have remained, as it began, with decentralised education.

“It is amazing that in a country which has been rich in political experiment no parliamentarian since 1877 nas ever applied himself seriously to the unification of the conflicting educational interests of the islands. Admittedly the adjustment of provincial and central interests presents great difficulties in education as in other spheres of government, but there can be no hope of a satisfactory organisation of the national education until some bigminded 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 Educational 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 riot invalid even when they contravene any and all of the Education Acts.

‘‘With such powers the department might have been expected to go a long way towards 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. Witness the fact that it has separate groups'of inspectors for primary schools, secondary schools, technical schools, special schools, Native schools, all working under regulations of their own. “Perhaps it was too much to expect that a department manned by persons who have come to their high office by the way of seniority on the strength of their excellence as teachers and inspectors should possess the gifts oi initiative and statesmanship needed for educational reconstruction on a national scale. But there the fact isThe super-teachers at the head of the denartment, capable men as they are, have proved as disappointing as the legislators. REORGANISATION IN PROSPECT “The picture must not, however, be painted too blackly. New Zealand is a new country, with a real zeal for education, and as its Labour laws show, not afraid of making bold changes when it realises the need. One of these days it will tackle its educational problem as it has tackled other problems. Even now a great deal of thought is being given to the matter. A scheme of reorganisation is. ready to hand in the unanimous recommendations of a Parliamentary Committee representative of all parties, which took evidence from every educational group in the country in 1929. “ Further information is available from the systematic survey of New Zealand’s educational institutions which is being made by the New Zealand Council for Education Research. Discussion still goes on freely. All that is wanted now is the njan strong enough and wise enough to bring the new system into being.”