INSPIRING PROSPECT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25172, 12 March 1943, Page 2

INSPIRING PROSPECT

EDUCATIONAL MAGNA CARTA ACCREDITING POLICY FOR SCHOOLS (Special) OAMARU, Mar. 11. In his report to the Waitaki High School Board of Governors to-day, Mr Frank Milner, rector of the Waitaki Boys’ High School, stated that while in Wellington recently he discussed with the Director of Education, Dr C. E. Beeby, the implications of the accrediting policy. Though long overdue, this move was so sweeping and revolutionary as to demand special reference. Mr Milner said he was assured both by the vice-chancellor of the University and by the Director of Education that from the end of this year secondary education would be freed from all prescriptive examinational bondage. From the infant department right through to the University entrance no external examination test would be imposed with the single exception of the school certificate examination. This would be taken normally in the third year of the post-primary course. This test required English and any four options from the whole post-primary curriculum. Thus it inaugurated a policy of parity for all sides of a multilateral school like Waitaki.

It hampered no course, no matter how realistic and vocational. Moreover, after this year no secondary school pupil would be compelled to offer either a foreign language or mathematics for matriculation. For the first time in their history this enlightened policy admitted of.full justice being done to the basic needs of a liberal secondary education. Mr Milner added that he was assured by the highest authority that external professional bodies would not be allowed to nullify this policy, but would be required to accept matriculation as interpreted in the new educational Magna Carta. The prospect, to his mind, was inspiring.