INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25457, 11 February 1944, Page 5

INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLS

VIEWS OF MINISTER As a sequel to the action of the Waitaki High Schools Board in writing to the Minister of Education. Mr H. G. R. Mason, the Director of Education, Dr C. E. Beeby, and the Otago Education Board asking for their comment on the statement made by Mr S. Symon at a meeting of the North Otago School Committees’ Association, that they were sympathetic to the Oamaru proposals for a detached intermediate institution and could be counted upon to implement any of the Oamaru school committees’ representations, a reply was received from the Minister of Education by the board at its meeting yesterday. Mr Mason said that he was conscious of the many directions in which there was need for great activity to make up for the inevitable retarding of educational progress in the war years, and that he felt it was likely to be many days before one could put In the forefront of immediately practicable proposals the question whether there should be a complete transformation of educational facilities, which were already working’ at least reasonably well. The board in its previous representations to the Minister had stated that it felt that, while lie had endorsed the general principle of detached intermediate schools in the large centres, he would not support a proposal which would mean the uprooting of the existing intermediate schools attached to Waitaki, with a duplication of costly buildings, etc., and that the Oamaru system had been in operation for 19 years and had fully justified itself in the eyes of the community.