NEW SCHOOL REGULATIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3655, 1 April 1924, Page 44

NEW SCHOOL REGULATIONS.

COMPLAINT BY HEADMASTERS. WELLINGTON, March 25. With the support of similar associations in Christchurch, Dunedin, and Wellington, the Headmasters’ Association is endeavouring to show through the press that the recent regulations regarding the organisation of schools are both impracticable and undesirable. The headmasters complain that they have received scant consideration from the Minister of Education (the Hon. C. J. Parr) or his department. One way, they say, of convincing the public would be merely to publish the regulations and ask the public to judge whether they are practicable. Seeing that regulation 3 (a) requires that a headmaster shall devote the major portion of his time to the work of actual teaching, in order to make their case clearer, they have tabulated under 30 heads the duties which by regulation, head teachers are called upon to perform, and have subjoined a carefully-considered estimate of the average time per week that is required for each. They note that the Director of Education (Mr J. Caughley) has ruled that a headmaster is teaching only when he is in the class room actually giving lessons, and that other written work is not to be considered as teaching

A carefully-drafted tabulation shows that preparing and giving 25 lessons weekly by the latest approved -methods, training pupil teachers, conducting- term examinations, issuing reports, outlining schemes of work, inspecting teachers’ diaries, attending to correspondence, visitors, the tone of the civic life of the school, and other detailed duties would occupy over 51 hours per week. Headmasters contend that what is being done efficiently now occupies 40 hours per week in and out of regular school time. The association states that regulations are inadvisable, because they restrict the headmaster as to the means he may use to secure the efficiency of his school, because headmasters know that they can be neither obeyed nor enforced, and that as a consequence they will tend to bring about the lax observance of other regulations, because they contravene principles that should guide one in framing the regulations—viz., being necessary, being as few as possible, being definite, being both easy to enforce, because if the department considers these regulations necessary, it admits the futility and untrustworthiness of its own grading list, inasmuch as the teachers affected have been placed high on that list, presumably because the department considers them able and conscientious teachers. If some of them are no longer considered efficient, the association points out that (he remedy is to alter their position on the grading list, and if necessary to remove them from their present positions.

The headmasters urge the department to remember the advice of one of the dominion’s greatest educationists, Mr G. A. Hogben : “Get a good man in charge of a school, and leave him alone.” Finally, the regulations are inadvisable because the department is unwise to restrict the right of parents to interview the head teacher regarding their children. The headmaster knows and apparently the department docs not know how important it is that he should work in co-operation with the parents, especially now that the State is taking over more care of the children.

Headmasters state that they believe parents of a past scholar understand better than does the Education Department the work that is being done in New Zealand schools. No two headmasters conduct their schools exactly alike. The personality of teachers rightly shows itself in each. Past pupils know that the spirit of self-sacrifice inspiring the work of the vast majority of teachers is an infinitely better thing than the spirit which the Government, by regulations, will engender. The association is resisting the recent regulations not because headmasters will find them irksome to themselves, but because they know that their enforcement will gravely impair the efficiency of their schools. They ask that the regulations be cancelled, and that, if necessary, others drafted with the assistance and 00-operaiion of representative head teachers be substituted. The statement concludes: “The refusal of the Minister of Education to grant this reasonable request convinces us that he has no desire to work in a spirit of co-operation with the teachers for the welfare of the children of New Zealand.”