EDUCATION

Southland Times, Issue 20664, 20 April 1929, Page 8

EDUCATION

JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS

PROPOSED NEW SYSTEM CRITICIZED MR A. E. LAWRENCE’S VIEWS (Per United Press Association.) Timaru, April 19. In connection with the controversy in which the principal of Marlborough College, Blenheim, has come out as the champion of the decapitation of the primary school and the mass transference of standards 5 and 6 pupils to existing secondary' schools, Mr A. E. Lawrence (chairman of the lay members of the Primary School Syllabus Revision Committee who submitted the Minority Report) states that the committee was invited to report on “whether the curriculum provided for Standards 5 and 6 should be modified as in junior high schools, to provide for an earlier commencement of subjects that have heretofore been studied onlyin a post-primary course and whether it is possible without additional expenditure to provide these courses.” The Minority Report furnished an estimate of the cost of the junior high school scheme of reorganization proposed in the Majority- Report, but since these figures have been questioned by the new Minister it will be most helpful in view of the fact that the reorganization of the educational system on junior high school lines involves the mass transference from primary to some other type of school of something like 42,000 pupils in Standards 5 .and 6 (or one-fifth of the primary school population of New Zealand) if the principal of Marlborough College -would produce a comprehensive statement setting out the total capital expenditure on land, buildings, furnishings and equipment (giving details of classrooms vacated), style and annual cost and increased incidental allowances and other payments involved in providing a mere handful of scholars with junior high school facilities at Blenheim.

The Primary School Syllabus Revision Committee. Mr Lawrence explains, as the name implies was not invited to report on the quality' and objective of secondary' and technical education, but the Minority Report strongly’ recommends that before the reorganization or disorganization of the present system involving the status of the primary school is contemplated, a thoroughly representative committee should be appointed to report on the quality, objective and cost (to the State and the parents of the pupils) of secondary and technical education in New Zealand and that recommendation has found very general endorsement throughout New Zealand. Moreover, it contended that if staffing accommodation and the equipment arrears of the primary school are overtaken and the new syllabus given a fair trial, the revitalized and wellstaffed primary school will do all that is required to make that portion of our education system more in accordance with New Zealand’s traditions and circumstances.