JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS

Southland Times, Issue 20666, 23 April 1929, Page 4

JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS

MR BUTCHERS INTERVIEWED.

REORGANIZATION ON MR TATE’S LINES.

Interviewed by a representative of the Southland Times yesterday, Mr A. G. Butchers said that there was ample evidence that the publication of the pamphlet “After Standard IV, What?” was achieving its purpose of re-focusing the attention of the public upon the educationally and economically sound proposals which Mr Frank Tate made to the New Zealand Government in 1925 for the re-organization of post-primary education. This .valuable report from an acknowledged educational expert had hitherto received too little attention. The amazing proposal of the New Zealand Syllabus Revision Committee to transfer standards 5 and 6 en bloc from the primary to the secondary organization was diametrically opposed both the letter and the spirit of Mr Tate’s recommendations as well as to the present practice in Great Britain and Australia.

Commenting on the junior high school Mr Tate said that no such school had been established in any one of the Australian States. Mr Spurle- Hey, Director of Education of Manchester, England, said that the experience of Manchester had proved the unwisdom of a system based upon the arbitrary decapitation of elementary schools and that on such a basis it was difficult, if not impossible, to establish a sound system of advanced education. Mr James Macrae, Chief Inspector of Primary Schools of Victoria, after a personal investigation of the position in Manchester in 1927 had said that the truth of Mr Hey’s statement could not be challenged. Mr Butchers added that he believed that when the announcement of the Government’s policy was made it would be found that the strengthening expression of public opinion against the wholesale transference of the upper standards as recommended by the majority of the Syllabus Revision Committee would be respected. There would certainly be a re-organization of post-prim-ary courses, commencing at the age of about 12 years, upon the need for which all educationists were agreed. But he believed it would now be rather along the lines advocated by Mr Tate than along those recommended by the Syllabus Committee. The compulsory mass transference idea would, he hoped, be dropped. The doors of the post-primary schools would be opened to pupils at an earlier age; and differentiated courses provided giving a vocational, instead of an academic, bias to the work of the schools. In all agricultural and pastoral districts such as Southland definite provision would be made for some form of agricultural training. As regards the primary schools there was no doubt that the most popular reform the Government could announce would be that all classes of over 50 pupils, of which there are more than a thousand, were to be reduced and that, this was to be regarded as the first instalment in a comprehensive scheme to reduce the size of the classes to such numbers as would permit of more personal attention being given by teachers to the individuality of the pupils. To have endeavoured to bring this about, and to cause the abandonment of the universal decapitation proposals of the Syllabus Coniniittee, would have been worth striving for alone. But they should go further and work for a thorough re-organization of the whole svstem with a view to the elimination of all overlapping, competition and wasteful expenditure of public money. Probably when Parliament met this aspect of the matter would receive attention and a Bill would be introduced consolidating all previous educational legislation, and instituting important administrative reforms along the lines indicated. The necessity of continuing to disseminate information on the subject, therefore, still remained, and he hoped that Southland educationists would not relax their efforts in this direction. There was no doubt that a healthy, well-informed, public opinion was the strongest possible factor in influencing members of Parliament to take a deep, keen, interest in educational affairs.