EXCHANGE TEACHER

Southland Times, Issue 22465, 28 December 1934, Page 7

EXCHANGE TEACHER

YEAR IN VICTORIA EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. Miss Vera King, of Ipswich, England, arrived by the Maheno on Wednesday evening from Melbourne where she has been for the past year an exchange teacher. Under this scheme a limited number of teachers are sent for a year’s experience in England and in exchange an equal number of the English teachers are sent to the dominions. In conversation with a Times representative Miss King expressed herself as delighted with the experience and said that the experiment was _ well worth while. It had been her wish to come to New Zealand, but this might have necessitated the wait of another year, so when the offer of an exchange was made with a teacher from Victoria she accepted and now is on her way home via Panama. She expects to be in New Zealand only three weeks. Her companion on the Maheno was Miss Constance Pitcairn, of Edinburgh, who had been at Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, when she, too, came to Victoria, as a teacher on exchange. Like Miss King she expressed herself as delighted with her experience. She holds the M.A degree (Edinburgh) and specializes in geography whereas Miss King’s chief interest lies in the modern special schools where individual treatment is given to each pupil. They stated that on the Maheno from Melbourne there were no fewer than 70 members of the teaching profession on board, indicating that the round trip is popular both with Australian and New Zealand teachers.

Miss King was teaching in Bow Open Air School, East End, London (within sound of Bow Bells). This school specializes in the development of delicate children and so each pupil receives individual attention. When asked of her impressions of Victorian schools for she was stationed at schools in some of the small country towns besides having a short experience in one of the large city schools in Melbourne during her stay, she stated that the small country schools compared favourably with the village schools of the Old Country. The new curriculum introduced last year by the education authorities in Victoria was a vast improvement. It gave the teacher wider scope and a better opportunity for individuality—and individuality in education was everything. Individual method and expression by the teacher was preferable to the stereotyped method of a narrow curriculum. In London, as in the greater part of England, control of the schools was more under local authority than was the case in Victoria. The disadvantage of this was that it was more difficult to transfer from one school to another outside the county area. If one wished to get on in England in the teaching profession it was necessary to be transferred to a large centre as things moved very slowly in a village or small town school. A woman teacher might be in a sense better off in England, for it was not uncommon to have a woman head of a school, whereas in the colonies such a case was rare except in the smallest schools. At Home the local authority supplied most of the school material, books and writing material. When questioned regarding the junior high school idea Miss King stated that at Home when the child was eleven or twelve four or more avenues of education were open. First, the child could stop on at the elementary, school the minimum leaving age of which had recently been raised to 151 years. Here as the name implied, the child received only a thorough grounding in the elements of education. Secondly, the child might go to a central school where instruction with a commercial bias, was given. Clerical work with a business grounding was a feature of their class ol work. Thirdly, there was the secondary school at which on passing an entrance examination or by ■ scholarship the child might continue its education. This was not free, as in New Zealand, but fees had to be paid. It was generally understood that the child entering this school intended carrying on at the university and entering professional life. Fourthly, there were the trade schools. As the name implied these were to fit the child for some definite trade. In all education in England to-day there appeared to be more emphasis placed on physical development. A good, well-equipped gymnasium was a feature of almost every post-primary school, and dancing and games played a large part. This was in contrast to the military method of rigid marching and exercises. Miss King mentioned that in England an appreciation of English literature was the aim of teaching English and grammar was only incidental, whereas in Victoria attention was paid to the rules of grammar.