SHORT SCHOOL YEAR

Southland Times, Issue 23182, 24 April 1937, Page 4

SHORT SCHOOL YEAR

Terms And Holidays Rearranged PUPILS TO CELEBRATE CORONATION The infantile paralysis epidemic and the subsequent closing of the schools has necessitated a rearrangement of school terms and vacations for 1937. The first term will close on May 12, and the pupils will have two days’ vacation —May 13 and May 14. A special vacation from July 19 to July 23, to allow teachers to attend the Dunedin sessions of the New Education Fellowship Conference, will give the children some compensation for their brief first term holidays. The second term will be from Monday, May 17, to Friday, August 20, and the second term holidays will extend from Monday, August 23 to Friday, September 3 inclusive. The third term will begin on Monday, September 6, and close on Friday, December 17. The 1938 school year will begin on Tuesday, February 1. Labour Day, Monday, October 25, and Coronation Day, Wednesday, May 12, will be special school holidays, but the Southland Education Board has received no official advice about the observance of the King’s birthday. Coronation Celebrations The Coronation will be fittingly celebrated in the schools of the Dominion. On Coronation Day the pupils of each school will assemble at school at 9 a.m. and, after some suitable ceremony, disperse for the day. On' the day before the Coronation teachers will explain, as part of the curriculum, the significance of the occasion. The Education Department has also advised the Education Board that schools are to be urged to provide some suitable symbol of commemoration, such as the planting of a “Coronation” tree in the school grounds, and that each school will be provided, free of cost, with a permanent souvenir of the Coronation. THE POSITION IN WELLINGTON ONE WEEK’S HOLIDAY IN JULY (United Press Association) WELLINGTON, April 23. The dislocation of school routine caused by the infantile paralysis epidemic and the fact that the Coronation celebrations in May and the New Education Fellowship Conference in July will break further into the school year have been causing concern to many parents in Wellington. The Education Department recently announced that the May school holidays would be reduced by one week and that a special vacation would be given in July for the week of the New Education Fellowship Conference. The schools are to resume on May 24 instead of May 31, as originally intended, and are to close again for that week in July in which the conference falls in each district, or in the most convenient adjacent district. The attitude of the department was explained yesterday by the Director of Education (Mr N. T. Lambourne), who said there was no intention to cut out the May vacation.