EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 239, 10 May 1933, Page 2

EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

Free Secondary Education EXAMINATIONS SCHEME OUTLINED Press Association —Copyright ■Wellington, May 9. Until thirty years ago, said Mr. W. G. Aldridge, , M.A., in his presidential address at the annual meeting of New Zealand technical school teachers to-day, few could receive free secondary education. Scholarships were few and other free places fewer and of brief duration. There was then a sudden outpouring of enthusiasm in favour of increasing opportunities of this sort and of relating them more definitely to the realities of life. The results were felt first in the technical schools then in existence, and subsequently caused additional technical schorls to spring up, finally embracing high schools: also no real limitation was set to the number of free places provided, the ideal being to place education within the reach of all. The ideal was splendid but in practice rather indiscriminating. “The first phase, one of boundless faith and broadening opportunity, has worn itself put, I think,” Mr. Aldridge continued, “and a time of criticism has arrived. It is easy at this stags to fall into two errors—some would restrict expenditure on education, others would impose a written examination test. The problem, however, could be uprely solved as simply ns that.” To the critic who believed education opportunities were too wide in New Zealand Mr. Aldridge would admit many pupils either stayed at school too short a time to receive real benefit or spent too long in a course in which they could not hops to succeed. He would commend any efforts to secure a saving of public money by remedying those two faults, but on many counts he v.ould urgu that the free place system should remain. Parents had absolute faith in high school education. Social workers and thinkers were unanimous that grave ills were in store for a country that provided neither discipline nor employment for its youth, and keen students of industry proclaimed that New Zealand always needed more workers of greater skill, whereas fewer learners than ever were now being trained outsid* the schools. Mr. Aldridge proceeded to outline a scheme of examinations which, he submitted, offered a much-needed middle course between the over-generous senior free place gift and the alternative of nothing at all, and was in no real sense a departure from the spirit of the present regulations.