PROFICIENCY EXAMINATIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 January 1933, Page 6

PROFICIENCY EXAMINATIONS.

Probably those who are most satisfied with the results of last year’s proficiency examinations of the primary schools are the inspectors and teachers. Some people were of opinion that the insistence upon an examination was a departmental method of erecting a barrier between primary and secondary education; others that it denoted distrust of the recommendations made in former years by the teaching staff. The results of the December examinations should remove both those conjectures. The percentage of failures by examination was less than when proficiency could be obtained, by recommendation of teacher and inspector. When only 8.6 per cent, of candidates failed to obtain either proficiency or. competency certificates it can hardly be asserted that the examination was in any way unfair. Last year, when' certificates were granted on recommendation, the percentage of failures was 11 per cent., which shows that no undue leniency was shown. The check on their judgment Which the examination has made possible should be quite satisfactory to the teaching staff and still more to the parents of the primary school pupils. It should make critics of the Minister’s policy a little less eager to see in necessary economies something more sinister than a desire to do the best with the funds available, or in a change of method something more than a desire to get the best possible results. Of course, neither examination nor recommendation is a perfect method of assessing the pupils’ progress or their fitness to proceed to “secondary” education. Nevertheless between them the result is fairly true, and that it has shown such a high percentage of certificates granted is a tribute to the excellent work of the teachers throughout the province.