ACCREDITING SYSTEM

Taranaki Daily News, 17 April 1935, Page 7

ACCREDITING SYSTEM

PROFICIENCY CERTIFICATE ADOPTION OF MODIFIED SCHEME. IMPORTANT CHANGE IN POLICY. BROADER AND SOUNDER DRAINING By Telegraph—Press Association. Auckland, April 16. An important change in educational policy, involving the partial replacement of proficiency examinations by an accrediting system, was announced to-day by the Minister of Education, the Hon. S. G. Smith. He said that pupils not accredited would have •an opportunity of sitting for the examination at the usual time, and the alteration would become operative this year. It would apply to larger schools only. Examinations would still be held in the smaller schools. Mr. Smith said that the principal effect of accrediting should be felt in education itself. The head teacher should know at feast 50 per cent, of his pupils who were of the intellectual calibre that always obtained a proficiency certificate. To this group he would be expected to show that he had given training on broader and sounder lines than he had ever given before, for the justification of all accrediting systems was that they removed from the teacher the temptation to reduce his classroom practice to bare examination requirements, to the possible of the weaker pupils, but certainly to the detriment of the stronger. The Minister added, that he did not doubt that teachers would live up to the responsibility which the privilege of accrediting conferred on them, and that no exaggerated sense of value of high percentages of passes would tempt any teacher to make his recommendations lightly.