SCHOOL LEAVING AGE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18620, 16 July 1930, Page 13

SCHOOL LEAVING AGE.

SHOULD BE RAISED TO 15. PROPOSAL OP SELECT COMMITTEE. One of the recommendations of the Select Committee on Education, whose report was presented to Parliament yesterday, involves drastic revision of primary and post-primary education. It is suggested that the primary course shall terminate at Standard IV., and that the leaving age shall be raised from 14 to 15. The recommendations include the following:— “That the age to which the education of a child is required by law be raised from fourteen to fifteen years, with provision for exemption in cases of hardship.” “ That intermediate classes should form part of the education system, and that the types of schools or classes as suggested by Mr Garrard be recommended to the Government as a basis.” The Committee surveys the history of New' Zealand’s education system to show how overlapping and chaotic conditions of administration have developed, and states that in the provision of a continuous system for all classes up to the age of fifteen, New Zealand has lagged behind many other countries. “This may be ascribed,” the Committee states, “to the peculiar organisation of that system under so many different controlling authorities, which have hitherto not been able to agree upon any practical method of giving effect to the desired reform throughout the Dominion. In Victoria, where the education system is completely centralised, the change was introduced in 1916. .In England, where again there is divided control, it is only now being put into, general effect. In the United States of America, where the diversity of conditions lends itself to early experimentation with new ideas, the junior high school movement, as it is called there, has for a number of years been an accepted feature of State and county educational organisation.”

The great mass of evidence heard by the Committee was in favour of this change. The Committee proposes that the primary course shall terminate at 11 plus, or after passing Standard IV. Then would follow a post-primary course adapted for different classes of pupils up to the age of fifteen years. The Committee suggests exploratory courses (12 to 15 years) to determine aptitudes for further full-time education (for continuers) or for employment (for leavers), accompanied wherever possible by continued evening education.

“The great waste of money and teaching effort involved in the present system,” with its breaks between primary and secondary education, is discussed by the Committee. Only half the primary school output in 1928 entered post-primary schools, and a quarter of that number left before the end of the first year’s course. The early stages of secondary education are described in the report. It states that there is a succession of peripatetic. teachers, none remaining long enough to establish personal intimacy such as is possible in the higher stages of primary education.

“In the school the best and most experienced teachers are engaged with the university entrance scholarship and matriculation forms,” says the report. “To them the pupil will come in time if he survives the ordeal of the first two years. Meanwhile for the most part he is given over to the charge of junior members of the staff, with the result that in actual practice it is found that less than 40 per cent, of the pupils remain long enough to enter upon a third year in these schools The Committee recognises that the technical high schools have done much to mitigate the rigours of the system above described. But the leakage there, too, in the first two years, is not less serious. Indeed, it greatly exceeds that of the traditional secondary schools, although it is clear that much of it is due to economic causes. The Committee is not surprised that our elaborate system of post-primary schools, the cost of ■which naturally falls upon the whole of the tax-paying public, thus fails to confer any corresponding benefit upon the children of one-half of their number. “The proposals made in this report will,” in the opinion of the Committee, “entirely revolutionise this state of affairs, and will ensure for all the taxpayers’ children a post-primary education in which the transition from one stage to another will be both natural and easy. It is further of opinion that by adoption of the scheme proposed there will be made to disappear the last vestige of the objectionable social distinctions which have hitherto tended to divide those who have received a secondary education from those who have not, as well as those who have received an academic education from those taught in the technical schools; for these two types will be brought under a single controlling authority,’ and in many cases actually amalgamated, as at New Plymouth, into a single modern composite school. Junior High Schools. Mr C. W. Garrard, 8.A., senior inspector of schools, Auckland, whose proposals are endorsed by the Committee, stated in evidence: “I am definitely of opinion that for the larger cities junior high schools such as Kowhai best serve the educational needs of the community; for smaller towns the type of Rotorua and Whangarei is the most satisfactory, and for rural areas the Matamata type is the best.” It was found in regard to the pupils of Kowhai Junior High School, Auckland, that 312 pupils left during 1928, and of these 174 went directly into employment, a number of whom, the Committee was given to understand, attended evening technical classes; 32 entered the technical high school as day pupils; and 106 proceeded to the grammar schools. The Committee formed the opinion that the exploratory courses provided effectively reveal the pupils’ aptitudes for further education and for vocation, both to the pupils themselves and to their parents and teachers, and that their destination upon leaving the school followed mainly the aptitudes so discovered. “The proposed scheme of compulsory post-primary education, in so far as it will result in increasing the number of children in attendance at the public schools, will undoubtedly increase the annual expenditure upon education,” adds the report, “but this will arise from the extension of the school age from fourteen to fifteen years, and would have to be met whatever form of educational reorganisation was adopted. In so far as the new system necessitates \a general reduction in the size of classes, it will also contribute to what is already the declared policy of the Government. The same will apply in regard to the policy of consolidating schools and classes, which the Committee recommends should be extended throughout the system.

“In so far as the running expenses are concerned, Mr Rudman’s evidence shows conclusively that the Kowhai Junior High School has been conducted for some time at a cost not

exceeding that of the district high schools; and while this will result in a slight increase as regards the transferred fifth and sixth standards, that increase will be to a considerable degree balanced by a corresponding reduction with respect to the third form pupils withdrawn from the existing secondary schools system. There will be very little additional building required above what would be necessary to meet the normal expansion of the service and the special extension occasioned by the raising of the school age.”