ACCREDITING SYSTEM STRONGLY CRITICISED.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18643, 21 December 1928, Page 2

ACCREDITING SYSTEM STRONGLY CRITICISED.

VIEWS OF DEAN JULIUS AROUSE COMMENT, (Special to the “Star.”) AUCKLAND, December 21. The “Star,” in an editorial, congratulates Canon Archdall, the head of King’s College, on having introduced some plain speaking and clear thinking into the well worn controversy over examinations and entirely agrees in his condemnation of the vague idea that no test, external or within the school, is either advisable or necessary*’ After admitting that the examination system is open to improvement the “Star” goes on to say: “Canon Archdall maintains that teachers of secondary schools, including, of course, private schools which are open to inspection, should be kept in touch with the examiners, that the syllabus for matriculation should be more precisely defined, and that while the matriculation test may still serve as an entrance examination for the University there should also be issued by the schools a leaving certificate of more general character and higher cultural standard. All these proposals deserve serious attention and in any case it is a relief to find the examination question discussed with so much rationality and common sense. “We may contrast Canon Archdall’s criticism of accrediting with the commendation of Dean Julius who hopes to see the day when a body of men and' women filled with deep sympathy and wholeheartedly devoted to their job, will make a round of our schools and decide, apparently by the help of their higher instincts, which pupils should go to the University and which should not; but quite apart from sentimental nonsense of this kind. Canon Archdall was able to show that the accrediting system, while it cannot even in theory attain any reasonable degree or finality, or uniformity, breaks down in practice and that in Germany, where it has been most extensively applied, it has produced disastrous results.”