CHANGES ATTACKED.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 638, 16 December 1932, Page 5

CHANGES ATTACKED.

Headmaster’s Views on Education Policy. FEVER FOR EXAMINATION'S. Criticising the changes made by the Education Department, the headmaster of Christchurch Boys’ High School (Mr G. J. Lancaster) said yesterday in his report at the annual prize-giving that the changes would bear hardly on all teachers and all pupils and would bear hardest on teachers and pupils of initiative and originality. Mr Lancaster said that in previous years a large percentage of boys of the second year had qualified for the senior Iree place on the recommendation of the principal of the school, if approved by the secondary school inspectors. This year all candidates must sit the examination. The papers were forwarded by the Department to the various schools. The pupils took the examinations in their own schools, the papers were marked by the staffs, and the results adjusted in Wellington. It was still necessary to draw up a list of pupils recommended. The second change was that postmatriculation pupils, instead of qualifying for a University bursary on their higher leaving certificates, were required to take the University scholarship examination in order to qualify for the bursary. “ In both changes,” stated Mr Lancaster, “ the probable results will be, (a) fewer successful candidates, (b) a greater concentration on purely examination subjects, (c) a more intense standardisation of teacher and pupil, (d) a greater tendency to mass production, and (e) a greater prominence to mere results that can be counted and tabulated. ” The fever for examinations will also bear hard on pupils who are developing less rapidly than the Department’s tests allow for, and on pupils who are earnest students but lack the examination temperament,”