FLEXIBLE EXAM.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20280, 14 April 1934, Page 26 (Supplement)

FLEXIBLE EXAM.

Choice of Courses for New Certificate. COMMERCE AND MARRIAGE. (Special to the 44 Star. 44 ) WELLINGTON, April 13. An education authority has made a selection of subjects from the new regulations which candidates for the school certificate examination may take, having in mind specific occupations. Commercial.—English, history, geography, bookkeeping, and shorthand and typing; or English, arithmetic, bookkeeping, economics, shorthand and typing; or English, agriculture, geography, bookkeeping and economics; or English, mathematics, bookkeeping, economics and history; or English, French, bookkeeping, economics and geography. Engineering as a future career would cause the student to make a choice on the following lines: English, technical drawing, drawing, electricity and magnetism, technical electricity; or English, drawing, technical drawing, heat and light, heat engines; or English, mathematics, mechanics, applied mechanics, plane trigonometry'; or the engineering preliminary examination. For the building trades a grouping of suitable subjects would be: English, drawing, technical drawing, mechanic! and applied mechanics; or English, drawing, technical drawing, arithmetic and bookkeeping. Students intending to enter the sphere of agriculture could secure the certificate by passing in English, botany, chemistry, general biology and agriculture; or an alternative group which would substitute bookkeeping for botany. Domestic grouping would comprise the subjects of English, home science, did wing, needlework and housecraft; or English, physiology and hygiene, drawing. needlework and housecraft. So adaptable is the system that it is possible to obtain a certificate covering subjects which will help the student in commercial life followed by marriage, by taking the subjects of English, drawing, shorthand and typing, needlework and housecraft. The new system will be of real value to post-primary teachers in enabling them to plan suitable vocational courses for students, with a guarantee that their work will eventually obtain an official certificate giving them an academic standing equal to that enjoyed by the matriculated student of past years. In order to qualify for the school certificate, a candidate must pass the examination in English and at least four other subjects.

REFORM IN N.S.W. Committee’s Report to Government. (Special to the “ S.tar.’’) : SYDNEY, April 6. Important developments in . the New South Wales scholastic world are certain to follow the publication of a report the Minister of Education has received dealing with the examination system in the public and private schools and in the university. For some time there has been much criticism of the examination system as it is practised at present. This criticism emanated from the highest and most authoritative quarters—Professor Carslaw, professor of mathematics at Sydney University, and the Rev. C. T. Parkinson, headmaster of King’s School/ the oldest public schpol in Sydney, areamong the number. Therefore the Government has been obliged to take notice of it, although the present examination scheme has the backing of generations of experience and tradition. “Taking notice” took the form of appointing a select committee of competent authorities to give the examination system a thorough overhaul; and the results of this investigation are said to constitute what in the workaday affairs of everyday life would bo described as a “sensation." The report has reached the Minister, who has not yet made it public. In well-informed circles, however, it is said that the report strongly condemns the existing system of examinations and recommends its abolition. The committee, it is rumoured, favours the substitution of a system whereby students would be obliged to pass a general knowledge examination fairly early in their scholastic careers, after which they would specialise on the subjects most suited to their temperaments and abilities, and sit for future examinations only in those subjects.