LEAVING SCHOOL TOO EARLY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 85, Issue 228, 27 September 1941, Page 4

LEAVING SCHOOL TOO EARLY

TECHNICAL COLLEGE PUPILS

PRINCIPAL COMMENTS ON PRESENT TREND

SHORT-SIGHTED POLICY OF PARENTS.

Grave concern at a growing tendency of parents to take their children from secondary schools and allow them to accept employment has been expressed by the principal of the Wanganui Technical College, Mr. I. E. Newton, M.A. In a report to the College Board of Managers he refers to this as a short-sighted policy which will lead to many boys and girls finding dead-end occupations and, later, when competition for remunerative posts become keen, regretting tnat they were not allowed lo continue m their post-primary education. ) "Employers are constantly inquiring " for the services of pupils and so many have already left that third-year engineering and commercial classes especially are becoming depleted," Mr. Newton reported. "Twenty-five out of 42 senior commercial girls have gone into employment and 10 out of 31 senior engineering boys. “This is not surprising in view ot the present state of world affairs, but there is a very disquieting feature. On entering their children at the beginning of the year parents are required to guarantee that the pupils will remain at school throughout the whole year. Pupils who stay for only a term or two can scarcely be considered to have received even the semblance of a technical education. In spite of this, with only two terms of the year gone, 14 first-year pupils have alreadj’ left school to go to employment, a proportion of one in every fifteen. This is evidence of a very short-sighted policy on the part of the parents concerned, who for the sake of a fwe shillings a week, are willing to jeopardise the future careers of 'J their children. A • “It is true that many such pupils enrol in the evening classes, but four or five hours weekly in the evening classes cannot balance the 30 hours of day instruction that have been discarded. Many of these pupils have taken up dead-end occupations, or positions which can only be regarded as temporary. After a year or two in such positions they will find themselves displaced by youths returning from their military duties, so that, at the age of 17 or 18 years, they find themselves looking for another position.

"It is much harder for a youth ot 18 to obtain employment than it is for one of 16, owing to the fact that the former must, by law, be paid higher wages. The average lad in such a posifion is likely to have his whole career ruined from the start. He cannot hope to compete with those who have had a full course of sound post-primary education. We have numerous instances of pupils taking 5,6, 7, even 8 years of post-primary schooling. V "Competition for remunerative posi- W tions will become very keen when there is a general return of men from military service. There are too many parents who take no view at all of the future welfare of their children. They are helping to build up a large army of untrained and helpless citizens, in a country which offers educational facilities to all in a measure excelled by no other country in the world. ‘'Moreover, by scorning the advantages freely offered by the State they are helping to waste the State's money. The cost of a complete year's education is paid by the State on the Ist. of March for every pupil on the roll of a post-primary school, whether he takes the full year or not. If par- • ents do not appreciate the action of the State, then the State should require them either to make full use of the education provided and paid for. cr to make good the financial loss suY'ered by the State through their own neglect.”