A NEW IDEA.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11727, 30 November 1905, Page 5

A NEW IDEA.

The Wanganui Education Board, at ths instance of tli» Chief Inspector, have decided that in future tho examinations for the Sixth Standard certificate shall beheld simultaneously throughout the district towards the end of each year. Tho proposal involves th? most radical change in school organisation that has yet been attempted in tlu> district. Wo cannot, of course, express a final opinion upon it uni.il wo arc in possession of the details of the scheme In such a matter it is obvious that much must depend upon the methods adopted i:» carrying it out. How it is proposed to proceed we do not yet know, as no information has been published. On the whole however, the idea strikes us as meritorious, though its success will depend largely upon the manner of its application. We think also that before adopting the suggestion it would have been wise to take the opinion of the head teachers. There are in tho district upwards of a hundred schuo!s, the teachers in charge of which would make an advisory body of very high authority on such questions. We have no doubt, however, the scheme would have met with approval. It will probably go a long way towards breaking down the old, bad tendency to measure school efficiency by the hard and fast standard of passes and failures — a tendency which is still exhibiting not a little vitality. To make tho Sixth Standard year end in December throughout the district it will, as the Board's circular points out, bo neccasary to make the courses of the other classes end at the same time. Thus the school year will in every case correspond with the calendar. What difference this will make to the work of the Inspectors wo. do not know, ,but it does not promise to make it any easier. It is clearly impossible that every school can be examined by the Inspectors in the same month, and we may therefore pjesumo that the examinations will be left, as they properly should, to the teachers. The regulations provide that at his annual visit an Inspector shall examine "a due proportion of the pupils in each class" as a test of the school work as a whole. What an Inspector appears to do in nine cases out of ten is examine the whole school, and in the end the promotions aro his rather than the teacher's, as the regulations contemplated. We refer now to all the classes except Standard VI. Of the work in this class the Inspector has been very properly made- the sole judge. Under the system accepted by the Wanganui Board the promotions below the Sixth Standard will probably become in every case the teachers', and being made, not as tho result of the visit oi a special examiner, but as part of the ordinary school routine, cease to be- regarded as "passes" from which the efficiency of the school may be calculated. In this way the Inspector will become less of an examiner and critic, and more of a helper and adviser.

We shall be interested to see the details of the proposals for carrying out the simultaneous examination of the Sixth Standard children. The schools in some parts of the district are so far apart and connected by such poor roads that it would be a task of more than ordinary difficulty to gring the children together. But nc doubt some plan can be devised by which all could be examined in different centres during the course of three or four weeks.