A NEW TYPE

Waikato Times, Volume 123, Issue 20692, 30 December 1938, Page 5

A NEW TYPE

SCHOOLS IN BRITAIN RECOMMENDATION BY COMMITTEE SINGLE NATIONAL SYSTEM (Official Wireless) (Received Dec. 30. 1 p.m.) RUGBY, Dec. 29 In a report of an inquiry which bjM been proceeding for live years the consultative committee expresses the view that secondary education in the past has been too exclusively academic. It recommends a new type of school, to be called a technical high school, v to take selected boys at 1 1 years of age and provide a five years’ course. In the first two years the curriculum ■will be similar to that of other secondary schools, and later the course will follow more modern lines, with science as its central feature. A new type of internal examination, with a leaving certificate to be taken at 16 years of age. is suggested. The technical schools are to be developed out of the present junior technical schools in buildinjg and engineering, and they will be cquiva-» lent in status to grammar schools. The committee considers that grammar schools should continue, as hitherto, to provide education mainly for boys and girls likely io>go to the university, and it urges that, greater freedom *be allowed the schools in shaping their curriculum. Developing Individual Tastes Suggestions for ensuring that pupils shall be allowed to develop their individual tastes and capacities are made, and the committee stresses the importance of good teaching of spoken and written English as a central feature of the curriculum in these schools. Looking beyond these immediate proposals, the committee favours a single national system of schools for pupils between 11 and 16 years of age. In this system there will be grammar schools, 'technical high schools, modem selective schools and senior sohools. The committee thinks that ultimately all these types should be under one secondary code.