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(2) A system of technical bursaries was instituted for pupils following senior technical courses in agriculture, art, building construction, engineering, and homecraft. In 1943 secondary-school bursaries of £4O a year were introduced to enable country children who had passed the School Certificate Examination to attend the Sixth Form at a school on the accrediting list. The technical-school bursaries are of the same value and are intended to provide similar facilities to country children wishing to take more practical courses. They are open to all children who have completed an approved two years' course at a post-primary (including district high) school, and who cannot attend a school giving technical courses without living away from home. This is a logical outcome of the policy to provide for every child the course for which he is best fitted. (3) Another essential in an education system that gives full secondary education to all without selective examinations is a system of educational and vocational guidance. Approval has been given for careers teachers to be appointed in 1947 in all post-primary schools, including district high schools with at least two hundred secondary pupils. Up till now they have been officially approved and paid only in the schools in the four main centres. (4) Special annual grants to all post-primary and district high schools were instituted for the purchase of materials for the teaching of social studies and school music. District high schools, in addition, received special grants for their libraries. (5) Large quantities of scientific, mechanical, and other equipment was purchased during the year from the War Assets Realization Board for free distribution to postprimary schools. (6) The Publications Branch of the Department began the fortnightly production of post-primary school bulletins for free distribution to all State and private post-primary schools. These bulletins had their origin in the current affairs bulletins issued during the war by the A.E.W.S. They will, as far as possible, cover those portions of the new post-primary curriculum that are not ordinarily dealt with in the usual text-books. The standard of the first few issues has been extremely high. (7) On Ist July, 1946, the Department took over the responsibility for the study courses previously conducted by the A.E.W.S. A Technical Correspondence School was established to develop these courses for men in the Armed Services, and also to provide correspondence instruction in vocational and technical subjects for apprentices and advanced students unable to attend technical schools. There is growing evidence that this School is meeting a real need throughout New Zealand. (8) As a result of close collaboration between the educational authorities and the New Zealand Motor Trade Certification Board considerable advances are being made in the provision of special training for apprentices in the motor trade. There are now some thirty-five post-primary schools in which organized training for these apprentices is being carried out. Army buildings have been widely used to provide the necessary accommodation, and the Government has approved a grant of £13,000 for the purchase of special equipment. I have been pleased to assist a trade that has realized so fully the necessity for systematically training its young workers. (9) With the recasting of the School Certificate Examination it became possible to revise the Department's Technological Examinations to bring them into closer relation with the demands of industry and with the changed concepts of post-primary education. So in October I set up a Consultative Commit'tee to report on these examinations. The Chief Inspector of Post-primary Schools is the Chairman, and there are six members representative of employers and workers in various groups of industries, three members nominated by the New Zealand Technical School Teachers' Association, and two others representative of the Department. Pending the Committee's report, the Technological Examinations and the City and Guilds Examinations, both of which were discontinued during the war, will be re-instituted in 1947.
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