The colony was still young when talk began of providing university education for some selected scholars; and in 1868, following the report of a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament, a New Zealand University Endowment Act was passed. The chief result of the Act was to stimulate the Province of Otago to push on with its own plans; and, an endowment of 100,000 acres having been set aside, in 1869 the University of Otago was founded by a Provincial Council Ordinance, the Presbyterian Church having agreed to endow a chair of mental and moral science and political economy, while the Council provided for a chair in classics and English and a chair in mathematics and natural philosophy, and, later, for one in natural science.

Stirred in its turn to action, Parliament passed in 1870 the New Zealand University Act. The debates on the Bill were long and acrimonious, conflict of opinion developing at once (it lasted for half a century) between those who saw a university body, incidentally examining for and granting degrees, and those who envisaged merely an examining and degree-granting institution. The intention of the Act, as was that of the majority of the members of the Joint Committee that prepared the Bill, was the establishment of a community of scholars — of teachers and taught — in a place to be determined, with examining and degree-granting functions as a corollary.

The Act provided for a council, to be nominated in the first place by the Government, and an annual grant of £3,000. It also empowered the University of Otago to agree to its dissolution and the transfer of its endowments to the University of New Zealand, in which case “the said University shall be established at Dunedin”; but, in default of such agreement with Otago, the University of New Zealand might be founded at such other place as the Government might determine. The first council comprised three Auckland, five Wellington, two Nelson, four Canterbury, and six Otago representatives and when H. J. Tancred and Hugh Carleton were elected chancellor and vice-chancellor respectively, both holding to the examining and degree-granting function and both hostile to amalgamation with Otago, it was apparent that neither party would agree to terms submitted by the other. In these circumstances Otago proceeded with the appointment of its professors, while the University of New Zealand, “houseless and homeless”, proceeded to draft conditions for the affiliation of “Scholastic or Collegiate Institutions”.

Otago petitioned the Government for a charter; so did the University of New Zealand. The Government sent forward both applications without expressing an opinion on the merits of either; but Her Majesty's Government, said the Secretary of State in appropriate diplomatic language, would be unwilling to advise Her Majesty to grant charters to two universities, and would postpone any advice till the New Zealand Government could make up its mind which to recommend.

Agreement by Otago was hastened, if not precipitated, by action in Canterbury, first in the formation of the Canterbury Collegiate Union, and by the passage, by the Provincial Council, of the Canterbury College Ordinance in 1873, and the establishment of a board of governors which very soon petitioned Parliament for the maintenance and chartering of a single university in the colony — the University of New Zealand — and then sought affiliation therewith. Otago gave up the unequal struggle. It, too, agreed to affiliate on condition that it retained its endowments, its title of University, and its right to a share of the University grant of £3,000; but it abandoned its application for a charter and power to confer degrees.

The University of New Zealand was established by Act of Parliament in 1870. By the beginning of the year 1961 it had developed into a federal university comprising the University of Otago, the University of Canterbury, the University of Auckland, and the Victoria University of Wellington, together with the Canterbury Agricultural College at Lincoln and the Massey Agricultural College at Palmerston North. By Acts of Parliament passed during 1961, the University of New Zealand was disestablished and its functions were distributed among four independent and autonomous universities, each with its own new empowering Act. A University Grants Committee was also established by Act of Parliament.

The story of the University of New Zealand is one of provincial jealousies and rivalries in the educational and political arena and of restraints and frustations on the academic level, in the light of which the names of distinguished graduates, many of international fame, in every field of scholarship, shine with almost incredible brilliance.

The Council for Technical Education consists of a group of men whose experience and knowledge fit them to consider objectively and dispassionately any question related to technical education that may be submitted to them. The main duties of the council are to advise the Minister of Education on any matter relating to education and training for industry and commerce, and to foster close relations between technical education and industry and commerce. The Council could be paralleled at various levels by national and local committees, both temporary and permanent, by means of which the cooperation between industry and commerce and the education service, that is so desirable, can be made effective and fruitful.

by Bernard Crossley Lee, B.SC.(ENG.), PH.D.(LOND.), D.T.C., M.I.E.E., Superintendent of Technical Education, Department of Education, Wellington.

New Zealand is a country characterised by small pockets of population strung out over a long distance. As a consequence the education system must be prepared to deal with a pattern involving small numbers of apprentices in any one place and, indeed, for some trades, in the country as a whole.

One of the agencies that has been developed for this purpose is the Technical Correspondence Institute which now has a full-time staff of 181 teachers. The school caters for a large number of apprentices and in June 1964 they accounted for 7,246 of the total roll of 10,760. To make provision for them, the school provides courses in almost all the apprentice trades and in some of them the tuition, together with block courses, is the only technical training available.

There is a wide variety of other courses, ranging from radio and television to horticulture and farming, and including courses on industrial and business management. Among the more unusual subjects in this range are surveying, textile manufactures of various kinds, aspects of coal-mining, and rural and urban valuation. In several of these subjects, the school offers the only tuition provided by the State system. Another function of the Technical Correspondence Institute is the production of textbooks. Most of the earlier books related to agricultural studies and particularly to New Zealand conditions. More recently, the institute has produced apprentice textbooks, the latest of these being Plumbing in New Zealand and Electricity for Motor Mechanics.

Three types of college may be distinguished in principle — namely, local, regional, and central, and though it may often be found that a particular college exhibits the features of more than one type, its work falls mainly into one of these categories. A local college serves the needs of a locality for technical education and at present takes the form of a post-primary school offering a range of evening and apprentice classes. The regional college serves as a local college but it also draws students for some courses from a wider area which may be anything from, say, Wellington and the Hutt Valley to the whole of the South Island. The size of the region may vary with the course and depends on the number of other colleges providing a particular course. A central college makes a special feature of providing national courses, often in the form of block courses, for groups so small or so specialised that provision for them at only one college in New Zealand can be justified.

Recently a decision was taken to split the Seddon Technical School at Auckland into two schools, one a technical high school and the other a polytechnic. To effect this division, a multi-storey block was erected on the present site. However, before this block could be occupied, the demand for technical classes had grown to such an extent that plans were made to move the day school to another site. A second step was the development of the senior work of the Hutt Valley Technical School at Petone into the Central Institute of Technology, a change made possible by transferring the day school temporarily to prefabricated buildings and subsequently to another site. The Central Institute of Technology provides motor mechanic courses on a regional basis as well as national courses such as those for country electrician apprentices and country refrigeration service apprentices. At the technician level the college provides block courses for students taking various certificate courses by correspondence. In this way they get the practical laboratory work that would normally be obtained by attending live classes. The College also provides sandwich courses at this level.

The Christchurch Technical Institute was formed in 1965 by dividing the Christchurch Technical College into a high school and a technical institute. The Otago Polytechnic is to be formed by the same process in 1966.

Mention must also be made of the New Zealand School of Pharmacy which has been established at Central Institute of Technology. A complete block was remodelled especially for the needs of pharmacy and it now provides accommodation for 150 students spread over the two-year course.

The Trades Certification Board is an autonomous body with its own secretariat. The members are representative of both sides of industry, of the Plumbers and Electricians Registration Boards, the Motor Trade Certification Board, the Technical Education Association, the Post-primary Teachers' Association, and the Department of Education, together with the Commissioner of Apprenticeship and a chairman appointed by the Minister of Education. An important feature of the Board's activities is close cooperation with industry both at Board level and at committee level, as well as with the schools.

Apprentices are encouraged to sit for the Board's examinations but they are under no obligation to do so. They do, however, have to attend courses of instruction which are based on the Board's syllabuses. The fifteenth annual report of the Board shows that it now provides for 36 trades and had 13,880 candidates in 1963. Up to 31 March 1964, the Board had issued 16,994 trade certificates and 4,575 advanced trade certificates.

The technician is now accepted as a member of the industrial hierarchy, though that word is not always used to describe him. He, or she — for there are many women technicians — is sometimes referred to as a member of the “middle group”, who may be described as people who work with their hands, but their hands are more likely to hold an instrument than a tool. Such a man may have been a tradesman but not necessarily so; and though he will often need a knowledge of manual techniques, he may not necessarily need the ability to practise them.

The Technicians' Certification Act of 1958, which was brought into force on 1 February 1960, puts on a statutory footing the work that had been carried on for five or six years by the Controlling Authority for the New Zealand Certificates in Engineering. The success of these certificates led to the belief that there might be a need in other branches of industry for some similar qualification. The Technicians Certification Authority was formed to investigate these possibilities and to formulate courses, as they were shown to be needed. It took over control of the courses for certificates in engineering and in draughting that were developed by the Controlling Authority; and it has added courses for New Zealand certificates in building, architectural draughting, and quantity surveying; and in the main branches of science – chemistry, physics, biology, and geology. The Authority also offers shorter courses for a technical certificate in automotive engineering and welding; for a certificate of competency in garage management; and for a radio technician's certificate.

The Apprentices Act (1948) provided for the establishment of the office of Commissioner of Apprenticeship to be responsible for apprentices throughout the Dominion and to act as chairman of the 32 New Zealand apprenticeship committees. He is assisted by nine district commissioners who operate regional offices and chair the 223 local committees. Apprenticeship Orders may provide for technical school training and most of them do so. It is for the apprenticeship committee in each case to decide whether that training should take the form of evening classes, day training, block courses, technical correspondence tuition, or, indeed, any other form of training that the committee may select. Normally, though not necessarily, the course will be provided by one or more State schools. Generally, the study course of the town apprentice consists of day release and evening classes, whereas the country boy is provided with technical correspondence tuition and block courses — that is to say, continuous periods of attendance at college during 40 hours a week for one or more weeks. In this way both have the same opportunities but in different forms.

Though the scheme has been operating for over 10 years, it is still changing. There is a definite trend towards block courses in place of half-day a week release, and there is also a tendency towards the replacement of small local evening class centres by correspondence tuition. Typically an apprentice is directed to attend one block course, usually of three weeks' duration, once during each of his first three years of apprenticeship, and any further attendance must be by arrangement between the apprentice and his employer with the concurrence of the Department of Labour. There is a tendency for this to take place to an increasing extent.

Technical education comprises an extensive range of courses and classes that are attended by students who have left day school; it excludes courses provided by the universities and adult education agencies. This body of work includes continuation and hobby classes, school of pharmacy, classes for apprentices and technicians, senior business courses, and a variety of other short and long courses — generally, though not always, part-time day or evening — too numerous to mention individually. Together they form a part of the education service that has been growing very rapidly during the past decade and shows every sign of growing even more rapidly in the next.

In the provision made for mentally backward children, a distinction is drawn between those who are capable of “education” (as are special class children) and the “intellectually handicapped” for whom training in the simpler, physical, personal, and social skills and habits is all, or nearly all, that is possible. Children of special class level who cannot be helped satisfactorily while living at home can be enrolled in two special residential schools at Otekaieke (for boys) and Richmond (for girls). For the intellectually handicapped, occupation centres may be established by education boards where there is an assured minimum roll of 12 children between the ages of five to 18 years. There are at present 23 such centres in New Zealand. In smaller towns where there are five to 11 suitable children, education boards will provide teachers for an occupation group if the local community will provide and maintain a suitable building. At the request of the Department of Health's Division of Mental Health, schools have also been established within the Kingseat, Levin, and Templeton Hospitals for their less severely handicapped children, and within Cherry Farm Hospital for selected young mentally ill patients. The two residential schools for the deaf (Sumner and Kelston) are under the direct control of the Department of Education. Eight specialist visiting teachers attached to these schools work throughout the country with pre-school deaf children and their parents, and give guidance to teachers in ordinary schools who have hard-of-hearing children in their classes. The New Zealand Foundation for the Blind administers New Zealand's one residential and day school for blind and partially sighted children — Homai College in Auckland — but the Department of Education meets the full costs of educating its pupils. Pre-school and primary children are taught at Homai College itself but some of its secondary boarders attend Auckland post-primary schools, whose staffs are assisted by an itinerant teacher from Homai College. Dr Earl Carlson's visit to New Zealand in 1948 focused public attention quite dramatically on the needs of cerebral palsied children and led to the development of a national policy for their education. There are now six cerebral palsy schools. Children mildly cerebral palsied attend ordinary schools while those who are severely handicapped intellectually are admitted to occupation centres. A school is attached to each of the seven health camps, and there are also two special schools for delicate children. The Mount Wellington Residential School, Auckland, admits severely disturbed children from all over the country. The Child Welfare Division controls a number of “open” institutions for the rehabilitation of wayward boys and girls. Educational programmes form a part of their work, and schools and classes are established at Burwood Girls' Training Centre (for older girls), Fareham House (for younger girls), the Levin Boys' Training Centre (for older boys), and Hokio Beach School (for younger boys). There is also a post-primary class at Owairaka Boys' Home (Auckland) and at the Lower Hutt Boys' Home. The Department of Education has also an official relationship with the Department of Justice in the appointment of part- and full-time teachers to prisons and borstal institutions, and it also pays the salaries of the tutors in lip reading employed by the New Zealand League for the Hard of Hearing to assist deafened adults.

by Stephen Selwyn Powell Hamilton, M.A., DIP.ED., Officer for Special Education, Department of Education, Wellington.