The 153 special classes for backward children are the most numerous and best known of the special classes attached to ordinary schools under the control of education boards. They are concerned with helping some 2,015 children to become literate and live independently in the community. Children whose vision is so defective that their education is impeded can be enrolled in one of the partially sighted classes in the main centres. The Christchurch class is now part of a visual resource centre which is providing both for partially sighted and for blind pupils. With the recognition of the therapeutic value of school work for sick children in hospital, special classes are now provided in almost all public hospitals. Other special classes in the larger cities cater for partially or severely deaf who are very delicate or who are emotionally disturbed to a degree preventing their effective education in an ordinary classroom.

Specialists giving support to the work for handicapped children include psychologists, area organisers of special classes, visiting teachers, speech therapists, and advisers in reading. The central purpose of the psychological service is to examine children on request, report on their condition and needs, and advise on measures to help them. A psychological examination precedes admission to various special classes and schools, and psychologists are members of advisory committees giving guidance to teachers. Equally, the 45 psychologists and 12 area organisers are concerned with the healthy growth of all primary and post-primary children. The visiting-teacher service began in the disturbed wartime conditions of 1944 to cope with problems which had their origin outside the school itself and were affecting the progress of children. This remains its essential purpose. The 31 visiting teachers each serve a group of primary schools and, in addition, provide a limited request service for post-primary schools. The main responsibility for speech training and correction rests with the class teacher but severe cases are referred to speech therapists who work in some 75 clinics, each attached to a central school and serving a group of neighbouring schools. In addition, cerebral palsy schools have full-time speech therapists. The clinics are administered by local education boards and admissions follow reports by headmasters, school medical officers and psychologists, with the consent of parents. For several years a clinical service in reading has been maintained in the six main centres. These clinics are concerned with a small number of children who, though not mentally backward, have unusual difficulty in learning to read. Pupils are admitted when psychological examination has shown that a reading problem is too complex to be solved within the school. The main work in reading, however, must be tackled by schools themselves. They are assisted by advisers on reading who have district responsibilities for planning reading programmes and conducting courses for teachers.

The New Zealand primary schools accept almost all children who come to them, and teachers, parents, and the community are reluctant to set any groups of children further apart from their fellows than is necessary for their welfare. This attitude has guided the approach to the education of the handicapped, and many children with marked disabilities are encouraged to attend ordinary schools. It is recognised, however, that these pupils often need special attention, perhaps by having the work of the class teacher supported by that of a specialist. If in a particular case this imposes too much strain, the child may be placed in a special class attached to an ordinary school. Only where it is beyond the school's capacity to care effectively for the child, is a separate school provided. But even where the handicap is very severe, the service remains within the education system. Thus children classified as “intellectually handicapped” attend occupation centres and “go to school” like other boys and girls.

A third responsibility arising out of the Department's role as the source of the curriculum concerns the quality of work in the schools. Here the regular inspections of schools are part of the process. Standards of school work are, of course, relative and they bear a direct relationship to what children are capable of scholastically, to the quality of teaching in individual classrooms, and to the resources of the system to help teachers. There is often a temptation to simplify what is a complex matter. A comprehensive comparison of standards in English and arithmetic carried out in 1958 showed no marked losses, but considerable gains in reading for meaning and in oral English; while comparisons between the scholastic attainments of New Zealand children and those in England and Australia, summarised in 1958, revealed little difference between levels of attainment in the fundamental processes of arithmetic and spelling, but considerably higher achievement in reading by New Zealand children.

The interest of parents in the quality of children's school work is evinced in the discussions of home and school and parent-teacher associations which are active almost everywhere in the country. It is rare indeed to find a school that has not some means of letting parents know what it is trying to do for their children, and how it is going about it. Points of contact between school and home are many, and the local parent-teacher meeting is a continuing link. Among the important topics of joint concern that are often discussed at these meetings are school reports to parents on children's progress, and homework.

In describing the primary schools, one has to make it clear that most of the statements cover the work of some 11,000 classrooms in a large school system; hence generalisations on such a scale will always need to be qualified. Teachers differ in ability, in background and in their approach to children. Every classroom has some characteristics of its own. It can be said, however, with some confidence that nearly all teachers plan their work so as to give children a well balanced education in which scholastic, aesthetic, and practical subjects have reasonable portions of school time; and that most are successful in carrying out what is planned. Teachers today as a body also understand children better than did many of their predecessors. This has led to better relationships and a better working atmosphere in the classroom. Our primary schools have vindicated their place as the common schools of the New Zealand community.

by John Lithgow Ewing, M.A., DIP.ED., Chief Inspector of Primary Schools, Department of Education, Wellington.

In addition to the responsibility, already mentioned, of issuing to schools the syllabuses that make up the primary-school curriculum, the Department of Education has the further task of helping teachers to cover the work prescribed. One of the major duties of inspectors of schools is to give positive guidance to teachers on classroom work. For certain subjects — namely, physical education, art and crafts, nature study and science, reading, and music — specialist advisory services are available to give advice and practical help. Advisers to junior classes — a small group of experienced teachers of infants — are able to help teachers over the whole range of primer work. Members of the advisory services, themselves experienced teachers, give expert guidance to classroom teachers in need of help, assist head teachers and their staffs in drawing up suitable school programmes, and conduct courses of in-service training. In some country areas rural schools advisers regularly visit small schools to help teachers with their programmes. Textbooks, journals, bulletins, and handbooks reach the schools from the Department's school publications branch, while the National Film Library is a source of films and filmstrips. In the four main centres the museum education officers receive groups of pupils at the museums with the aim of supplementing classroom studies in a vivid, practical way. In order to assist in bridging studies in science and mathematics between primary and post-primary schools, an officer for school science and an officer for school mathematics have been appointed. The arrangement of in-service courses is a further means of helping teachers with the curriculum. This is a responsibility in which teachers have willingly shared, and the Teachers' Refresher Course Committee has for many years organised voluntary national holiday courses annually. A highly important development in in-service training was the opening in 1961 of Lopdell House, the Department's residential in-service centre, at Titirangi.

Many influences have affected the primary school curriculum since it was first issued in 1878. One of the strongest has been the implications, for both teaching and learning, of the fact, now completely accepted, that in the ordinary primary class children differ quite widely from one another in ability and temperament. The official syllabus in reading puts the problem plainly:

“We must accept the fact that each child is a unique personality whose capacities differ from those of his classmates. A uniform standard of achievement throughout an ordinary class is a mistaken aim. Uniformity will be achieved only if we neglect a number of highly intelligent readers, who will waste their time, and put pressure upon a number of ‘poor’ readers, who will tend to become maladjusted, and increasingly so as they struggle with material beyond their scope.”

Other syllabuses are explicit on the same point. Teachers have considerable freedom to choose their own methods of teaching, and it has been officially stated that “every teacher should have reasonable scope to do his job in his own way”. (Annual Report (E.1.) 1957.) It would be expected, however, that some general methods have evolved to cater for the varying abilities of children. Chief among them is the grouping of pupils within a class on ability or achievement for subjects like arithmetic and reading. Such groupings are practically universal except in some small country schools, where teachers are able, often with great success, to work out individual programmes. Behind this method is the desire to give children the help and impetus that will bring out their best efforts. In most schools the teaching programme is a mixture of group work and of class teaching where the class is taught as a whole — for example, in introducing a new process in arithmetic or a new topic in social studies.

For a time there was evidence of some misunderstandings about group work and its relationship to class teaching, but these have now largely disappeared. A much more widespread misunderstanding, and one not confined to New Zealand, concerns methods developed by teachers and inspectors to approach syllabus topics through both children's interests and, wherever possible, their first-hand experience. Out of these methods have come such things as the classroom shop and post office, the class magazine or wall newspaper, the nature-study table, the individual or group project, the class visit to a farm, or a factory, or to the museum, and letters to business firms asking for information. They are all aimed at giving some sense of reality and purpose to school work, of quickening children's interest in it, and of giving them a measure of responsibility. Such methods referred to variously as “activity methods” or “the play way” have at times been strongly criticised on the grounds that they tend to dilute the intellectual side of school work. There is little evidence to support this view. Activity work of the kind mentioned needs very careful and methodical planning. Admittedly it is not always successful, but schools with “activity programmes” that are carried out successfully almost always have a high standard of work in the three R's.

It has been long accepted that primary schooling in New Zealand should aim to give all children the foundation of a broad general education. This aim is reflected in the official curriculum and in school programmes. The curriculum includes language (that is, oral and written English, reading, spelling, and handwriting), arithmetic, social studies (which combines history and geography), nature study and elementary science, art and crafts, music, physical education, needlework, “and such lessons on the chief laws of health, on the duties of citizens, and on other subjects or moral instruction as may be prescribed”. (Education Act, section 56.) Work in crafts is broadened to include woodwork and metal-work (for boys) and homecraft (for girls). New Zealand is one of the very few countries in which the curriculum is prescribed by a central Department for every school. This has the advantage of ensuring that all schools, urban and rural, are covering the same programme, and moreover the programme can be readily amplified by in-service courses for teachers, by official textbooks and bulletins, and by a supply of teaching equipment. Further, children changing schools have little difficulty in settling down to the programme in their new environment. On the other hand, observers have criticised our schools as being more uniform than is necessary, and consequently unadventurous in studies where uniformity is not essential. There is some truth in this criticism, but against it must be reckoned the fact that, over the past 25 years, the primary schools have been struggling to subdue a tradition of extreme standardisation which reduced teaching in the main to a mechanical, abstract, bookish business wherein little or no account was taken of the children to be taught. In earlier years the head teacher had little part in planning a programme for his school; today, however, he has considerable responsibility for the way in which the official syllabuses are handled in his school, even though his programmes are ultimately subject to the approval of an inspector of schools.

When children begin school at the age of five, they spend a period, varying in length with their progress, in the first primer classes. In these classes most of the mornings and often part of the afternoons are usually spent on the early stages of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Some of this work is informal, using children's interests and experience as its basis; part of it is a more formal approach to the three R's. In reading, for example, the teacher aims first towards helping children to distinguish shape and form and next to recognise the printed word. Then the children begin learning to read from the first graded reader. Music, rhythm, drama, and story all have a place in the daily programme. Most primer rooms have a nature table which is the centre of talks and discussions about plants, insects, and the like. Painting, crayon drawing, modelling and other crafts are organised during the day. In Form II, the senior primary class, the programme usually plans for the three R's in the mornings and other subjects in the afternoons. In a typical week in a Form II class, time is allotted among the various subjects on the following general pattern:

The Currie Commission on Education in its report (1962) recommended that secondary education for all pupils begin in Form I at the average age of 11 plus, and suggested ways in which parts of the system could be reorganised to achieve this aim. Chief among these proposals were those for setting up, in suitable rural areas, high schools catering for pupils of Forms I–VI and for reconstituting intermediate schools as two-year junior high schools. Three experimental rural high schools, at Geraldine, Te Karaka, and Picton have been established.

The compulsory beginning age for primary schooling is six. Parents, however, are permitted to enrol their children at the age of five and 97 per cent now do so. In many other countries children beginning school are enrolled either annually or half-yearly, but it has long been accepted in New Zealand that children can be enrolled on their fifth birthday. Thus school rolls increase steadily during the year, and the heaviest demand for teachers is in the third term. Another effect is that children who are enrolled in June or later can, if they make progress well above the average, move into Standard 1 after 18 months in the infant classes (Primers 1, 2, 3, and 4) and ultimately begin post-primary work in Form III at the age of 12. Most children, however, are 13 when they reach Form III.

The New Zealand system has six primary classes above the primers — Standards 1, 2, 3, and 4 – and then Forms I and II. The majority of children have all their primary schooling from Primer 1 to Form II in one school. In a number of places, however (mainly in large centres), pupils who have completed the work of Standard 4 are transferred to central two-year institutions known as intermediate schools, the largest of which are planned for about 600 pupils. After the age of eleven, children are ready to make quite marked advances in scholastic work. When several hundred of them in this age group are brought together in one school, special programmes can be devised for varying abilities, and fast-learning and slow-learning classes formed. Some specialist teaching — in art, for example, and often in music, science, and physical education — is introduced, while in some intermediate schools optional subjects like mathematics or a foreign language are taught. As intermediates are consolidated schools, it is possible to provide them with a library, an assembly hall, an art and craft room, woodwork and metalwork rooms, and homecraft rooms. The cost of providing such facilities in each individual primary school would be very great indeed. Intermediate schools were for some years the subject of considerable controversy in New Zealand among both parents and teachers, but are now accepted as part of the Dominion's educational structure. There are at present 81 intermediate schools and others are being built or planned.

About half the 2,200 public primary schools are in the country and have one, two, or three classrooms. In the smallest of them about a dozen children are taught by one teacher. It is scarcely possible to travel far in New Zealand without seeing at least one small school, often set among old trees, with the teacher's house close by. Indeed, the rural school is at least as familiar and accepted a part of the New Zealand scene as the dairy factory or the district hall. Thousands of New Zealanders climbed the first steps of the educational ladder in what used to be called “backblocks schools”, and many children are in country schools today, though good roads, better transport, and the radio have helped to reduce their isolation. Over the years, New Zealand teachers have developed methods of teaching groups of classes in one classroom to an extent that has given the Dominion in this respect a reputation beyond her shores. In the normal schools attached to each of the seven teachers' colleges are a number of model country schools in which students aiming to become primary-school teachers can observe, and have some practice in, the complexities of running a small school. Country schools get the same equipment pro rata as urban schools and a similar measure of supervisory assistance, and — as the salary scales are so devised that the majority of teachers are required to spend a period of service in the country — an equitable share of the teaching force. The passion for equality of educational opportunity has produced another now familiar feature of rural New Zealand — the school bus — which collects children from comparatively remote districts and brings them to more convenient or central points for their schooling. In fact, school transport consists of over 2,000 separate services which have led to the demise of many small back-country schools (the number of one-teacher schools in 1921 was 1,448; in 1962 it was 451) and to the appearance of consolidated schools, such as those at Tapawera and Hunterville. For children living on high-country runs, near lighthouses, or in remote bays, the Correspondence School (in Wellington) provides lessons by post and supplements them by radio broadcasts.

In the bigger country centres, and in the towns and cities, larger primary schools are to be found. Though some have enrolments of well over 600 pupils, education boards try to plan ahead so that full primary schools (those taking pupils through the primer classes and standards to Form II) will rarely have more than a maximum of 13 classes and a total enrolment of 520 children. If primary schools become much larger than this, children tend to lose something of the vigorous community life that is possible in a neighbourhood school, while personal supervision and help by the head teacher grows increasingly difficult.

A primary school is basically a set of classrooms, each of which is a “general purpose room” where a group of up to about 40 children has to work at nearly all the prescribed studies. In the newest schools the classrooms average about 760 sq. ft. in area, but most older rooms are smaller. In addition to the classrooms, there are administrative rooms (offices for the head teacher and the clerical assistant, and a staffroom), a room used for medical inspections of the children by school medical officers (also used as a sick room), some storage space, cloakrooms, and toilets. The school may have a hall and a small, shallow pool in which children are taught to swim, both of which would be paid for by local contributions subsidised by the Government. Many schools have a dental clinic in the school grounds.