THROUGH THE ARCHIVES: Ulster minister appeals to grammar schools

An appeal to all local education committees and boards of governors of voluntary grammar schools to unite to the fullest extent in implementing the full provisions of Northern Ireland’s ‘Chapter of Education’ was made the previous night by Mr Harry Midgley, Minister Education, the News Letter reported on this day in 1950.

Mr Midgley, who was speaking at the annual prize distribution of Grosvenor High School in the Ulster Hall, said that he was proud of what the school had been able to achieve in their short existence, and of how valiantly they were “striving to create tradition in their county grammar schools, a tradition of character, understanding, mutual respect courage, reliance and determination”.

Mr Midgley said that they should all strive to make the home and the school complementary, “that no violent change was effected in going from one to the other”.

Mr William Moles, MA, headmaster, in his report, criticised the Charlesworth Committee for its retention the junior certificate examination, which, he said, “had no value beyond itself”.

He said: “It carries with it no exemption from any professional requirement you can do nothing with it!”

He added: “If anybody replied that a harder examination set a year later would have the effect of frightening would-be entrants away from the grammar schools, my reply would be: ‘So much the better.’ There are too many pupils in the grammar schools already.”

Mr Moles said that the work of such committee as the Charlesworth Committee was, “of necessity, cramped, or even hamstrung, by the attitude that Queen’s University might adopt to it, and to the pupils brought up according its recommendations”. 
He said: “One the more urgent tasks lying to the hand the new Vice-Chancellor was the establishment of an entente cordiale between schools and university, whereby, among other things, the schools would be furnished with a specification of the goods the university required.”