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Graphic: An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966.

Warning

This information was published in 1966 in An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock. It has not been corrected and will not be updated.

Up-to-date information can be found elsewhere in Te Ara.

EDUCATION, TECHNICAL

Contents


Organisation of Colleges

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.