ABSTRACT
In 1944 I was appointed to the office of the Public Service Commission and became in 1946 the Superintendent of Staff Training, a position I held until 1951. In view of my official position I had access to documents coming from England dealing with the promotion of the Administrative Staff College at Henley. Not only was I interested from an official angle but I was also an active member of the New Zealand Institute of Public Administration. I have set out relevant developments within New Zealand as I remember them and in chronological order:
In 1949 I was chairman of a study group set up by the Wellington branch of IPA to consider the subject of education and training for administration, and in our report we discussed the English Administrative Staff College as one tenable approach. Their first course had been launched in 1948. For my part I was convinced that the idea behind such a course had definite potential for us, and I decided to take the initiative within IPA and strive to persuade our members to this point of view.
In May 1950 at the annual conference of the Council of the Institute of Public Administration, I submitted data I had gathered dealing with the establishment and progress of the Henley project. The pros and cons of the project were discussed by the conference and then the question was referred to the National Executive Committee for further action.
In the following month, June 1950, Professor R.S. Parker of Victoria University College addressed the New Zealand Institute of Industrial Management on the subject of the Henley development. He was aware of what was already happening within the Institute of Public Administration.
Steps were taken to inform the general membership of the IPA about the Henley project. Some detail was given in the IPA newsletter for June 1950 and then an informative article by the late H.A. Levestam was published in the newsletter for August 1950, which quoted a paper by Mr Noel F. Hall, ‘Staff College in Training for Management’, published by the British Institute of Management.
The National Executive Committee, in reviewing the Henley scheme in the light of the earlier discussion in council, decided to appoint a subcommittee, of which I was to be the convener. Our task was to provide a further report on whether we should have a Staff College within New Zealand. In our subsequent report we sought approval for the proposal in principle and also for authority to discuss the proposal with interested persons in the realm of private enterprise.
In May 1951, the council of IPA gave general endorsement to our proposals and authorised the National Executive Committee to proceed as early as practicable with arrangements for a course. Discussions subsequently took place with other interested organisations and a controlling committee was set up as follows:
https://www.niso.org/standards/z39-96/ns/oasis-exchange/table">IPA
D.F. Campbell
J.L. Robson
T.R. Smith
IIM
W.G. Rodger
K. Schwarz
A.H. Thomas
VUC
Professor R.S. Parker
Joint
P. Eastwood
Secretaries
H.G. Lang
