"COWYARD GOSSIP."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 224, 21 September 1932, Page 5

"COWYARD GOSSIP."

TEACHERS' TESTIMONIALS. department perturbed. AUCKLAND BOARD AMUSED. For fear that information about teachers should be made the subject of "cowyard gossip," the Education Department asked the Auckland Board to limit the information passed on to committees when teachers applied tor a position. The Auckland Board at this morning's meeting did not take the Department's alarm seriously. , j The Department wrote asking for information as to the manner in which school committees in Auckland district were consulted regarding appointment of teachers. The Department wanted to know whether the board would be prepared to accept its suggestion and send only a list of names of applicants, together with further particulars concerning length of service and other qualifications of selected applicants. One paragraph in the letter read: "The Department has under consideration a letter from a teacher who was an applicant for an .advertised position. Her application was forwarded to the school committee, and she says 'most of the information contained in my application was general knowledge in the district long before I arrived,' and she further says, with reference to an appointment to a neighbouring school, 'the chairman's wife, with the application form clutched in her hand, waylaid me as I passed the cowyard 011 my way to school, and invited me to say what I thought of the application.' The application referred to was evidently one that had been sent by the Education Board to the committee of the school concerned, and was being passed from hand to hand and gossiped about under all sorts of conditions." " Hysterical." The secretary to the board, Mr. D. Dunlop, said the Department's letter was typical of Departmental methods. A solitary case cropped up, and the Department immediately took it ill hand and wanted to legislate for the whole service on the lines suggested by the isolated case. That attitude was the explanation of much of the trouble with the Department. Some hysterical teacher talked about "a cowyard" and "clutched in the hand," and so on. The whole thing was apparently exaggerated, and the Department wanted to act as though it was ,tlic normal condition when information was sent to committees. As it was, the school committees had very little power left them, and if their rights were to be further curtailed as suggested by the Department, it would not be 'much encouragement. / Mr. S. B. Sim asked if the cowyard incident happened in the Auckland district. Some Boards Not Discreet. A board official said he did not think the board members need feel conscious. There was no doubt that some boards were not very discreet in the matter of testimonials. In one instance a member of • a board—not in the Auckland district—carried, reports on teachers in his waistcoat pocket. In another instance all the members of a board travelled about to interview applicants personally. Mr. A. Burns: If we did that in Auckland the members would never be 111 the office.

Mr. R. Hoe thought there was a danger of further limiting the powers of the school committees.

The chairman, Mr. T. U. Wells, explained the procedure in the Auckland district, where there was very little danger of teachers' testimonials being "hawked." In cases where two or more teachers applying for' a school were on the same mark as regards qualifications, the committees liked to have as many particulars as possible to enable them to come to a proper decision. It was only fair that in such cases the board should supply the committee with something more than the bare list of applicants and their markings. Other members spoke and made it clear that there had been no abuse of information in the Auckland district. The board decided to write to the Department and explain the method adopted in Auckland when information was forwarded to committees.