NEW PLAN WELCOMED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 17, 20 January 1934, Page 10

NEW PLAN WELCOMED.

improvement on old

•oAn Auckland education authority said to-day that the plan to obviate or lessen employment among young teachers, as enunciated by the Minister, will have two markedly beneficial results. It will relieve the strain on teaching staffs who have had to bear the burden of larger classes or lessened assistance since ccoAomy measures were enforced, and it will provide for more continuity of teaching than has been possible with classcs in the city and with small country schools during the operation of the "rationing" scheme. Headmasters have been unanimous in their conviction that the change of teachers of some of their classes, which occurred at the beginning of every tern?, was seriously affecting the steady progress of pupils in the lower and middle divisions of primary schools. Parents, too, had learned from observations and experiences of children that the scheme, designed for the benefit of unemployed young teachers, was far from beneficial to the children.

"The rates of pay proposed under the new plan are certainly very small for trained and qualified men and women starting the practice of a profession," remarked one teacher to-day, "but I think that the assurance of a steady though minute income, and the prospect of permanent occupation, will be welcomed by the young teachers affected as a considerable advance upon the conditions of the past two years. There should be much-needed additions to the staffs of the city schools, and far less dislocation of work by changes in personnel. There is only one drawback, an inevitable one when it is considered that the young teachers must gradually be absorbed into the ranks of those in permanent "positions at scale rates of salary. This drawback is that the extra teaching assistance provided in the big schools will gradually lessen as the year proceeds, and this will neccessitate readjustments in the work for the staffs. It will be far better, however, than the chopping and changing which has marked the past two years."