FLOOD OF SLOW LEARNERS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29177, 11 April 1960, Page 17

FLOOD OF SLOW LEARNERS

Post-Primary Complaint

An allegation that secondary schools are being flooded with slow learners is made by the president (Mr W. R. Edwards) m the latest journal of the New Zealand Post-primary Teachers’ Association.

“Although our staffing ratios were established long before the slow learners began to flood into post-primary schools, we have to absorb them with ratios which, in many schools, are already amended in the wrong direction through the teacher shortage,” Mr Edwards says. "There has been considerable lack of foresight in this as in other staffing matters; but apparently post-primary teachers are to be complimented on being in the class of those whose strength is as the strength of 10,” says Mr Edwards. “Whether their patience is of the same order remains to be seen.”

Mr Edwards says the Education Department invited the association to make a case for improved staff ratios and additional positions of responsibility to cover slow learners, and this was done last November. “In effect, the net gain from much work ... is a Wallis House conference of teachers of slow learners (held last month), plus information that district senior inspectors have power to make grants for setting up special rooms, equipment, etc., where schools put forward well-based claims,” says Mr Edwards.