Mr Baigent Replies To Editorial On Teachers

Press, Volume C, Issue 29630, 28 September 1961, Page 17

Mr Baigent Replies To Editorial On Teachers

Mr A. G. A. Baigent, president of the New Zealand Post-primary Teachers’ Association, considers that a leading article in “The Press” last Monday on the recruitment of teachers did not. acknowledge sufficiently the present staff shortage. In a letter to the editor he says:— “Probably your figures of entrants to the Christchurch Teachers’ College for 1962 refer to primary teaching recruits, and our association is pleased at the response. So far as post-primary education is concerned, you speak, sir, for a city and a province that have less evidence of staffing shortage than any other part of New Zealand. “Our association wishes to make it clear that we are not agitating for increased salaries as such. We do not seek revaluation. Our case has been made to the Commission on Education and we leave the issue to its report in 1962. We do, however, seek implementation of a qualification allowance, recommended 13 months ago. in an interim report on recruitment and staffing made by the Commission on Educa. tion at the urgent request of the former Minister of Education (Mr Skoglund). We believe that this qualification allowance will aid recruitment and help to increase the number of graduates entering the service. . "Agitation” “ The recent agitation’ is based on our concern, first at the effects of the staffing shortage on the quality of our post-primary education, and second, at the stress and strain produced in our schools by inadequate numbers and inadequately qualified staffing. A school cannot do its work properly if it has 14 teachers when its roll demands 16, Schools today, to an extent unknown 10 years ago. are burdened with teachers who are underqualified or inexperienced in various ways for the duties which must be entrusted to them.

Apart from 137 vacancies in the post-primary service, we have 462 full-time relieving teachers, 60 per cent, of whom principals would wish to replace, and many parttime teachers doing the work of 217 equivalent full-time teachers. "Among those classified as in permanent positions. 32 are regarded by principals as completely unqualified. 240 are underqualified. 132 recruited from the United Kingdom may not remain in New Zealand, and 161 are classified by principals as likely to leave the profession soon for various reasons other than marriage. There are 88 vacant positions of responsibility, including 12 positions as senior assistant mistress. Seventy - nine schools are short or have diluted teaching strength in mathematics and science, and 40 schools similarly in English. “To quote the Commission of Education interim report: ‘There is an undeniable crisis in post-inrimary school staffing. . . . The volume of protest at the decline in auality of post-primarv staffing cannot be ignored. . . . With school population expansion this tendency is accelerated.' “It is the qualitative aspects of the shortage that concern us even more. The percentages of graduates in postorimary schools has been reduced to 53 9 per cent. The Parry University Committee report set our post-primary needs at 75 per cent, graduate teaching strength Emergency Schemes

“With all the emergency schemes at the teachers’ colleges. an even lower percentage of post-primary teachers will enter the profession with a completed degree or diploma. Mrs Meikle, in 'School and Nation.’ writes: ‘The immediate effect of these staffing difficulties is to throw an almost intolerable burden on principals- and the dwindling numbers of skilled, full-time, really permanent teachers who understand young people and whose discpoline is unshakable. It is wholly admirable, but far more than the country should exoect, that most of these teachers continue devotedly doing their best for their pupils and their schools under conditions that would strain a cart-horse and for salaries far below the profits a small businessman expects The long-range effect on New Zealand cannot but be disastrous.’

“Peter Drucker, in The Landmarks of Tomorrow,' writes: ‘A developed society and economy are less than fully effective if anyone is educated to less than the limit of his potential. The highly-educated man has become the central resource of today's society.’ "Is it any wonder, then, that there is dissatisfaction and complaint among teachers at the complacency in high places, at the refusal of the Government to approve the commission's urgent recommendation? If this is denied, what will be the fate of the full report of the commission? This is the concern of all thinking citizens and parents.”