Higher Qualification For Teaching

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29905, 20 August 1962, Page 10

Higher Qualification For Teaching

(N.Z. Press Association)

WELLINGTON, August 19.

The minimum entry qualification for the two-year teachers’ college courses for primary school teaching and the teaching of homecraft might well be raised to the level of the endorsed school certificate from February, 1964. /The Minister of Education (Mr Tennent) indicated this tonight, noting: “This is one of the recommendations of the commission on education.”

For a long time the colleges had been handicapped by the presence of students who were insufficiently advanced academically and in-

sufficiently mature personally to benefit fully by a teachers’ college education, said Mr Tennent. “I should like to see the minimum academic level set ultimately at university entrance, but for the moment, as the commission itself says, it is impracticable to try to raise it beyond the endorsed school certificate if we are to have sufficient entrants.” He was making the announcement so that pupils in the fourth form this year who were thinking of entering teaching, and their parents, would know what was in mind. “I have already consulted with the Education Boards’ Association and the New Zealand Educational Institute and. if our recruitment

expectations are fulfilled this year in the way we hope, then I shall be able to make a firtp announcement in the third term.” Mr Tennent said the Government had other recommendations of the commission under close consideration. Some had in fact already been implemented during the period of the publication of the report. Provision had been included in the Budget for the extension of transport routes for country pupils which the commission had recommended, the rates of boarding allowances and post-primary bursaries had been raised, and a larger annual grant had also been made to the New Zealand Council for Educational Research.