“Desperate” Shortage Of Teachers For Africans

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30452, 28 May 1964, Page 18

“Desperate” Shortage Of Teachers For Africans

The teacher shortage affecting the African population of Southern Rhodesia was infinitely greater than any shortage experienced in New Zealand, said Mr W. G. McDonald Partridge in an interview in Christchurch. Mr Partridge, who is principal of the London Missionary Society’s Hope Foundation Teachers’ College at Bulawayo, is using his six months’ sabbatical leave to raise money and obtain trained teachers for a proposed £400,000 teachers’ college in Southern Rhodesia that will be used by Africans. The teacher shortage there was very desperate, he said. Only 40 per cent of children who finished five years’ primary schooling went any further because there were not the trained teachers to teach them. Of 23,000 African Children in Southern Rhodesia who completed their primary course last year, only 3000 went on to secondary education because of a lack of secondary school teachers. He said , that the Government spent 20 per cent of its income last year on African education. At about £8 - a child this did not go very far. Educational standards were rising in Africa, and that was why colleges were needed, Mr ' Partridge said. The college .he Was campaigning for would be built next year, ; ready for opening in 1966. It ■ would take 400 students inii tially, and part of his job at present was to get 30 to 40

teachers from Australia, New Zealand, and Britain. He last appealed for teachers in New Zealand five years ago for a similar project, but there was little response. He felt that young teachers were not willing to give up three to five years of their career to serve overseas. “They don’t want to miss on the promotional ladder, and of course there is the tempting pension at the end of it,” he said. Some persons might be deterred by racial troubles in Africa. Yet there was no great danger, outside the Republic of South Africa, from racial strife. When such strife had occurred it had generally been among Africans themselves. Mr Partridge said he felt that New Zealand, like Australia, could do more—by , sending teachers and technical experts—for the underj developed countries. New Zea- ' land, with the third highest . standard of living in the world, should be prepared to . devote 1 per cent of its Inj come to financial aid to such ! countries. At present, he , understood, it was more like .03 per cent.