Place For Teachers On Boards Seen

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30529, 26 August 1964, Page 5

Place For Teachers On Boards Seen

The fact that secondary school boards were not better organised or motivated to assist teachers’ claims at the national level was described as a weakness by the president of the New Zealand Post-Primary Teachers’ Association (Mr Lv E. Adams) at the annual conference of the association at Auckland yesterday.

Teachers had no rights to b« represented on the boards nor could they take a place on departmental committees, •aid Mr Adams, who is the principal of Glendowie College, Auckland.

"It is also a weakness—and this is said without the Intention to criticise anyone in the department—that a teacher must leave the classroom for good in his thirties if he is to have top prospects in a departmental career. Attempt Wanted "It would seem a good idea for experienced principals to have at least some chance of achieving some of the senior posts in the department where such experience could be invaluable, and for some departmental officers to move into schools or principalships. One must admit that it is easier to say this than to devise an equitable scheme. But •omething should be tried,” said Mr Adams. By means of a growing confidence between the department and the teacher bodies, teachers were enjoying frequent opportunities of consultation on a variety of professional topics, he said. “I should hope the growing strength and influence of this association will always be used fairly and responsibly and in a co-operative spirit with the department. On our part we see the pressure under which departmental officers work and the little time they get to escape from detail. “We must be allowed to make our contribution to educational theory, to experiment, to the curriculum and to all aspects of education

through a national council of some sort where the professional, administrative, and lay voices are equally. heard. In Scotland, teachers are accepted, as we are, on consultative committees and examination boards and are appointed with growing frequency to the committees of the authorities that employ them. They go so far as to claim disciplinary control over their profession, over entry to it, including certification of teachers.

“Our association has been described as a pressure group. It is one, of course. But its demands are modest and correct enough. If it has seemed to use its pressure for the good of teachers it was because past neglect of teachers was threatening the good of education. It seeks now a greater voice in policy and will deserve to be heard in proportion to the dignity and integrity with which it goes about the task.

“I exhort young teachers to look beyond the classroom to the unlimited possibilities for service to their profes sion and to their country through a lively interest in their association’s expanding role. “The future for secondary teachers was never better,” Mr Adams said.