THREE-YEAR COURSE FOR TEACHERS

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31017, 24 March 1966, Page 20

THREE-YEAR COURSE FOR TEACHERS

This year is the beginning of three-year training for some primary teachers. All students entering Hamilton and Dunedin Teachers* Colleges from this year onwards will have a three-year course. A great deal of work has gone into the shaping of new courses and the staffs of the teachers’ colleges have been specially strengthened, Next year Ardmore and Christchurch Teachers’ Colleges will introduce the new course followed in 1968 by Wellington and Auckland Teachers’ Colleges, and in 1969 by Palmerston North and North Shore.

Because plans now provide for the development of existing colleges to take larger numbers of students than envisaged earlier (they will eventually have enrolments of up to 1500 students), the transistion to three-year training of the eight existing colleges at the rate of two a year will now take only four years—from 1966 to 1969 inclusive.

A record qutoa of 2250 new entrants to teachers’ colleges was approved for 1966. Two other important developments have been the introduction of further opportunities for primary teachers to undertake university work. This year about 160 primary trainees are undertaking, as part of their primary teacher training, ful-time university study under the teachers’ university studentship scheme. This year also a school of education was established at the University of Waikato and with it the introduction of college and university

courses for a large proportion of the Hamilton Teachers’ College students. These students will be entering on a three-year course for a diploma of the University of Waikato for which the teaching will be the shared responsibility of the university and the teachers* college. Some of the students will proceed to the full degree which will be completed at the end of the fourth year. Other universities are showing interest in teacher training and this general question will be a major topic of investigation by the National Advisory Council on the Training of Teachers during 1966.