School Inspectors’ Role

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31151, 30 August 1966, Page 6

School Inspectors’ Role

“I am anxious that discussions with teachers should continue with a view to reducing the amount of formal assessment work by inspectors, particularly for young teachers,” the Minister of Education (Mr Kinsella) told the biennial conference of the Australian Association of Institutes of Inspectors of Schools in Christchurch yesterday.

Young teachers should receive help and guidance from inspectors, and should not be subjected to formal assessment visits during their early years of service, Mr Kinsella said.

“In the last analysis, I believe the assessment of teachers can be justified only where it Is directly related to promotion to posts of responsibility. “In New Zealand, we cannot yet say that our grading schemes for primary and secondary schools meet that criterion. Progress has been made in that direction, and I am hopeful that it will continue.”

The inspector was still charged with safeguarding educational standards and with ensuring that teachers performed efficient work. But although he was still required to carry out the duties of an assessment officer, he had become much more of an adviser, with whom teachers were prepared to discuss their problems. From his own experience as a teacher, he could recall “a certain uneasiness” as inspectors descended on his school to grade the teachers. It was natural, Mr Kinsella said, for teachers to keep a wary eye on their assessment, since their promotion could depend on it. “But this wariness of the assessment awarded by inspectors has tended to inhibit

the development of professional relationships between teachers and inspectors that are as close and easy as are necessary for a healthy school system. “With the best will in the world, it is difficult to overcome tenseness between the inspector and the teacher being inspected. However, in New Zealand we have gone a long way towards removing this tenseness, and grading does not loom nearly as large in the view of either the inspector or the teacher as it once did,” he said.

In spite of the limitations on his work through the requirements of assessment, the central function of an inspector of schools was that of a guide and adviser. “This is a positive function that will, in the long run, relieve teachers from unnecessary fears, enable inspectors to enter into the spirit of the schools they visit, and promote harmony and the interchange of ideas between inspectors and teachers,” said the Minister.

Among present developments in education in New Zealand, none was more important than the complete reorganisation of teacher training courses, with the transition from two to three-year training for all primary teachers. Mr Kinsella said.

“This project—to lengthen and improve the training course for teachers—has been introduced at a time when school enrolments are continuing to increase rapidly, and it reouires the training of an additional 2400 teachers. It represents the most significant development in teacher training in New Zealand to be undertaken this century.”

Other steps to improve primary and secondary education included the rapid expansion of in-service training for teachers, the introduction of new teaching, organising and staffing methods in schools, and changes in the examination system. New types of school were being tried, and ways of im-

proving the education of the country child were being carefully examined. There had been substantial advance in special education for the handicapped child.

Mr Kinsella welcomed the 170 delegates to the conference, especially the 37 from all the Australian states, Papua and New Guinea.

Both New Zealand and Australia, he said, had faced the challenge of training skilled craftsmen and technicians to support industry, and there had been a great upsurge in senior technical education. “I have no doubt that Australia, with its vast distances and variety of peoples, has met with many problems in education which are similar to ours, and has found solutions which would be of great interest to all of us here in New Zealand.”