Training College Proposals Opposed

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31209, 5 November 1966, Page 25

Training College Proposals Opposed

Disagreement with the Canterbury Education Board’s proposals for the new teachers’ college in Christchurch was expressed in a letter sent to the Minister of Education (Mr Kinsella) by the Christchurch Boys’ High School’s board of governors recently.

In the letter, the chairman of the board (Mr A. I. R. Jamieson) said it felt that the aspirations of secondary teachers to play a more responsible part in secondary teacher training should be supported. Secondary training had been “a mere appendage” of primary training for too long, and there was an unanswerable case for recognising that the secondary school pupil was taught by specialist teachers using subjects from their own degrees as teaching subjects. “Unless the organisation of secondary training is entrusted to a secondary training principal, subordinate only to the college council, the.i secondary training will be stultified and the secondary profession, chronically short of recruits, will further languish,” the letter said. A separate independent secondary department would cost little, and unless it was established, deep-seated discontent would mar all attempts to make a success of secondary teacher training at the new college. The Education Board’s proposals would perpetuate the primary domination of the college. The board of governors therefore suggested a council constituted so as to avoid any apparent weighting in favour of either the primary or secondary professions.

Such a council would include two Education Board members, two from universities in the district, two elected by secondary school controlling authorities in the district, one member representing sec-

ondary school principals, and one representing primary school principals, one member from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association, one from the Educational Institute, one joint principal from the college primary division, and one from the secondary division, one superintendent of the southern region of the Education Department, and two other members.

The board of governors felt that the adoption of suggestions such as the ones given would do much to enhance the status of secondary training and lead to harmonious relations between the two branches of the profession.