Staff Shortage A ‘Vicious Circle’

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31380, 27 May 1967, Page 14

Staff Shortage A ‘Vicious Circle’

The main problem confronting the Post Primary Teachers’ Association in < 1967 was that of a coritinuing staff shortage, said the chairman of the Canterbury region (Mr W. E. Jeffery) when he opened the annual regional conference in Christchurch last night

He said the association was forced to repeat again and again that staff shortages in secondary schools was a fact and a “doom laden” one at that.

Mr Jeffery added that the Christchurch metropolitan area did not suffer from a staff shortage as did other centres.

Reenntment into the profession was falling and it could be deduced that secondary school teaching was less attractive than it used to be and it was becoming more so.

The first obvious reason was salary, he said, yet the contention of the association had never been that secondary teachers wanted higher salaries. Rather, it was that more secondary teachers were wanted. The main avenue of improvement in conditions was through a reduction in the size of classes, he added.

Mr Jeffery said that if it was unpopular to ask for higher salaries in a time of economic restrictions it was also “madness” to seek smaller classes at a time of teacher shortages. “We maintain we are trapped in a vicious circle,” he said. “Because we have Irrge classes, we cannot recruit teachers and because we haven’t the teachers we are carrying on with large classes.”

The association had made proposals in detail to the Minister of Education so that class reductions could take place in the foreseeable and planned future. But to implement them would cost money, he said.

“To often New Zealand has floundered in the mire of expediency and short-term advantage, no matter which party is the Government, no matter who is the Minister, or what he is the Minister of, or what the matter is under discussion.”

Three remits were passed by the conference last night. The first, from Rangiora, was “that the position of organised sport in the secondary curriculum be reviewed.” The second, from Hagley, was “that it be a recommend- ’ ation to the appropriate auth- ■ orities that the law be altered ‘so that when parents are ■ charged with having truant ' children, the children involved be brought before the ' Children's Court and charged with failing to come to ‘ school.” The third, from Cashmere, was “that the powers of inter- ; vention of the Child Welfare Division be investigated with ’ a view to having them ex- ’ tended.” il