The Press FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 1968. Shortage Of Teachers

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31765, 23 August 1968, Page 12

The Press FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 1968. Shortage Of Teachers

Once again the annual conference of the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association has been told that there are not enough teachers in the secondary schools, that too many young teachers are leaving the profession after a few years of service, and that too many ill-qualified teachers remain in the schools. The association’s president, Mr A. H. Scotney, thus summed up in his speech to the conference in Wellington this week many of the shortcomings of the State secondary school system. By no means all of the deficiencies would disappear if more teachers could be found. As Mr Scotney said, the shortage of teachers and textbooks only touches upon “the "great problem of the non-academic third” of the pupils “for whom the basically academic type of “education we offer is quite unsuited”. Accepting Mr Scotney’s assessment of the proportion of “ non-academic ” pupils—and it may well be close to the mark—this problem is highly relevant to the curricula of secondary schools and to the qualifications of teachers. Some schools have gone a long way towards meeting the needs of these pupils; and it is entirely within the competence of principals to provide suitable courses for them. But other schools will not be encouraged to do so until they are assured of sufficient teachers qualified to teach all the courses they seek to offer. The efforts of the profession and the Education Department to Increase the supply of teachers must pay due regard to the courses that need to be designed for this large segment of the school population.

The Prime Minister’s account of higher enrolments at the teachers’ training colleges has offered some hope that the situation described by Mr Scotney, and by successive reports of the Minister of Education to Parliament, may be alleviated. However, the improved enrolments will have very little effect on the shortage of teachers if the number of early resignations from the profession is not substantially reduced. Mr Scotney said that two-thirds of the 500 teachers who resigned last year were in their first five years of teaching. While there can be no advantage in retaining in the profession young people who have mistaken their vocation, there is a need to examine the reasons for the resignation, within five years of their appointment, of perhaps half the new teachers who hold university degrees. Apart from the reasons mentioned by Mr Scotney—excessive work load, classes that are too large, and salaries that are too low—it seems fairly obvious that many of the defections are young women who stop work upon getting married or soon after marriage. It is no solution to the problem of the teacher shortage to discourage women from entering the profession. Inconvenient as the employment of part-time teachers may be, it is preferable to a persistent shortage of full-time teachers. Unless the schools and the department can retain the part-time services of married women teachers the other reasons for early resignations are likely to become more serious than ever. Complaints against part-time and relieving teachers are that they seldom assist with

extra-curricular duties and often leave at short notice. To meet at least the first complaint, principals should be authorised to engage more staff for non-teaching duties. Although the increased applications for teacher training this year were encouraging, the increase may have been a temporary result of reduced opportunities for employment elsewhere. Even if the increase is sustained it will be necessary to retain part-time teachers for many years; and schools should be given the means to make the best use of them.