HINDRANCE TO EDUCATION

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33035, 30 September 1972, Page 18

HINDRANCE TO EDUCATION

(By our education reporter)

The Department of. Education, which this; year will spend almost; s34om of the taxpayers’ money, is facing a critical staffing situation. Deputations from the; 20.000 members of the New: Zealand Educational Insti- i tute have met the Prime Min- ], ister (Mr Marshall) to ex-; press concern about the in-; adequate staffing within the department. The N.Z.E.I. and the Post Primary Teachers’ Associa-;j tion, togther with the Edu-,, cation Boards Association,:; tay that unless the depart-1

I ment is strong, well organised and adequately staffed, ! the whole education service | will suffer. The president of the E.B.A. ' (Mr L. A. Lorrigan) said this week that his inquiries had I left him in little doubt about ; the excessive and constant | strain placed upon the Direc- ; tor-General of Education (Mr A. N. V. Dobbs) and his offil cers. The Educational Institute is adamant that teachers and] pupils are suffering because the Department of Education “is unable to process its work because of the Government's unrealistic staffing policy.” In his annual report Mr

Dobbs recognises this: “The time has now come when some degree of basic reorganisation should be considered,” he says. “The system of staff ceilings throughout the Public Service has limited the ability of the department to serve the education force as effectively as it would wish.” Since 1962, when the Commission on Education recommended that a third Assistant Director-General be appointed to the Department of Education—a step which has not yet been taken by the State Services Commission — the workload of the department has increased rapidly, but without extra staff.

The last decade rolls cf primary and secondary pupils have increased from 585,000 to 710,000. There has been a rise in Government expenditure on education over the same period—from sB4m to $337.8m. In 1962 there were 22,250 teachers employed in schools and now the figure is 31,230. The decade too, has seen the formation of technical institutes, which since 1966 have shown a 45 per cent increase in rolls and staffing. All this growth has taken place without any great change in the staffing of the department.