Kindergarten teachers seek more pay

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33049, 17 October 1972, Page 16

Kindergarten teachers seek more pay

The Government was continuing to abuse the good will of the country’s kindergarten teachers, a statement issued yesterday by the Free Kindergarten Teachers’ Association said. The association said that an offer made during recent salary negotiations with the Education Services Committee was insulting.

The kindergarten teachers believe that they have lost standing with the primary teachers’ salary scale with which they were on a par 10 years ago. "At present a first-year kindergarten teacher with sixth form certificate is handed some $34 net a week, and a first-year primary teacher with the same qualifications is handed some $50,” Miss W. Lee, publicity officer for the association, said.

“Isn’t it time the Government responded to the recommendations of the preschool education inquiry about the status of the kindergarten teacher? The commission recommended salaries and training in line with the rest of the teaching profession, plus improved conditions,” she said.

“The job is seen as a babyminding service, or a service of professional nose-wipers, no doubt because we are all women within the kindergarten teaching service—a suppressed group because the Government does not feel it has to pay us because we are not breadwinners,” she said.