Pay rises for trainees soon

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33532, 13 May 1974, Page 1

Pay rises for trainees soon

(From our education reporter) WELLINGTON, May 12.

Large salary increases for the country’s 600 kindergarten teacher trainees, giving them parity with trainees for primary school teaching, will be announced by the Government soon. The new salary scales will be a considerable increase on the average weekly wage of about $24 being paid at nresent. The new scales will be based on the rates paid to primary teacher trainees who enter teachers’ college with School Certificate. The pay rises will help ease the tension that resulted in a national walk-out of kindergarten teacher trainees and a three-day strike by trainees in Christchurch, with shorter strikes in some other centres. The rates, agreed to by:

the Education Services Committee in negotiations with the Free Kindergarten Teachers’ Association, will have a wider effect in a few years when most kindergarten teacher trainees enter college with qualifications higher than School Certificate.

Special provisions have been built into the new rates to allow for the three-year period of training, as recommended by the Hill report on pre-school education. The Education Services Committee and the Government have not changed their attitude to the Student Teachers’ Association, which is seeking recognition as the official negotiating body for all teacher trainee groups. This group has not been accorded negotiating status and is unlikely to be in the future because of opposition from the New Zealand Educational Institute, the Post Primary Teachers’ Association and the State Ser- ; vices Commission.