Courses disrupted

Press, 29 October 1981, Page 6

Courses disrupted

Courses at Christchurch primary and secondary schools are being disrupted because of industrial action being taken by staff at the National Film'Library. Many courses and programmes are based on films sent from the library. Library staff are not sending out a proportion of the films each week as a protest against staff shortages. Primary and secondary schoolteacher spokesmen said yesterday that the irregular film supply was disrupting courses. “Films are an essential part of teaching.” said the Canterbury chairman of the

Post-Primary Teachers’ Association, Mr Frank O’Connell.

“They are planned into many courses, and when they do not turn up it disrupts the flow of the course,” Mr O'Connell said. Films were the basis of some course programmes.

“One requires a film to arrive every week and if one does not arrive it shoots the whole programme to bits,” he said.

Staff shortages, at the library in Wellington, had led to a drop in film quality-in the last few years because the films were- not .maintained properly.- v ;; S

“Now they are not arriving at all,” Mr O’Connell said. He would like the Govern-

ment to meet the library staff’s demands so that the library could do the job it was set up for.

The president of the North Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Educational Institute, Mr A. G. Teale, said the film supply was causing similar problems in primary schools.

■ “Films are often ordered six,months in advance," said (Mr Teale. “Teachers rely on them to turn up when they haver:.’set’ time aside for them "