Department will not move on bonds

Press, 20 November 1981, Page 6

Department will not move on bonds

PA Wellington The Education Department will not try to recover the bond of any secondary teacher trainee graduate who makes genuine efforts to obtain a teaching post for next year, says the department’s director of personnel, Mr John Young. “We would not release them from the bond, but we would put it to one side,” said Mr Young. Each case would be assessed on its merits. The department had no policy automatically to cancel the total bond if a teacher could not get a position. About 1000 secondary trainees will graduate at the end of the year and more than half of these are known to have not yet secured teaching positions for next year. It has cost the taxpayer about $2O million to put them through a year’s training course. If they do not teach they will have to repay a bond, related to their training allowance, in most cases of about $4OOO. The question that arises is how long a teacher is expected to search for a teaching post before seeking a

release trom the bond to take another position. It is believed that this has been discussed in the past by the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association and the department but no agreement was reached. The president of the Christchurch Teachers’ College Trainees Association, Mr Hugh Smith, said last evening that the deferment of bonds was not an answer to the problem. “It is saying ‘We know there are not enough jobs but we are not going to com- mit

ourselve to providing them,” Mr Smith said. “The department should either guarantee graduated jobs or drop the bond,” he said. Deferring the bond was a way , of fobbing them off while still maintaining the trainees’• commitment to teach. “They want the best of both worlds,” Mr Smith said. He predicted that graduates who had their bonds deferred would want to leave the service. In Christchurch, 227 secondary teacher trainees have been unable to get jobs.