Fear for teachers

Press, 14 June 1984, Page 9

Fear for teachers

Unless proposed recruitment recommendations for teachers’ college trainees were altered, only people “who lacked the mental competence to do anything else” would become trainees, the Christchurch Teachers’ College Council was told yesterday. A council member, Professor W. C. Clark, said the proposals about experience and allowances would not encourage anyone to attend the college.

“All students would receive after three years would be a massive debt," he said. “There is no way that they will be able to support themselves and pay their superannuation commitment. Only those people who are not mentally capable of anything else will apply.” One of the recommendations put to the Minister of Education, Mr Wellington, by the Advisory Group on selection and training of

teachers that concerned council members was an increasing emphasis on the selection of mature and ethnic students.

The council’s deputy chairman, Mr D. L. Waghorn, said this could mean a lowering of standards at the college to ensure that fixed quotas were maintained.

Other recommendations included deferring the final selection process to the end of the first year of the course and extending the intake into the first year. The council voted to urge Mr Wellington to delay implementing the recommendations until 1986 so that they could be thoroughly investigated. Computers The college had the authority to employ a computer lecturer but only enough machines to keep courses at a minimum level, said the college principal, Mr I. D. Stewart.

A letter from the office of the Director-General of Education put paid to the hopes of council members that the department might fund the purchase of more computers.

In the past, new courses had been granted setting up allowances, said Mr Stewart. The horticultural course grant had been generous.

However, the DirectorGeneral of Education had given an emphatic “no” to such a grant for computers, he said. Universities and polytechnics had not been treated so harshly. It was ironic that the college had power to appoint a lecturer but not enough computers, said Professor Clark.

“We will not get caught again setting up a course without guaranteed resources,” he said. The matter will be taken up through the Association of Teachers’ College Councils.