Kindergarten teacher shortage felt

Press, 1 September 1986, Page 9

Kindergarten teacher shortage felt

A shortage of kindergarten teachers is beginning to affect Christchurch, says a Kindergarten Teachers’ Association executive member, Miss Sheila Fenton.

The shortage was discussed at the association’s annual conference last week. At the beginning of this year, 14 per cent of New Zealand's kindergarten teaching positions were vacant

Miss Fenton said the problem was particularly bad in Auckland, where some kindergartens were kept open by using trainee teachers” to staff them.

Christchurch kindergartens were having difficulties getting relieving teachers, for the first time that she could remember,

said Miss Fenton. At times, some kindergartens were staffed by one trained teacher and a parent-helper. Miss Fenton said the shortages went back to the years when teachers’ college quotas were cut by the then Minister of Education, Mr Wellington. The quota for new trainees from Canterbury was as low as nine a year, she said. This year the quota was about 20.

Miss Fenton said the shortage of teachers was preventing the introduction of a three-year training course for 'kindergarten teachers, which the association had been fighting for for about 40 years.

At the conference, the association turned down a

request from Christchurch Teachers' College trainees to boycott selection programmes for next year, unless trainees are put on a salary. The primary and secondary teachers’ asso-, ciations have also turned down the request.

Miss Fenton said the association believed that selection and recruitment for teachers’ colleges would go ahead even if teachers’ associations boycotted them.

“When the trainees put that suggestion forward, they thought that the department would not go ahead with recruitment and selection.”

Miss Fenton said the association would continue to support the trainees’ fight for a salary in other ways.