Access course ‘will exacerbate tension between trainees’

Press, 29 June 1987, Page 7

Access course ‘will exacerbate tension between trainees’

PA Wellington An Access course offering skills and experience for teacher training will exacerbate tensions between trainees caused by huge pay differences, says the P.P.T.A. president, Mr Peter Allen.

The standard allowance for a teacher trainee, primary or' secondary, is the tertiary assistance grant of $4l a week.

In the secondary area in particular there is evidence that this deters potential trainees who could get graduate jobs at $20,000-plus a year without further training. There was provision for higher allowances for some trainees, he said.

Those training to be Maori teachers under the te atakura scheme, for instance, get up to $12,000 a year and a discretionary provision, and trainees drawn from the workforce, such as those coming from trades and studying to be technical teachers, can receive anallowance related to their former income.

"These differences have long been a source of tension in the teachers’ colleges,” Mr Allen said.

“The PPTA has been arguing for years that all trainees should be paid a living wage, and should be paid equally as they are all being trained to do the same job. “The Minister of Education conceded more than a year ago that there was a case for putting teacher trainees on a different level of assistance from other tertiary students but nothing has been done.

“We are still awaiting the outcome of the review into tertiary allowances and no provision has been made in the Budget for increased allowances. “Apparently there is no money in the education boat for teacher trainees, but there is plenty in the labour vote.

“The Labour Department, through its Access scheme, is funding a course at Auckland College of Education for preteacher training.

“People accepted will be receiving the unemployment benefit plus 10 per cent plus actual and reasonable travel expenses. This means that a single 20-year-old will be paid $136 a week and travel expenses.

“We have no argument with that as such, but it will add. to the financial tensions already suffered by those on the tertiary assistance grant only. “If there is money available for this sort of training it can equally be used for the standard training. Will the people on this course be happy to reduce to the T.A.G. if they go on to train as teachers or will they continue to be funded at a higher rate?

“If the Government is serious about providing enough quality teachers to staff its schools, it should overhaul the whole financial basis of teacher training and not keep introducing different incentives for different people in this piecemeal way,” he said.