TEACHERS IN CONFERENCE

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 86, 4 January 1908, Page 4

TEACHERS IN CONFERENCE

;"■ ;.V — 0 The twenty-fifth annual conference of delegates from the various. district branches' of the New Zealand Educational.. Institute opened at Auckland last Thursday. The. inaugural ■.address at this conference is usually -a. concise summary of those features of the educational system which are, at the moment, matters of controversy, and with regard to which, reform,, in one direction or another, is . desired; We have before us the published report of the speech which was delivered by the President of the Institute, Mr. Jas. Aitken; 13.A., at the opening of the Conference, and the dominant' note struck by the speaker was,, as might have been anticipated, the unsatisfactory system of payment upon average attendance. Under normal conditions it is, at best, but a compromise. But when the schools are, for the time, affected by prevailing epidemics, a spell of severe weather, or other circumstances entirely beyond human control, the system breaks .down. It becomes an evil: .

"For years I have argued," said Mr. Aitken, " that average attendance alone is not at all the proper basis on which to determine the grade of a school for the purpose-of fixing , the payment to teachers for their -work. When the attendance is • far from the dividing line between grades, causes which' tend to tell unfairly against the average are not so much noticed,', but when the turning point is near such trifling incidents as a shower pf -rain,' 1 a flower show, a race meeting, or a performance by a travelling company —all circumstances lying quite, out of the range of the teachers' influencemay be sufficient to ! determine the grade of the school for a year pn the lower instead of the higher scale, and if that is so, what, may not happen; wher. measles follow whooping'cough and influenza, as'actually happened this last year in nearly every educational district in the Dominion?" '

There must,' however, be some basis upon which salaries may be estimated, and while there is almost complete unanimity of opinion upon the question of abolishing the present system, the difficulty is to formulate some'scheme which, while affording an equitable, basis of payment to the teacher,. shall', at the same time, safeguard the system from abuse or financial failure. . We 'quite agree with Mr. Aitken when he says that what is wanted is "something that will take the circumstances more fully into consideration," but we are not quite so sure that the basis he suggests would, in actual practice, solve tlie difficulty. He says: "It is, indeed, less the place that requires to be graded than the teacher—his experience, his attainments, his culture, the indefinable but very real something which we call his personality. These, I believe, will be the determining factors of the near future, which will serve as the grading marks." This is all very well, but Mr. Aitken lias enumerated certain piiases of a teacher's equipment, his culture and personality, regarding which possibly no two critics would agree in forniing an estimate upon which to base his grade and emolument. Not very long ago, it was argued that a teacher's personality should be approximated mathematically, and that'such marks should be factors in determining the. value of his professional certificate. Such , a system.would be infipitely worse than tiie present one. A. more workable scheme is that which suggests payment based, not upon the average attendance 1 , but upon the roll number. There should be no difficulty in guarding against " roll-stuffing." There would still remain, however, the "'floating' population" difficulty. The threatened reduction of a teacher's salary, consequent upon-the depopulation of his district, would have to be provided for by a system of transfer. The . whole question is fraught with difficult problems, the discussion of which by the Educational Institute, now in conference, will be followedwith deep interest.