RATIONED TEACHERS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 8, 4 October 1935, Page 8

RATIONED TEACHERS

Institute’s Demand For Standard Salaries NOT BOYS AND GIRLS The contention that all teachers at present employee! tinder the rationing scheme should immediately be put on standard salaries was made by the sec* rotary of the New Zealand Education Institute, Mr. G. R, Ashbridge, in an address to the Wellington branch of the Institute. . „ i “If the rationing scheme is allowed to continue until all the teachers in excess of normal staffing requirements are absorbed into ordinary positions, we cannot look forward .to the end of the scheme for some months at least,’ said Mr, Ashbridge. "The institute believes that rationed teachers have been asked to earry the burden imposed upon them by the Government’s economy legislation, quite long enough. Contrary to a popular misapprehension, the Government has at no time made any large contribution toward the employment of rationed teachers at relief rates. Of the total of about £llO,OOO per annum required to pay rationed teachers, only £15.000 per annum has been found by the Government from the Unemployment Fund. The remaining £95,000 per annum has been made up by pooling the salaries of those rationed teachers, some 000 in all, who would have- been employed at standard salaries in positions provided for on the staffing schedule but for the scheme itself. ’ Hence the major part of the financial burden of the fund has been carried by a section of the present rationed teachers. "The public should also recognise that these rationed teachers are not ‘boys and girls’—many are 23, 24 and 25 years of age, and fully-trained and certificated teachers at that, whose work has been praised in high terms by inspectors all over the Dominion. I 1 ar from it being the case that they are mere supernumeraries, chaos and confusion would result if they were-with-drawn from the primary schools. • "In view of these facts, and also of the substantia] improvement in the financial position of the country, there is no excuse for the continuance of rationed rates of pay. At the beginning of 1934 the institute reluctantly agreed to approve for one year the rationing scheme then instituted because the authorities made it abundantly clear that refusal’meant even worse conditions'for. rationed teachers.: That agreement wag honoured, and even this year the institute has restrained its criticism in the hope that the authorities would make a real effort to wind up the scheme as soon as possible. The time has now come to say quite bluntly that, when all the circumstances are taken into account, the continuance of -ationed rates of pay for these teachers is not far short of sweating.”