SCHOOL TEACHING

Dominion, Volume 38, Issue 4, 29 September 1944, Page 6

SCHOOL TEACHING

Inclusion As Essential Industry Urged

Sympathetic consideration to the inclusion of school teaching in the list of essential industries was urged by Mr. Coleman (Government, Gisborne), Mr Armstrong (Government, Napier), and Mr. Cullen (Government, Hawke’s Bay) in an urgent question they asked the Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser, in the House yesterday. They also asked that those teachers who returned from the Pacific and undertook to accept employment in an essential industry, and that teachers on military service in New Zealand who were not graded as medically fit for overseas service, be released 'to return to school teaching. In a note to their question they said that these matters were recently discussed by tbe Hawke’s Bay Education Board, which was greatly concerned regarding the shortage of teachers. It was of vital importance that . the schools should be kept fully and efficiently staffed. The Prime Minister said he would be pleased to arrange for the Minister of Education, Mr. Mason, and the Minister of National Service, Mr. McLagan, to confer, and in view of the recent readjustments of the mr-n in the services, giye consideration to the question of facilitating the return to their profession of school teachers, also to the practicability of including school teaching in the list of essential industries.