TEACHERS' INTERESTS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 120, 21 May 1926, Page 12

TEACHERS' INTERESTS

THE DUTIES OF PARLIAMENT

THE BIGHT TO APPEAL.

Legislation affecting the school teachers was the subject of reference in the annual report of the New Zealand Educational Institute, submitted to the conference yesterday. "The last session of Parliament added nothing to educational legislation as such, though a clause in the Finance Act gave teachers at long last the right to count house value or house, allowance as part of salary for superannuation. It was a long overdue act of justice, though for a certain proportion of teachers it loses its value through the continuance of the limitation of annuities for later entrants to £300. The time is coming when the extension of this limit will have to be considered. In the meantime there are more pressing matters that demand attention —the right of original members to count training-college service for superannuation; the repeal of the two-years' tenure clause; the right of appeal against non-appointment, and the payment of removal expenses. The first of these is an,old-standing grievance, and it is nothing less than a plain disregard for the terms of an agreement that allows it to continue. "With regard to- the two years' tenure clause and the right of appeal against non-appointment, the executive has to report that the conviction grows out of its experience of the business of the institute that these two matters should be made matters of urgency with the new Minister. Particularly is this so with regard to appointments. Members of the institute thought, when grading was made the basis of appointments, that they had come to the end of the days when appointments could give rise to tho injustices with which older teachers aro familiar. Later experience indicates %Hat that position of security is being undermined. The executive therefore recommends the institute to repeat its request for an amendment of the Act that will give to I teachers, under proper safeguards, the I right of appeal against non-appoint-ment. "At the suggestion of the Minister the executive stated its view against the two-years' tenure clause to the education boards, but without eliciting a sympathetic response. The executive believes that there is a growing body of experience that supports the claim for tho repeal of the clause. It therefore recommends that the annual meeting should repeal its former declaration on the subject, and that during the coming session of Parliament every effort be made to secure the repeal of the clause, which is unsound in principle and which experience has shown to be, in practice, injurious to schools as well as unjust to ( teachers.''