Unemployment Awaits Them

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 110, 12 May 1939, Page 6

Unemployment Awaits Them

Serious Position of School Teacher Trainees PRESENT SYSTEM BLAMED Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, Last Night. The serious position facing many teachers leaving Training Colleges through their inability to obtain permanent employment was referred to at tho annual conference of the New Zealand Educational Institute to-day. A committee set up by the conference to consider remits dealing with staffing said it considered as the key remit one from Auckland, “that probationary assistants be made supernumerary to the ordinary staff.” Mr. A. Hanna (Otago) said that at tho end of 1937 the number of teachers leaving Dunedin Training College had been 48 men and 78 women, who had become probationary assistants in schools. Since October last, when the new salary requirements had become operative, one man and 10 women had obtained permanent positions, leaving 47 men and 02 women still as supernumeraries and not in permanent positions. Assuming that 45 of the remainder were required as spare parts, there was still an excess of 04 over the number normally required to till positions in a relieving capacity. Position Analysed The present grading requirement for grade 1 positions was from 170 to 177, and the grading of supernumeraries coming out of Training Colleges was approximately 200. Assuming an average deduction of six grading works a year, it would be at least four years before teachers, who he believed should be employed at the present time, could have any hope at all of appointment to the lowest positions. Steadily Piling Up “A worse feature even than that,” continued Mr. Hanna, “is that, while these teachers remain unemployed, about the same number will be coming out of Training Colleges each year; so there must be a piling up of a large number of teachers for -whom under tho present methods of staffing there will be unemployment. If tho position persists during the next four years, it is inevitable that we must get back to where xve w-ere under the rationing scheme during the depression. I am very earnest in my appeal that the institute and the Department should make provision for these teachers,” lie added. BOARD OF STUDIES Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, Last Night. The Training College Regulations Amendment issued with to-night’s Gazette provides for the setting up of a Board of Studies at Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin. This innovation was tried as an -experiment in 1936 iu order to assist in co-ordinating the ■work of training colleges with that ofl . University colleges, and so successful has it been in the Wellington Training College that the Education Department has now decided to extend it. The board’s main function is to help iu the determination of the courses of study best suited to the individual needs and inclinations of tho student.