INTERCHANGE OF TEACHERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19721, 22 August 1927, Page 10

INTERCHANGE OF TEACHERS

DISCUSSION IN ENGLAND. VALUE OF CERTIFICATES. [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] LONDON. July'l2. A report which has special interest to New Zealand as well as to other Dominions is that on the interchange of teachers, which was presented to the Imperial Education Conference at one of its last sessions. The committee, of which Sir George Macdonald was chairman, reported upon difficulties arising out of teachers' salary scales and superannuation schemes. The committee recommended that the Education Departments of all parts of the Empire should, wherever possible, enter into reciprocal arrangements for the counting of teaching service for purposes of superannuation and salary increments in the ease of teachers who moved from one country to another. The Home Departments were requested to take the initiative in the negotiations. Mr. A. R. Ainsworth (Board of Education) presented the report of the committee on co-operation between education de partments, which referred more especially to the exchange of information on such matters as statistics, legislation, books, educational filnis, etc., and recommended the exchange of inspectors, wherever possible, on similar lines to those on which teachers were at present exchanged. The report also recommended the holding of regional conferences of education authorities in the several geographical areas of the Empire. Mr. S. H. Smith (New South Wales) presented the report of the committee, of which he was chairman, on the qualifications of teachers and the mutual recognition of teachers' certificates. He pointed, out that the arrangements for training teachers differed widely in different parts of the Empire, and even in the different States or provinces in the same Dominion. When teachers moved about the Empire this created difficulty, and the report endeavoured to set up some definite standards by which the several Education Departments could assess the value of certificates granted in other parts of the Empire with a view to general recognition of certificates which complied with these standards. The reports were unanimously adopted by the conference, subject to certain small alterations