EDUCATION SERVICE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21264, 19 February 1931, Page 13

EDUCATION SERVICE.

MARRIED WOMEN TEACHERS. EMPLOYEES NEAR RETIRING AGE. (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, February 18. The decision to make a further appeal to the Minister of Education (Mr H. Atmore) to take immediate steps to give education boards discretionary power to deal with married women employees was made by the Auckland Education Board this morning. The board considered a suggestion by the chairman (Mr A. Burns) that, in order to ease the acute unemployment situation among teachers, elderly servants should be appealed to to retire, but no decision to this effect was made. The Education Department, in a memorandum, said that the Minister had stated that when the Education Act was under amendment he would favourably consider giving boards discretionary power in the matter. A letter was received from the Onehunga School Committee emphatically protesting against the principle of employing married women teachers and directing attention to the position at the local school, where both husband and wife were employed.

Mr Burns said there were three married women at the Onehunga institution. The married couple were recently married, and had been engaged at the school prior to their marriage. Mr F. A. Snell urged that the board should press for consideration of the position of married women employees before the time arrived for a revision of the Education Act. The question was one for serious consideration when the country had so many homes receiving two salaries and so many postmatriculation students unable to secure employment. The matter should be dealt with, if possible, at the forthcoming special session of Parliament. It was grossly unfair for married women whose husbands were working to continue their service with the board. Mr Burns said there were 18 teachers in the board’s service who were near the retiring age, and he wondered if it would be any good to appeal to them to retire prematurely in view of the amount of unemployment among teachers.