EDUCATION TODAY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27384, 9 May 1950, Page 8

EDUCATION TODAY

Many Difficulties Faced PRINCIPALLY ECONOMIC Special to the Daily Times WELLINGTON, May 8. Outlining the main difficulties facing education in New Zealand today, the president of the New Zealand Educational Institute, Mr D. M. Jillett, said that the war and the phenomenal postwar marriage rate of female teachers had operated against efforts to retrieve lost ground in the supply of teachers. Education was recruiting teachers from a low birth rate period (the depression years) to serve the high birth rate period of the post-war years; service and salary conditions had not marched with the times, and professional workers of high calibre were being recruited at journeymen’s wages. Educational supplies, text books, etc., presented a difficulty, and the lack of housing and accommodation for teachers was an evil of long standing, he said. “ Our slowness in gaining ground would not be so depressing but for the hopes we have held for so long

for smaller classes,” M«- Jillett said. “ More than a third of the classes in our town schools have more than 40 pupils for every teacher. Unfortunately, large classes often lead to mass-production methods, with too little attention to the individual differences and needs of the pupils.”

Mr Jillett said that those who accepted the basic principles outlined by the senior inspector of schools, Mr D. G. Ball, in his report to Parliament last year, would apply a three-fold test to education. What of the whole man? What of the citizen? What of the worker? “ That is the order in which we must ask the questions unless we are to be guilty of paying only lip service to democracy,” he said. “ That there is little danger in this order is at once obvious if we reflect upon how unlikely it is that the basic skills will remain undeveloped in a person of whom the first two questions can be answered in the affirmative.” There might be something in favour of schools being more restrictive and discriminating in selection, and more thorough in treatment, he said, but the day-to-day work in the classroom provided almost continually for training in leadership, or in following intelligently, or in working together. Mr Jillett said it was not until the Prime Minister, Mr Holland, had issued his review of the financial position of the country that thought was given to the possibility of serious inroads on the material side. Many teachers felt now that the Prime Minister’s survey had already been reflected in the building, grounds, and maintenance programmes of education boards.

Importance of Primary Schools

To the Minister of Education the opinion was expressed that the more thorough his survey was, the more he would find in primary schools what should not be left undone. Such a finding would be of general benefit, for it was upon the foundation of the primary schools that all other educational institutions must build. The cost of primary education for each pupil was £l9; post-primary education cost £39 a pupil. With all costs disregarded except salaries, the figures were £29 a pupil for secondary education and £l6 a pupil for primary. The reasons for this were that secondary schools had more generous staffing schedules, and a more generous salary scale. “ The approximate cost of providing the post-primary staffing and salary schedules in the primary schools would be more than £2,000,000,”' said Mr Jillett. “With such a disparity of conditions it will need no further explanation to account for the dissatisfaction among primary teachers in 1946, when stabilisation cut the basic scale for primary teachers to the extent of £4O, but left the post-primary scale practically unchanged.”