TEACHERS UNEMPLOYED

Southland Times, Issue 21576, 14 December 1931, Page 12

TEACHERS UNEMPLOYED

PROSPECTS FOR NEXT YEAR. POSITION NOT HOPEFUL. RELIEF MEASURES POSSIBLE. About 140 young teachers in the Auckland district, who will complete their four yeans’ period of training this year, are looking forward with little enthusiasm to the year 1932, when they will have to seek positions against others with higher gradings. Their only hope of employment lies in possible emergency action by the Education Department, states the N.Z. Herald. There are now about 200 teachers in the Auckland district who are not filling permanent positions. At the end of this year the 140 young teachers, now employed as probationary and substitute assistants, will be displaced by trainees leaving the Auckland Training College. Accordingly, there will be some 350 unemployed teachers next year. The Auckland Education Board does not taka an optimistic view of the prospects. The board officials understand that the department is making some effort to ease the unemployment position, but they have not been advised of the department’s intentions. The board has been instructed to delay the appointments of probationary assistants until further advice is received from the department. At ordinary times the appointments would now be made, and the students leaving the college this year would know where they were being sent. There are about 180 students leaving this year and, allowing for those returning to Taranaki, approximately 140 will have to be placed in the Auckland district. It is thought that behind the request for a delay is a scheme to provide increased employment for teachers in the Auckland district.

There will be no appointments to the teaching profession this year, and unemployed teachers feel that the department should thus be enabled to provide some employment for them. The position is hardest for those teachers who have been out of college for some years, and have yet not been able to secure permanent positions. For some time many teachers have been able to obtain only temporary employment. As for those 140 teachers who will be thrown on the “open market” next year, many feel that even employment at a pupil teacher’s salary would be preferable to no employment.