TEACHERS WITH NO POSITIONS

Southland Times, Issue 23815, 12 May 1939, Page 5

TEACHERS WITH NO POSITIONS

NEW TRAINEES FROM COLLEGES DIFFICULTY IN GETTING APPOINTMENTS (United Press Association) WELLINGTON, May 11. The serious position facing many teachers leaving training colleges through their inability to obtain permanent employment was referred to at the annual conference of the New Zealand Educational Institute today. 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 M. A. Hanna (Otago) said that at the 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 regulations had become operative, one man and 16 women had obtained permanent positions, leaving 47 men and 62 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 64 over the number nominally required to fill positions in a relieving capacity. The present grading requirement for Grade I 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 marks a year, it would be at least four years before the teachers who, he believed, should be employed at the present time, could have any hope at all of appointment to the lowest positions.

“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 large numbers of teachers for whom, under present methods of staffing, there will be unemployment. If the position persists during the next four years it is inevitable that we must get back to where we were under the rationing scheme during the depression. lam very earnest in my appeal that the institute and the department should make provision for these teachers.”