TRAINING TEACHERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 690, 15 June 1929, Page 13

TRAINING TEACHERS

IMPROVEMENTS IN SYSTEM PROPOSALS BY COUNCIL Press Association WELLINGTON, Friday. The Council of Education today decided to make a number of recommendations to the Minister of Education bearing on the training of teachers. The council resolved that the standard of attainment for entrance to the profession should be, as far as Dominion requirements allow, a higher leaving certificate or its equivalent, provided that an applicant with lower qualifications than a higher leaving certificate but not lower than matriculation, and who has exceptional personality, shall have special consideration. The view was expressed in other recommendations that the teachers “D” examination be discontinued after 1930, but that there be substituted a training college entrance examination in the subjects of reading, writing, music, drawing, English, arithmetic, history and geography, this examination to be passed before candidates are accepted as probationers, and the requirements for class C being modified accordingly. At the beginning of their training probationers should be given a course of study arranged to fit. in most appropriately with the subsequent requirements at the training college and at the university, so that a coherent four-year course is organised. It was considered that the courses of study for probationers should be drawn up by the principals of the training colleges and approved by the Department of Education. The department should, by means of a survey, . estimate the number of teachers required each year lor work as (a), infant school teachers; (b), standard class teachers; and (c) secondary school teachers, and that the principal, in consultation with- each student, should make a selection of his sphere of work in the first year of the student’s attendance at the college. Probationary assistants should, as far as possible, be placed in accordance with the direction of their specialising. The council considered it desirable that sufficient grades should be mad© available each year for ex-probation-ary assistants and that ex-probtionary assistants should be appointed at once to positions on the staffs of schools, particularly those having an average attendance of 30 to 35, if necessary as supernumerary teachers; and that all first appointments of a permanent nature for ex-college students should be, to a certain extent, special appointments. The Minister is also to be advised, to obtain the necessary power to allot supernumerary probationary assistants to secondary and technical schools and to manual training centres in addition to the ordinary staffing of tbe schools.