MARRIED WOMEN TEACHERS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20066, 25 March 1935, Page 10

MARRIED WOMEN TEACHERS

AUTHORITY TO TERMINATE EMPLOYMENT Authority for Education Boards to terminate the employment of married women as teachers in post-primary schools is to be conferred by a section of the Education T -*w Bill, introduced and read a first time in the House of Representatives on Friday. The bill proposes to extend the provisions of the 1931 Finn”'’- Act to married women in the service of boards controlling technical, secondary, combined or intermediate schools. This act gives Education Boards power to determine the engagement of any married woman employed as a teacher in their service. The board must receive and consider a report from the senior inspector, with such recommendations as he thinks fit to make. The teacher concerned has a right of appeal under the terms of the principal act, and the Teachers’ Appeal Court must, in addition to any other considerations, take into account the financial position and responsibilities of the appellant and the appellant’s husband. The court may grant the appeal if it is of opinion that the termination of the teacher's engagement would constitute a cause of undue hardship. Commenting on the proposal giving authority to the department to terminate the employment of married women as teachers at post-primary schools, the chairman of the Canterbury Education Board, Mr C. S. Thompson, said that the board had for some time had power not to appoint married women teachers, but that power did not affect married women already in the service of the board. It would be an advantage if the board had discretionary powers to deal with married women already in its service, always using its discretion in cases of hardship. Thus, married women with husbands in good positions should not be in its service, but if a woman had a crippled husband then he thought she should not be penalised.