JUSTICE FOR COUNTRY TEACHERS

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXVLL, Issue 4275, 14 September 1895, Page 3

JUSTICE FOR COUNTRY TEACHERS

(To the Editob.) Sib, — For years past teachers in the country have been placed under great disadvantages on account of an unfair system of promotion which has been almost universally adopted by committees in the large towns. Whenever a vacancy occurs in, say, Dunedin or Oamaru, it is the practice to promote oue of the assistants, and thus the plums of the service fall into the hands of a favoured few. Country applicants are simply ignored.

The Education Board, recognising the injustice of the present method of making appointmeots, is endeavoring to remedy matters by the adoption of new regulations. One regulation (section 32), if passed, will, by making " step by step " the rule of the service, place country and town teachers on an equal footing. This vital clause reads as follows : — " No teacher shall be promoted except to a class next higher than the class from which he is promoted."

It, therefore, behoves all country teachers to leave not a stone unturned in support of this regulation. The first assistants in Dunedin and Oamaru are most active in their opposition to it.

In order to gauge the feeling of teachers on this important question, the Teachers' Institute is now sending out to every teacher in Otago a voting paper for or against clause 32. Country teachers should not let slip this opportunity of expressing their opinion and of showing by an overwhelming majority in favor of this clau3e how strongly they disapprove of the present methods of promoting and appointing teachers.— l am, etc., Equality of Promotion.