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training-college students, 40). In addition, a number of Maori girls have, with the help of nursing scholarships, qualified as nurses. This represents one of the most hopeful developments of recent years. (11) One Maori Vocational Guidance Officer has been appointed, and other appointments will follow. Islands Education During 1945 a survey of the education systems of Western Samoa, Cook Islands, and Niue was made by the Director of Education, the Superintendent of Technical Education, and the Senior Inspector of Native Schools. As a result of their report an Officer for Islands Education has been appointed to the staff of the Education Department to co-operate with the Department of Island Territories in the improvement and extension of the educational facilities in the islands. The Teaching Profession An education system is only as good as the teachers who work in it, and the Government has done its best to improve the recruitment and training of teachers, and to encourage a strong sense of professional responsibility in the teaching service. The war has interfered seriously with much that it was planned to do in this sphere, but even so advances have been made. (1) As previously stated a new and more generous salary scale for primary teachers was introduced at the end of 1938. The war prevented corresponding improvements being made in the post-primary teachers' salaries until February*, 1944. In addition to these improvements, the trades' teachers working under the technical regulations were given a substantial rise in status and prospects in 1944. The latest Post-primary Teachers' Salary Regulations have the special virtue of bringing both secondary and technical schools teachers on to the same scale, an important step towards the unification of the profession. (2) All teachers participated in the general rises in salary given to all State servants as from June, 1944. (3) Early in 1946 there will be set up a Consultative Committee on Teachers' Salaries, representative of the Department and of all branches of the teaching service. "To inquire into and report on the scales of salary for primary and post-primary teachers, inspectors of schools, and vocational guidance officers, and professional officers drawn from the teaching service, with reference to the adequacy of existing rates, to the suitability of the present types of salary scales, and to the desirability of devising a scale or scales that shall have a common basis for the primary and the post-primary services ; and on the basis of this inquiry to formulate a scale or scales for presentation to the Government." (4) In 1944 I set up a Committee on Grading, consisting of representatives of the Department, the Education Boards, and the New Zealand Educational Institute, to investigate certain problems that have arisen in the working of the primary teachers' grading system. Owing to the death of its Chairman, Mr. B. N. T. Blake, this Committee has not yet reported. (5) Last year, teachers, with other State servants, were given an improved superannuation scheme. (6) Working in close collaboration with the teachers' associations, the Government has done everything possible to safeguard the interests of teachers serving in the Forces. Every man has come back to the salary that he would probably have been receiving if he had remained in the teaching service. Their grading has also been safeguarded, but in case a mere mechanical adjustment should do injustice to some returned men I have agreed to the setting up of a special Grading Adjustment Board to consider the grading of any rehabilitated teacher who appeals to it. Over 600 ex-servicemen have taken, or are taking, refresher courses at training colleges or in selected schools, and some 500 are holders of rehabilitation bursaries.

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