Teaching Appointments

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31118, 22 July 1966, Page 10

Teaching Appointments

Sir,—To the women readers, the filling of a staff vacancy at the Technical institute may not have been the highlight of the week, but it does put the spotlight on a basic principle in our so-called democracy. The “unfortunate requirement” of advertising a promotion as a vacancy has existed in the education service for some time. A controlling board still has the right to decide who will fill an actual vacancy, or receive promotion. It is surely proper that all who may qualify should be given the opportunity to apply for any position whether it is promotion or an actual vacancy. Any system that may replace existing regulations must raise doubts in the minds of the staff already employed. Surely a system of advertisement so that all tutors are aware of a vacancy in a higher grade is as important to them as an actual vacancy is to any outside applicant or the board. No, the answer lies in the Education Department’s accepting the idea of stating beside such an advertisement in the “Education Gazette” that there is “no actual vacancy.”—Yours, etc., IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE. July 16, 1966. [Mr D. W. Lyall, Principal of the Christchurch Technical Institute, replies: “I think I can assure your correspondent that the Technical Institute Board is entirely in accord with him (or her) in wishing to safeguard the right of all eligible persons to apply for teaching posts. In the case in question, however, the only possible result of advertisement was to invite people from outside the institute staff to go to the trouble of preparing and submitting applications for a non-existent post. To express regret, in these circumstances, is not to dispute the general correctness of the principle of advertising vacancies, nor to infringe in any way what your correspondent describes as ‘a basic principle in our so-called democracy’.”]