Teacher trainees to seek more support

Press, 5 July 1983, Page 8

Teacher trainees to seek more support

Teacher trainee representatives will meet the Minister of Education, Mr Wellington, tomorrow to seek greater financial support. The moving of teacher trainees last year from a living allowance to the standard tertiary bursary had caused severe financial hardship, said the president of the Teacher Trainees’ Association, Ms Allison Taylor, yesterday. The change had restricted entrance to teachers’ colleges, she said. The level of the bursary made a mockery of the principle of free education, and a farce of equal opportunity and multi-culturalism in New Zealand.

Unable to save enough from summer holiday earnings to make up the difference between their costs

and their bursary incomes, teacher trainees faced particular difficulties, she said.

The average trainee spent about $3700 a year. Most had about $420 in personal resources, said Ms Taylor. That left a deficit of more than $3200. The bursary provided only $2068. A student would have to find a job paying $3OO a week during the vacation, and that did not take account of living costs during the summer, she said. Those living away from home were in a slightly better position but they still required a net income of at least $l4B a week, excluding living costs, throughout the vacation.

“Without a student job scheme guaranteeing that income, trainees as the last group on to the restricted

summer job market will have very little chance of getting a holiday job at all,” Ms Taylor said.

Of the 1234 trainees on the bursary this year, 558 were receiving only the basic $27 a week grant. Ms Taylor said the basic grant had to be calculated on actual and reasonable costs incurred. Her association believed that $4O a week should be the minimum grant and that students should receive a full $2O hardship grant to compensate for their short summer saving period. “Should this recommendation not be implemented, the fears of the educational organisations, the T.T.A.N.Z. included, that teaching service will be restricted to the rich will become more and more apparent,” Ms Taylor said.