Teachers' Ideas To Help School Problems

Chronicle (Levin), 17 September 1948, Page 7

Teachers' Ideas To Help School Problems

Press Association)

(Per

WELLINGTON, Sept. 16. Detailed proposals for measures to overcome school staffing and the accommodation problem, have been submitted to the Education Departmeni by the New Zeaiand Education Institute. The proposals are based on the urgent need for staff to teach and classrooms to house the rapidly rising- school population which is expected to reach a peak iu the primary schools in 1952, ' ' The proposals are under consideration by the Education Department, ' ' said the president of the Institute, Mt. J. S. H. Robertson, today. "We realise that the Department has already under eonsideration some of tlnreconimendations we put forward and some of them have been found ini practicable. We feel it necessary to get numbers of teachers of the riglit type with no falling off in the present standard." There should be a certain degree oi preference for the housing of teachers both in town and country, said Mr. Robertson. It was difficult now for teachers to get board in the country. Before the war an economic urge had existed to make people take teachers as boarders but tliat urge did not exist. today. Now teachers were taken as boarders not for the money but as a duty. The institute was concerned at the nuiubcr of teachers who were leaving the service aud would shortly be uudertaking a survey of reasons why teachers leave. Each teacher who left would be contacted by the institute and asked to give reasons for leaving. In that way it was hop(ed to find the grievances and difficulties of teachers so that there would be some scientilic ground on which the problems of fiudmg teachers would be attacked to aileviate thc staif shortage. The institute 's suggestions covered ;i widc field. They suggested that applicants be recruited from all walks of Iif as avcII as from schools and that retired and marned teachers be asked to take 011 relieving work. It was suggested that a sixth training college be formed and that salaries be increased. Thc diversion of sufficient labour ano materials for education buildings to cover the construction of sufiicieni classrooms, aud the establishment 01 portable or prefabricated classrooms for temporarv use, were recommended. Thc buikling of new schools where the school ro 1 1 approximated 500 pupils, was also suggested.