TEACHERS' GRADING SCHEME.

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2739, 6 April 1916, Page 6

TEACHERS' GRADING SCHEME.

Sir,—Tho Auckland Assistant Masters' Association are evidently under the de'usion that they 'have achieved sometlf tig by their selfish agitation !e the tethers'.grading scheme. Tho sum total t the whole of the turmoil engineered ky the assistant masters is that they b l'e had to be taught by the Minister that teachers in all other districts , knew already by the exercise of their own intelligence. Any reasonably informed teacher knows that no promotion, or transfer scheme, compulsory or otherwise, could-be included in a Dominion classification scheme, 6imply because . promotion or transfer would have to be dealt with:by an alteration of the Edtooation Act. ' In the "New Zealand Herald's", report of the meeting of some Auckland teachers on March 3 we ,find the following:—"The. tone of the meeting . . . was considerably modified by . . . . a letter from the Department, which was viewed as satisfactory and reassuring."'.Mr. G. Barber, the chairman, said: "Tne Department's latest reply seemed to place the teachers In a very satisfactory position." Mr. E. Purdie claimed that "the Department's latest telegram' (letter ?) was a complete : justification of the action taken by 'the assistant masters, for it was wholly favourable to their main contention," and, further, "we are guaranteed that tho new lists were not to be immediately operated on for promotion purposes." . ' Now, sir, all the fears above, said to be laid at rest, were.the creation of tho assistants' imagination, the result of their own gross selfishness, an evidence of their ignorance of . the Education Act. No teachors. in other districts required to be told what the Auckland teachers regard as the triumphant vindication "of their main contention." j They might just as well have got up an agitation which resulted in the "satisfactory and reassuring" statement from the Minister that out-of-work teachers from Germany were really not to be included in the classification lists. However, the assistants had to save their face somehow under tho appearance of a triumph, seeing that their action was repudiated by tho moro sensible Auckland teachers; that they could not secure an endorsement of it

at their own meeting, and that'every, other district in New Zealand is indignant at their attempt to preserve Auckland only for Aucklanders.—l am, etc., A MERE SOUTHERNER. . March 31, 1916.