TEACHERS OUT OF WORK

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 127, 27 February 1928, Page 10

TEACHERS OUT OF WORK

Sir, —In your report of the Education Board’s meeting, several members expressed apprehension at the number ot teachers out of work, it is apparent that many members of education boards and school committees have not realised that there has been a surplus of about 300 young teachers thrust upon the unemployment list by the Department’s action of curtailing the old four-year training system for the present three-year one — whole year’s output of teachers from the various training colleges. Had the many promises of new schools and smaller classes been kept, they might have been absorbed, but on every hand we hear of claims being met by “regrets.” The new system, which has a backdoor method of continuing the old system of continually changing teachers, has some advantages—lt saves money ; it means less wages paid to teachers; it means very few applicants for the teaching profession; it means more children being sent to private schools; and it means far, far less proficiency passes, in standard six, which will secure a saving (a monetary one) in free secondary education. It means a bigger number, already a large one. of children leaving school from standards -1 and 5, thereby failing to secure a primary education. It means satisfaction to those people who think and say that public money spent upon educating our children is wasted, so why worry if it does mean chaos in the school?—Yours, etc. L. HENNESSEY. Chairman, Te Aro School Committee. Wellington, February 23.