NO VACANCIES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 340, 29 September 1932, Page 6

NO VACANCIES

TEACHING PROFESSION CLOSED TO PROBATIONERS AGAIN NEXT . YEAR. EDUCATION DEPARTMENT'S DECISION. The teaching profession will again beclosed to young people next year. The Education Department, aceording to a notice it issued last week, has decided that no probationers will be appointed next year. Probationers are boys and girls, generally just out of secondary school, who serve a year in a public school before 'entering a training college for training in teaching. Usually about 90 in the Canterbury and West Coast districts, and about 500 in the whole Dominion find employment for a year and enter the profession for life in this way. The department decided, partly as a measure of economy and partly to stem the supply of new teachers because of unemployment among those already in the profession, not to take on any probationers this year. A Christchurch reporter was informed that although there was no pronouncement to that effect it had been widely thought that the closing of the door would apply for one year only and that this year the teaching profession would be thr.own open again to intending applicants. The fact that no new trainees will be entering the profession for two years' opened up the possibility that there would be a shortage of teachers in a few years, because of no new ones coming on to take the places of those lost by the annual wastage caused by deaths, retirements and marriages. The department has also announced that, with the exception of four or five-year student teachers from technical colleges, none of the first division students will be admitted to training colleges next year. This decision, to a certain extent, at ) ieast, follows on the previous one that there would be no probationers this year. As there have been no probationers there are, of course, no students for next yeai\ It was suggested at one time, however, that the department might take probationers appointed next year straight into the training colleges, instead of making them serve a year in the schools. Since the department has decided not to have probationers again next year this, of course, becomes impossible. The consequence, it was stated to a reporter to-day, would be that there would be a considerable reduetion in the rolls of training colleges next year, but this had already been anticipated by the action of the Minister (the Hon. R. Masters, M.L.C.) in deciding to close two colleges and that of the Education Department in giving notice to several members of the existing training college staffs. The department has also decided that not more than 25 of the present second-year students will be granted third-year privileges at the colleges. Generally from 50 to 70 students stay at the colleges for a third year to specialise in some particular branch of teaching. The exception for admission to the colleges — four or five-year student teachers at technical colleges — are young people who entered technical colleges insteau of primary schools to begin their teaching experience. Another exception is made :§or graduates. They will be admitted to the colleges. This, one teacher declared, was an undesirable distinction between rich and poor. Young men and women whose parents had been able to maintain them while they secured a degree were to be allowed fco enter the profession while the children of poorer families were to be barred. The department also announced that candidates who desire to enter colleges as paying students — the fee is £7 7s a term — may make application to the Director of Education, but to the Minister of Education is reserved the right to refuse the admission of any such students.