TEACHERS OR CLERKS?

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 121, 12 August 1927, Page 13

TEACHERS OR CLERKS?

NEW “CARD SYSTEM” BOOK-KEEPING OBJECTED TO 11 A RE we to be teachers or is the question which many Auckland school masters and mistresses are asking themselves. Overburdened with book-keeping’, as they are now, they do not relish tackling the Education Department’s newly-instituted “card system,” whereby the whole of a child’s school career and medical history is to be kept filed. Though large supplies of the cards,\ with stamped envelopes, have been sent to the headmasters of city schools few have had time to start the labour of filling them in. On one side the card demands to know the dates of the child’s admission and withdrawal, attendance, attainment in school work and games (in detail), and estimates of industry and initiative. The other side bears questions about the “personal” and “medical history” of the child. Thees are so exhaustive that whoever fills in the blanks is expected to know practically the whole of the child’s family history. When a child leaves a school, the car dis to be sent into the headmaster of the one he is going to. At the end of the school career the card is returned to the department, and a copy of the school history is sent to the parent or guardian. CAUSE FOR COMPLAINT “Teachers have a great amount of clerical work to do already,” said a city headmaster to-day, “and the cards will give them more. It means that the book-keeping of statistics must be done at the expense of the instruction, which should be given to the child.” These are examples of the clerical work which teachers have to do now: Daily register of attendance, to be kept by each teacher and summarised at the end of each week in reports. Admission, progress and withdrawal register, giving dates of birth, admission, and details of the child’s school career. Examination register, recording the two or three examinations held each year, with details of attendance and marks gained. General scheme of work drawn up by the headmaster. Individual teachers must detail this scheme and at the beginning of each week fill in “work books” outlining the week’s instruction. Banking books, kept by each teacher to record the money paid in by each child. Statistics and details of leaving pupils. These are required each year by departments interested in military training and apprentices. Records of all material on hand (“every little point brush,” one master said). Reports on the progress of trainingcollege students who spend five weeks each at the city schools. Practially all this work has to be done in the teacher’s own time. “Every school in grade six or seven should have a clerk,” said another headmaster to - day. “Teachers cannot be expected to do all this book-keeping.” “The old registers and the medical cards seemed to have all the information necessary, and the new idea strikes one as being useless. W e have a suspicion that no one will look at the cards when they are sent to the department.”