FINING OF TEACHERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 210, 24 November 1927, Page 11

FINING OF TEACHERS

M.P.’S VOICE OPPOSITION REPORT ON NEW BILL (TH3 SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Wednesday. “A smack in the eye to their pride and dignity,” is the way in which Mr. D. G. Sullivan, member for Avon, summed up the attitude of school teachers throughout New Zealand toward the clause in the Education Amendment Bill which empowers an education board to punish a teacher for minor offences. The Education Committee of the House, in dealing with the Bill, altered the clause to give teachers who were fined more than £2 the right of appeal. Mr. J. A. Nash, Palmerston: Is there to be an appeal board? Mr. R. P. Hudson, chairman of the committee: No.

There was strenuous objection to this clause, and several members expressed their determination to do all possible to keep it off the Statute Book, declaring that all teachers in the Dominion were against it. The Minister of Education, the Hon. R. A. Wright, defended the clause on the ground that there was no power to discipline teachers short of discipline which no board would enforce, and if they did a teacher would appeal and no appeal board would support the board In a case of that kind. Now that teachers had discovered a board had no power to punish them cases of insubordination were increasing. Mr. R. W. Smith, Waimarino, and Mr. W. S. Glenn, Rangitikei, opposed the clause. Mr. D. G. Sullivan, Avon, said the Minister could only quote two or three cases of insubordination, yet for these two or three cases he was casting a slur upon the whole teaching profession. The motion that the report be tabled was talked out.