The Sun WEDNESDAY. FEBRUARY 1. 1925 HIGH-GRADE UNEMPLOYMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 267, 1 February 1928, Page 10

The Sun WEDNESDAY. FEBRUARY 1. 1925 HIGH-GRADE UNEMPLOYMENT

ONE of the most stupid features of unemployment in New Zealand is to be found in the crude policy of the Education Department. It spends over £.200,000 a year on the training of students for the teaching profession, and, having trained them to a high standard of proficiency, is unable to employ them in the State schools.

The position is bad at all the training centres, but it is particularly acute in this district. Close on two hundred students have completed their two years’ course at the Auckland Training College, and there are only eighty positions in sight. These vacancies will not be filled automatically or as a matter of right by the latest trainees ; such positions must be advertised and made open to the whole of the teaching profession. Some of the students may secure places in the general scramble for school billets, while others will have an opportunity of serving as probationary assistants at a low rate of salary, representing a shrewd saving to the impecunious department, but half of the total number at least will, it is feared, be cast adrift among the unemployed. This, clearly, is a waste of time and money, and a mockery of efficient organisation. The department simply has not had the ability even to estimate with reasonable accuracy its own needs and the measure of opportunity for its students. It is not at all surprising that the trained students and those intimately concerned in their welfare hold bitter feelings against the myopic administrators and speak unkindly of characteristic administrative bungling and a callous instability of policy. The harsh indictment asserts that the Education Department’s system of training teachers lias at least succeeded admirably during the past year in two conspicuous achievements. It has trained a very large number of student-teachers for high-grade unemployment; and (as perhaps too harshly and unfairly) it has broken faith with and disappointed most of the remainder. Possibly, it should be urged, in the department’s favour, that, if it has bungled its business at all, it has bungled with characteristic thoroughness. All of the students who, two years ago or earlier, entered into a bond to become teachers, expected to receive at the end of their certificated training, temporary appointment for a year at a minimum salary of £l7O in the town or £2OO in the country. They would then have been free to apply for permanent positions. Such was the system in the past, and such were the conditions in the regulations, and accepted in good faith by the students. A year ago, however, the department caused consternation in the training camp by an edict which stated that all students of Division B would, on leaving college, be appointed probationary assistants at a salary of about £145 a year. Though doubtless there is some kind of plausible explanation, the change in policy looks perilously like a breach of faith. It is announced by the Director of Education that the number of new students to be admitted to the teachers’ training colleges this year will be reduced. This is a belated policy. It is understood that this year there will be about 39Q students at the Auckland Training College. There is little prospect of employment for at least half of the number. Hitherto, the department has been callous about the future interests of its trainees for the teaching profession. It was its plain duty to gauge the needs of the schools before it overcrowded its training colleges. And if circumstances demanded curtailment of expenditure the Minister of Education might well have spared the unfortunate students and practised economy in the bungling department.