JOBS FOR TEACHERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 288, 25 February 1928, Page 11

JOBS FOR TEACHERS

REVIEW OF SITUATION UNEMPLOYMENT NOT SERIOUS Press Association. WELLINGTON, Friday. With reference to the complaints regarding unemployed teachers at the present time, the Education Department has just obtained returns from education boards, which indicate that the position is not worse than usual. According to these returns the number of teachers seeking employment during the current year is 1,389, while the estimated number of vacancies will Tbe 1,418. The information obtained by the department is as follows: Teachers without permanent positions in December last, 340. Probationary assistants completing their training in December, 177. Substituted assistants, 218. Students leaving the training college, 654. This gives a total of 1,389 teachers for whom positions have to found during the year. On the other hand, the number of probationary and substituted assistants required this year is 460, arid the boards estimate the number of relieving teachers required as 355. The probable number that will retire from the profession during the year is 562, and the additional teachers required for new positions is estimated at 41, or a total of 1,418 primary school teacher positions to be filled during 1928. That the boards’ figures regarding probable vacancies are made out on a conservative basis is shown by the fact that the number of teacher contributors who retired under the Superannuation Act last year was 588, while there were a number of other retirements, making the total well over 600, and that the average number of new positions during the five years ending 1926 was 185, yet the boards give the retirements as 562 and the new positions as only 41.

The department has made careful calculations regarding the probable number of new teachers required on several occasions during the past five years and its estimates are confirmed by the boards’ returns, which show that the end of the year there should be few trained teachers unemployed, unless teachers confine their applications to large towns or to certain districts..