TEACHERS’ POSITIONS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 941, 7 April 1930, Page 10

TEACHERS’ POSITIONS

APPOINTMENTS FROM GRADED LIST DEFENCE BY INSTITUTE A defence of the present system of j appointing teachers according to their j grading is made*in the current issue of “National Education,” the official I organ of the New Zealand Educational Institute. This method has been criti- j cised recently by education boards, ! which have complained that they are i forced to give positions to the highest- i graded teacher who applies, and that ! they have no power to treat every case i on its merits. The journal says:—“lt is not surprising that the present system of appointment by grading should be unpopular with the boards and the committees, since it has deprived them of the powers of patronage they possessed—and abused—under .the previous system. What is surprising, however, is that the system is being attacked by some members of the teaching profession. “Most of the younger generation of teachers know nothing of the disabilities and injustices suffered by their elders under the patronage system of appointment. Resentment against the system became so strong and widespread that when Sir James Parr became Minister of Education he felt impelled to do something. The teachers were asked whether they would accept a system of appointment from a graded list. By a very large majority they returned an affirmative. “The present system is not perfect. It would be impossible under any system to make a classification of human differentiations that would satisfy everybody and at the same time be of practical use. But it is a vastly better system than the other. The system, no doubt could be improved. “The current controversy over the married woman teacher has given committees and boards a pretext for reviving their agitation for the restoration of their discretionary authority in making appointments. If we say that married women whose husbands are able to provide for them should not be given appointments in the teaching profession, we at once adopt a different basis of discrimination from that imposed by the graded list, and surrender the principle so long and tenaciously fought for, that appointments should be based on service and efficiency as denoted by the list ”