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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 30, No. 9. 1967.

Govt's secondary school policies slammed by PPTA

Govt's secondary school policies slammed by PPTA

Speaker after speaker slammed the Government's secondary schools policy at the regional conferences of the Post Primary Teachers' Association held recently.

The President of the Association, Mr. J. S. Webster, said he was disappointed that the Minister of Education (Mr. Kinsella) would not agree in principle with the immediate goals of the Association: smaller classes, stepped-up teacher recruitment and improved conditions for teachers.

He Said that although the Minister had pointed out $4 million in salaries, 1500 more teachers and 750 more classrooms would be needed, the question was not whether we could afford to do it but whether we could afford not to do it.

Agreement in principle with the Association's alms would not cost anything and he was certain that over-worked staffs would struggle on for another few years if they knew there was a promise of reduced classes in the future, Mr. Webster said.

The chairman of the Canterbury region, Mr. W. E. Jeffery, said that the staff shortage in secondary schools was a fact, and a doom-laden one at that.

Recruitment into the profession was falling and the first and most obvious reason for this was salary. The contention of the Association had never been that secondary school teachers wanted higher salaries; rather it was that more teachers were needed.

Mr. Jeffery said that if it was impossible to ask for an increase in a time of economic restrictions, it was madness to seek a reduction of class sizes in a time of teacher shortage.

There were not nearly enough good graduates to fill vacant secondary school positions, the headmaster of Wellington College (Mr. S. W. Hill) said at the Wellington regional conference.

School rolls keep increasing but recruitment does not keep pace. Dropping standards and staff vacancies have become a nightmare, he said.