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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 37, Number 8. April 24 1972
Rags for kindly trainees?
Rags for kindly trainees?
Salaries of kindergarten teachers-in-training are lower than the unemployment benefit. Trainees are having grave difficulty surviving their courses because of financial hardship.
How has this situation arisen? Is it because of discrimination against the students because the huge majority of them are female? Or is it the negligent incompetence of the Education Department?
On entering Kindergarten Teachers College in return for a two-year bond, kindergarten teachers-in-training receive on average no more than $25 per week.
Living costs use up at least $20 per week of this "salary". The cost of board in a student hostel in Wellington is between $18 and $20 per week.
The students are left with less than $5 per week after paying their basic living costs. From this they must pay for teaching aids, college activities, material for college courses and fees, in all amounting to over $200 a year. If there was any money left over it would be spent on-necessities like clothing and toiletries.
If the trainees were paid a living wage they could rightly be expected to pay for all these things out of their own pocket —as other teachers in training do. But many kindergarten student-teachers are forced to undertake secondary employment not only on week nights but also during the weekend simply so they can afford to live.
Many kindergarten-teachers-in-training have to accept loans (which they know they will never be able to repay) from their parents in order to train for their chosen profession.
A survey carried out in 1973 by the Student Teachers Association showed the following startling results:
- 30% missed meals
- 48% are inadequately housed
- 78% delay seeking medical and dental treatment
- 86% cannot afford to dress "respectably"
- 42% cannot pursue university and polytech extension courses
- 31% are forced to undertake secondary employment during the week.
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For the last eighteen months the Minister of Education (the Hon P.A. Amos) has assured the Student Teachers Association of NZ of his awareness of the problem and his concern about it.
It is a pity that such ministerial assurances of awareness and concern no longer indicate any action.
Even more disappointing coming from the man who in August 1969 said:
that "Education should be accorded a much higher priority in the affairs of the State than it enjoys at present". (Evening Post 26.8.1969)
In November 1971 the Committee of Inquiry into Pre-School Education (the Hill Committee) made recommendations to the Minister of Education.
If these had been implemented during the intervening period to the present day (two years and five months) the financial difficulties faced by Kindergarten teachers-in-training would no longer exist.
The 1972 Labour Party Manifesto stated: "The education of pre-school teachers.... will be radically expanded" and "adequate remuneration will be offered to all full-time pre-school teachers".
Many pre-school teachers in service receive a lower salary than some primary teachers college students.
There are policemen who pay more in tax than most kindergarten teachers receive as their salaries, yet a good kindergarten teacher who prepares say 40 children for school, does more in the fight against crime than any dozen policemen.