The Alliance says that the independent job comparison which shows that kindergarten teachers' jobs are very similar to those of primary teachers should come as no surprise to anyone.

'It has been clear for years that teachers in New Zealand have been paid according to the relative power of their constituencies rather than the nature of their job' said Liz Gordon.

'Kindergarten teachers, who work with very young children, are a female-dominated workforce and are very scattered geographically have had little opportunity to voice their claims.

'The fact that there is a $15,000 pay gap at the top of the basic scale between kindergarten and primary teachers is a scandal.

'No Government can claim that they cannot afford to give pay parity to this 99 percent female workforce. The total cost is only around $15 million a year – about 5% of next year's proposed National P ance of the work that early childhood teachers do, which has kept this group as the lowest paid professional workers in the country'.

Dr. Gordon said that pay parity for kindergarten teachers has been Alliance policy 'for years'. She promises that it will be a prominent part of her party's early childhood education policy for the 1999 election, which will be released in September.

ENDS

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