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Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 139, 18 July 1914, Page 8

One of the most inexplicable omissions from the new Education Bill is a provision which would- abolish the unreasonable system of payment on the basis of average attendance, and substitute a method by which teachers should be remunerated according to efficiency and experience. A littl<?, but only a little relief, has been vouchsafed by the present Minister of Education, but the principle is one that calls for abolition not for palliatives. It imposes on the teacher in the small country schools in districts of scattered settlement a hardship he should not be called upon to suffer. Just exactly how this obnoxious principle can operate was shown in a recent tragic occurrence in the Canterbury province. x It is utterly futile and indefensible that when the average attendance of a small school, through no fault of the teacher at all, drops two, three, or four, the salary should decrease correspondingly. Comfortable publicists outside the profession are never tired of extolling the national work which falls to the lot of the instructors of the young, and the Inspector-General has praised on festal occasions the devotion and conscientious energy of the teachers as a whole, but no attempt has been made to place these admirable public servants in a position above thepossibility of their salaries "being influenced for the worse by the mere fact of several scholars leavingHlie.district, or getting beyond school age. The work required of the teacher to-day is exacting and responsible;,, and he. should not be left liable to a reduction ;of salary because of a decrease in thd census returns for a particular district. When the principle of payment oil a basis of aA'erage attendance, is wiped, out,. and when efficiency and' experiejice (in that order) count most for promotion, then the recruiting ranks of th«j teachers of the Dominion will not be so empty of men.