REDUCTION OF TEACHERS.

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 72, 26 March 1888, Page 4

REDUCTION OF TEACHERS.

An opinion maintained at the cost of a pecuniary sacrifice carries with it strong evidence of sincerity, and the preference displayed by head-masters of city schools for reduction of salaries rather than a reduction of the number of teachers has this recommendation. Every man who is a lover of his work will consider its efficient performance before everything else, and when the head-masters declare that to increase the number of pupils under the care of individual teachers will have a deteriorating effect on the work done, we have no hesitation in believing that they are speaking in the interests of the schools, and therefore in the interests of the children!'who attend them, arid the community for whose good they have been established." So far as the city schools are concerned, we feel convinced that the Board of Education will act wisely in ' adopting the recommendation of the City School Committee; and when they come to examine the pay-lists of teachers they, will find such anomalies as would have warranted revision, irrespective of the question of retrenchment. On . the whole, the salaries are unquestionably moderate enough—they are below the rates ruling in the South ; but the Board have been guilty of singular extravagance in 'the remuneration of pupil, teachers, paying rates, for what is practically an apprenticeship, are 50 per cent, higher' than have ever been paid in Otago. . ' . With regard to the country districts, however, the ■, excessive number of teachers demands reduction even more than the salaries. Yielding to the pressure of local School Committees, assistants have been granted- when none were required, schools": have been erected where they never ought to have been placed, and of a size disproportionate to the wants of the district. The hand of the nruner must now be applied firmly to these excrescences. Persons who choose to locate themselves in outlandish localities will have to learn that such isolation entails a loss of certain advantages and putting up with a number of inconveniences. In short, we must be brought back sharply from an era of prodigality to one of greater simplicity and prudence in our public institutions and expenditures.