TEACHERS' SALARIES

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2236, 24 August 1914, Page 3

TEACHERS' SALARIES

IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS,

Ihe Secondary SchoorAssistants' Association appears to be in no wise satisfied with the < Bill now in circulation that provides for a new scale of salaries. The annual roport of the association says:— ' • '. . /

"A great amount of time and labour ias been devoted by your executive to

the ■ question of salaries. The Bill is now before us, aiid while it is of benefit to the smaller secondary schools and to most female assistants, it must be regarded as a comparative . failure for these reasons: — ' "(a) It leaves secondary education in the same chaotio state as before; (b) it makes no difference to the men and wonien who have spent years in the service; (c) it'indicates'that while we are to bo described as professional men and women we are still to bo paid on a scale quite -inadequate to our professional standing; (d) it offers a good inducement to a single man or woman to become a teacher; it offers no inducement to men and women of ability to remain in the service; (e) the moneys that shall be paid in salaries by the boards cannot be paid, for in many cases the additional grants will not cover the increases whiqh have to, be made to salaries'; (f) it leaves the question of' superannuation soverely-ialone; and so we who happen to have salaries of over £300 still pay our superannuation payments out or it, still pay income tax—not on what is left, but what wo are nominally in receipt of;, finally; we' have our retiring allowances computed on the'last three years of service, instead ■ of, as in the case of Civil Servants, on the three best consecutive years. Why this invidious dis-

tinction? "It seems a pity to us that members of Parliament should- be so prorte to approve or disapprove of an expenditure according as they see it, will meau a gain or loss in hard cash. Yet these very men when chairmen of some gatherings, or when taking a prominent part in prize distributions, utter the samo fervid oration about 'the nobility of

tho teaching profession.' When it conies to voting a little- more money to that noble profession—they forget to think of its nobility, they rcfuso indirectly to regard it as a profession.

"How tho proposed Bill .will finally emerge after being dealt with by the Education' Committee and by Parliament it is difficult to say. It will have to bo a much more liberal sort of measure before it will-be acceptable to most secondary school teacher."