TEACHERS’ SALARIES

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 191, 15 May 1928, Page 11

TEACHERS’ SALARIES

Sir, —In your issue of May 11 you publish a .report of a discnsSon by the Educational Institute on the basis of payment of teachers’, salaries. Unfortunately, the heading, “Increases Sought,” must givi to the public the impression that the discussion had for its object the raising of the scale.of salaries. This was not sb. What was- under discussion was the basis of payment, not the rate; and the scale' suggested by Mr. Rowntree and dealt with in the report had reference to that subject alone. It may interest your readers to have nn' explanation as brief as the subject will permit of the present position. In this country and, so far as is known, in no other, teachers’ salaries are based on average attendance. It is to this fact that nearly all the evils and complaints connected with educational administration owe their origin. All the trouble about the too frequent changes in staffs, about the difficulty to getting teachers to stay in the country, and about the uncertainties connected with grading arise from this source. In New Zealand it is the position that is paid, not the teacher. In the endeavour to make an inherently unjust and unreasonable system work . with some approach to I 'justice and. reasonableness positions have been divided into a multiplicity of grades and subgrades. This necessitates for every little step in promotion an application for a new position, a .removal and a new appointment —perhaps several removals and several new appointments,-with the dislocation and disturbance of as many schools. It would be impossible to exaggerate the mischief that arises from this cause. It exists in no other country, and for very many years the institute has been asking, that it should be removed in New Zealand.. . , Mr. Rowntree’s scale was merely a suggested scale based on efficiency and service to indicate a method by whi'ch the present- ridiculous system could be amended. Its object was not, as the heading of your report implied, an increase in the rate of payment, and the figures used in it were merely illustrative of the principle on which it was constructed.—l am ,etc., H. A. PARKINSON. Secretary, N.Z.E.I. Wellington, May 14.