TEACHERS' SUPERANNUATION.

Evening Post, Volume LXXII, Issue 95, 19 October 1906, Page 6

TEACHERS' SUPERANNUATION.

AN AMENDING BELL AND ITS PROVISIONS. The Teachers Superannuation Act Amendment Bill, introduced into the House yesterday, embodies, as the Minister explained, the recommendations of the board set up under the principal Act.' Th© main feature of the amendments provides that contributors who fail to retire at the prescribed age, or within three months after attaining it (siityfive years in the case of males and sixty, in the case of females) shall cease to be entitled to any of the benefits of tho Superannuation Act. The Bill proposes to considerably enlarge the scope of last year's Act. A teacher in a school for the deaf may elect to contribute to tho fund, provided he does as before 30th June, 1907. and shall be deemed an original member if he was in the service before tho beginning of 1906. He niay, however, enter the fund after June, 1907, on making payment according to the regulations. - Compulsory contributions to the fund are to be made by teachers first permanently employed in any school under tho Education Department (as well as public schools, as ax, present) after the commencement of the operations of the superannuation scheme. Teachers with previous service re-entering after that date are to contribute compulsorily also. A contributor leaving the service to become a professor or lecturer in a universitycollege or agricultural qollege, or a teacher in an endowed school may elect to" remain a contributor. There is also a provision that a contributor who before becoming such was a teacher in a separate endowed school shall have his length of service there counted as if it wero service in the Education Department. The ealary on which any retiring allowance is based is now to include payments a 6 bonuses on certificates, or for instruction to pupil teachers, or to pupils of a district high school, or for management or instruction of manual and technical classes. The regulations as to contributions when a contributor's pay is stopped, through ill-health aro extended to apply to absence on leave without pay, or v temporary absence from the service through unavoidable circumstances. In cases where a contributor retires medically unfit with over fifteen years' length of service, he may receive either' (a) an annual allowance not exceeding the allowance he would have been entitled to if computed on the same basis a 6 if he had retired at th,© retiring age, with a minimum of £52 per annum for original members, or (b) such cum as the board determines, provided its present value at tho time of his retirement at 4 per cent, per annum does not exceed the present value of the total annual allowance computed according to the regulations. In the latter case, on reaching the retiring age he shall be entitled to receive the balance of his contributions without interest. In the former case, he or Ghe shall be entitled to receive a total annual allowance computed in the manner set forth in that case. On a contributor 'lying and leaving a widow, the latter is to receive £18 per annum, together with either the amount of his contributions, or the annuity which such contributions would yield. In the caeo of payments to children, where there is no administration of the deceased contributor's estate, they are to be made through the Public Trustee, i A proviso has been inserted that a retired contributor, returning to service, i shall not in euch case receive altogether a greater sum yearly than the amount of his salary in retiring. All unpaid contributions are to be a first charge on the benefits.