THE TEACHERS’ PARADISE.

Evening Star, Issue 9472, 17 August 1894, Page 4

THE TEACHERS’ PARADISE.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —It was the Victorian Minister of Education, I think, who lately invited the public school teachers over sixty years of age to retire on the pension list. This statement induced me to look up the educational records for Otago, to learn how the Dunedin teachers who have been for a lengthy period in the Board’s employment have fared in the matter of payment for service rendered, and I must say that the result of my investigation fully justifies the title I have given to this communication. One head-master is credited with 32 years’ service under the Board, and another with 29 years’; a third has enjoyed the emoluments of his present post for 14 years, while a fourth has drawn a splendid salary for 9 years. The other Dunedin teachers are of comparatively recent appointment. Let us see how the four gentlemen alluded to have been requited for the work they have done. For the 9 years ended December 31 last one teacher has drawn from the educational fund of the colony the sum of £4,133. For his 14 years’ service another has received in salary and emoluments the sum of £5,040. For the period of a third’s mastership I can only find the records of 15 years, during which he drew the sum of £0,424. Calculating a similar rale for the other 13 years we get £5,568, making a tidy total of £11,992. In the case of the oldest of the teachers, he entered the Board’s employment so long ago as 1862, but only the records of 15 years arc available to the writer, and they credit him with having received the handsome sum of £6,570. Making a calculation for the other 16 years on similar lines, I arrive at ihother handsome sum of £7,008 —giving in all the remarkable total of £13,578 drawn in salary and emoluments by this teacher. For 1893 the average salary of the colonial teacher is given by the Minister of the department at the modest sum of £93 8s sd. From this I note that the average paid teacher would take 43 years to earn what one head-master in Dunedin earned in 9 years, or 63 years to get what another got in 14 years, or 128 years to reach the suin paid to a third in 28 years, while he would require to labor over the patriarchal span of 145 years before his modest pay would equal what a fourth gentleman has received in 31. years.

Epitomising yet again, I see that No. 1 has drawn £133 over £4,000; No. 2, £6O less than £6,000; No. 3, within £8 of £12,000; while No. 4 is within measurable distance of the enormous amount of £14,000. As Dominie Samson would say—“ Prodigious !”—I am, etc., Fourteen Thousand Pounds. Dunedin, August 10. P.S.—One would expect all these teachers to be in the first or highest rank ; but I was surprised to notice that only one of them possesses the highest qualifications ; the others are in the third and fourth ranks.