“NO CHRISTMAS BOX”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26958, 18 December 1948, Page 6

“NO CHRISTMAS BOX”

SCHOOL TEACHERS’ SALARIES PA WELLINGTON, Dec. 17. “A hasty reading of the headlines and the Ministerial statement appearing in this morning’s press may have given the impression that school teachers have received a Christmas box in the form of an increase in salaries,” said the president of the New Zealand Educational Institute, Mr J. S. H. Robertson, to-day. The regulations gazetted on Thursday, however, merely confirmed the salary schedules which had been in force since April, 1946. Since that date teachers had had no increase in salaries. “Apart from any question of a general rise there are still anomalies in the salary scale which the institute is anxious to have removed,” Mr Robertson added. “Teachers comprise the largest professional body in the country and we feel justified in asking the Government to set up a tribunal or an adjustment committee which will concern itself solely with our salary problems. Only in this way can many difficulties associated with the complex system of grading teachers and classifying schools be overcome.” The regulations now gazetted, though they did not contain all the institute had pressed for, set out in black and white what the teachers generally had been waiting to see for a long time, Mr Robertson concluded, and to this extent they should give general satisfaction.