Under-Paid Masters

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 727, 29 July 1929, Page 8

Under-Paid Masters

School Heads Seek Salary Increase EDUCATIONAL efficiency in New Zealand is not being achieved without a heavy call upon the industry and ability of the teachers. Hard work and intense study are necessary to meet increased responsibility. But since 1920 there has been no adjustment of headmasters’ salaries to meet the rising cost of living and, as the New Zealand Headmasters’ Association now proves, the high-grade masters are still below the manual labourer in proportion to cost of living figures.

The association lias approached the Education Department with a care-fully-prepared statement to show that any post-war adjustment of teachers’ salaries has operated directly to the benefit of those on the lower grades in both primary and secondary schools, and lias left the high-grade masters far below their just status upon the scale of departmental remuneration. Perhaps the most forcible argument used by the headmasters in calling for an increase in their rates of pay is the vivid comparison made between their positions and those of the manual worker ill relation to the industrial barometer —The official cost of living figures. Unskilled workers have been moved up the wage scale by an analytical Arbitration Court until they are now paid rates 60 per cent, above those paid in 1914, simply because costs rose to that extent above the pre-war level. Senior headmasters have been asked to meet the same increase in costs, with a rise in salary of 26 per cent; grade three head teachers have gone up 47 per cent., and the lower ranks of assistants have risen fey 106 per cent. YOUNG MAN BETTER OFF. Illustrating the anomalies contained in the existing scale, the headmasters reveal that the lowest grade of headmastership, which is within the reach of a young teacher having only 10 years’ experience, is worth 70 per cent, of the salary paid in the highest grade, which is obtainable only after 25 years or 30 years of experience. A master in grade seven.—the highest—with~7sl pupils, a staff of 20, and with 30 years’ service, gets £585; a first assistant, who has never had a headmastership, receives £440; a woman assistant of eight years’ service is on £350.

The first assistant in a large school may draw 75 per cent, of the headmaster’s salary-. In short, a headmaster in charge of 500 pupils and upward is paid only about one and ahalf times the salary of a teacher in ehirge of 40 pupils, one and a-third that of his first assistant, and one and two-thirds that of his second woman assistant.

It is correctly maintained by tile association that the duties and responsibilities of the headmaster of a large primary school are as important and as onerous as those of the principal of a technical or secondary school, though a study of the salary scale reveals a wide discrepancy in the proportionate reward for their services. A primary school with 140

Xiupils commands a salary of a technical school of the same roll £540 and a secondary school on the same basis £6BO. Similar discrepancies occur in the rising importance of the respective schools, until the school of 800 pupils is reached. Here the primary headmaster receives £585 and the technical school principal and the principal of a secondary school of the same siz each receives £920. In the cases of district high schools, which are in charge of primary beadmasters, the position is equally anomalous. A master of a school of this type, with an average of 400 in primary and 100 in secondary department, receives a maximum salary of £545 — £BO for being in charge of the high school department. Later, when the secondary department is established as a separate high school, and placed in charge of a secondary school headmaster, the new head is given an extra assistant and a salary of £6S0 —an advance of £55 upon what the primary headmaster received for carrying the burden of both schools. SINGLE SCALE ASKED

The smallest secondary school has 100 pupils and four assistants, and the principal’s salary is £680; a technical school with 300 pupils has 10 assistants and the principal’s salary is Sie same; the largest primary school has 900 pupils with 20 assistants, and the headmaster receives £SSS. In the face of these clear-cut anomalies, the headmasters ask the department for an immediate increase in the salaries of grade six and grade seven masters, the readjustment to be retrospective to February 1 in acknowledgement of the difficulties of post-war educational conditions. Secondly, the headmasters ask that a single r ale of salaries, covering all teachers, whether primary, secondary, or technical, be established in conjunction with the reorganisation of the educational system. In consideration of the powers and the responsibilities ofc-the teachers and their part in ultimately determining the educational ideal, the arresting disparity in salaries paid to the different branches of the profession are held to be an eloquent argument for the suggested increase. If the present purchasing power of the sovereign is 12s 6d the primary school headmaster’s present maximum salary of £585 is now worth £365 less than the maximum of 1901. The 1914 maximum was £450. To put them in a similar position today the maximum would have to be raised from £585 to £720.