THE TEACHER'S HIRE
Si,—Mr. Hurlstone-Jones's article and Mr. Gill's letter on the shortage of teachers are complementary. Mr. Hurlstone-Jones points out that 1,340 men left the staffs of some 700 grammar schools during a period of eighteen months. The existence of this "flight from the grammar schools," confirmed by Mr. Gill, has been and is being denied by Education, the journal of the Association of Education Committees. The underlying reason for it is not completely appreciated. It results from the present prospects of promotion and salary increases available to university graduates teaching in the grammar schools. Their work, if it is to be done well, absorbs much of their leisure; it is usually interest- ing in itself, and it used to confer a certain prestige. Many such teachers are perfectly capable of carrying out the duties of a headmaster, but only a small proportion of them can hope to obtain a headmastership during the few years when they are no longer too young and not yet too old to be appointed. Can they obtain the greater responsibility they are fitted for and the higher salary their qualifications should command by becoming heads of departments? An advertisement in the current issue of Education offers a special responsibility allowance of £50 a year to a senior classical master. A man capable of teaching classics to university scholarship standard is capable of earning that £50 several times over by devoting his leisure to coaching or casual literary work instead of to the wide reading, preparation and marking required in teaching university scholarship candidates.
Compare the position of the man from the two-year teachers' training college with that of the university graduate. Before the 1945 Burnham award, he was entering—and knew he was entering—a slightly lower grade of the teaching profession. He was compensated for that by three considerations. He knew, first, that he was not capable of obtaining an honours degree at a university; secondly, that a lower standard of intellectual effort, which he could comfortably attain, would be required of him; thirdly, that unlike the grammar school teacher he could scarcely fail, in due course, to become a headmaster. How did the 1945 Burnham award affect him ? It gave him the same basic salary as the grammar-
school teacher without depriving him of tha advantages which had previously compensated for his lower salary scale. This, I submit, has upset the balance of the teaching profession; the better qualified the
teacher, the worse his prospects.—Yours faithfully, B. B. CAUSER. The Wall House, Curbridge Road, Witney, Oxon.
Previous page
