SIR,—TO most headmasters of Grammar Schools, Dr. Bailey's letter must
seem surprisingly ill-informed, or Lancaster must be a unique school. I myself have just finished three hours' teaching on a Saturday morning, and my usual school day begins with my letters before breakfast and ends with parental interviews, lectures and corrections up to to or I in the evening, though I ant spared much of the two or three hours of nightly correction of my colleagues. As I am at school working for a week after term is over and for ten days or a fortnight before term begins, my holidays on the Bailey plan seem to be limited to a week at Christmas and a week in August in order to keep fresh a mind directed to school problems during a 70-hour week.
How many boys or masters limit their activities to 5i hours a day? J.T.C. three times a week, innumerable school societies, plays, holiday expeditions, holiday farming camps, Saturday afternoon matches, Sunday A.T.C. engagements, homework—these and much else fill the year. Even in a day selool, masters and boys are very rarely free for any external social engagement. As for the increased salaries, Dr. Bailey may not realise that a 50 per cent, rise in the cost of living has been for graduates met by a 15 per cent, rise in salary. The plums have gone to those who have few outside activities to run or book corrections to make. Meanwhile, all of the profession needs time to recover vision after a term—time largely devoted to milk bottles, dinner tickets, labels for school books, measurement of feet, potato-picking cards, gym. shoe coupons and issue of Savings Certificates. Possibly Dr. Bailey in retire- ment still thinks of schools in terms of steady academic effort and of the attainment of culture in a serene atmosphere, all passion spent. Times change, and Secondary School masters, in general, are more disillusioned than ever before. Curtailment to any considerable extent of the 13 or 14 weeks of nominal break would mean the impossibility of reading, or reflection, of having any freshness of outlook. Even a headmaster is a disaster if he becomes a bore.—Yours, &c.,
" DIRECT GRANT " HEADMASTER.
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