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TEACHERS’ SUPERANNUATION

Sir, —I too wish, to add my protest to the «u?tion of the Government in withdrawing the bonus to retired teachers. The bonus should never h/rve been made a temporary measure. Its addition to the pittance under which the original subscriber;, to the superannuation scheme retire should, have been made as au act ol common, justice, without any regard to the cost of living. The teachers at present “enjoying superannuation” (save the mark!) are the teachers who taught under the old regime. I for one began with the princely salary of £7O per annum, ns a fully-certificated teacher, and I had been teaching for seven years before I attained to the affluence of £lOB per year, which ('under the Wanganui Board) then, included a bonus on one’s certificate. For years after that my salary was only .£B4 per year, and when I retired I had enjoyed a salary of £l5O per annum for about three years! Gamparb those.figures with the salaries paid to teachers to-day. For the position oi assistant mistress In a two-teaohev school of 70 children (for which I received £B4 per year) a presentday teacher would get about £2OO. A probationer starting out gets over £B4 to-day, I believe, and tho lowest salary for a certificated teacher—or uncertificated for that matter—is, I think, £l3O. What is the result? Any teacher retiring in future is bound tQ have a decent retiring allowance, and has also a better opponunity to put a little by. How could anyone save out of £34 a year ana pay for board, clothing travelling, etc.? Then, too,‘all the teachers of today are only paying 5 per cent, to superannuation fund. We, the original subscribers, had to pay on a rate for age basis, some 6, some 7, per cent., some higher still. Seeing, therefore, the splendid salaries being paid to acting teachers and the certainty of a decent retiring allowance before them, is it not common justice that the retired teachers—those who taught under far less comfortable surroundings for less than half tho pay—should in their old age be considered, and have their retiring allowance increased—not as an act of charity for which they must go cap in hand to beg, but of common justice and humanity? I think it is a bitter reflection on the Teachers’ Institute that while they have battled so hard to secure more pay and less work for active teachers, they should never have cast a thought to those who, in face of •much opposition, started tho fund 1 for them. They need not fear that they will lose anything off their present comfortable incomes through the old teachers petitioning to have the bonus continued, for except in cases of direst need I feel sure none of them will be able to bring themselves to beg for what they should have had as a right. They will rather spend their did age—the evening time of a hard working life—in ekeing out their miserable pittance of 20s. per week by coaching, private teaching, housekeeping for some one more fortunate than themselves, or some other toilsome way, till they can work no longer, and then, T suppose, their relatives willhave to keep them. God help those xvho haven’t got any! Fancy "living" on £1 a week nowadays!—l am, etc., ONE OF TILE ORIGINALS. June 11, 1921.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19210622.2.6.5

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 229, 22 June 1921, Page 2

Word count
Tapeke kupu
557

TEACHERS’ SUPERANNUATION Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 229, 22 June 1921, Page 2

TEACHERS’ SUPERANNUATION Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 229, 22 June 1921, Page 2

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