TEACHERS’ SALARIES COMMISSION.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 6 May 1901, Page 2

TEACHERS’ SALARIES COMMISSION.

The Commission appointed by the Governor to take evidence in the above

matter consists of Messrs A. W. Hogg, chairman, M. Gilfelder, T. M'Kenzie, M.H.R., Mr Luki, Auckland, Inspectors Hill, Hawke’s Bay and Smith, Blenheim, Mr Stewart, Auckland, and Mr Davidson, Karamea. Mr Weston, who is a member of the Commission, was absent.

Mr Hogben, Inspector-General of chools. was also present. Mr Morten. Inspector of the Westland !oard, acted as secretary. Mr Harris, Chairman of the Grey education Board, in giving evidence, put a tiie Board’s regulations and scaliipf alarics. The great difficulty the Board iad to contend with was insufficient unds. The lower salaries were in many :ascs quite inadequate, but the Board iwing to the large proportion of small ichools could not do otherwise. They lid not experience much difficulty in jetting teachers. He thought that female teachers did quote as good work as miles. The recent extra financial assist- ' nice had helped, but was not enough to pay all their teachers a sufficient salary. Mr Kettle said he was treasurer of the Board, and, therefore, had good experience of the question of finance. It was a constant struggle' to make both ends meet, and it was only accomplished at the expense of teachers who were underpaid. This was more especially the case with the smaller schools. Such districts as the West Coast should get an extra allowance, on account of the scattered population and non-paying schools. Teachers in his opinion should be allowed to travel free on the railways, and provision made for retiring teachers at a certain age upon an allowance. No teacher in charge of a school should receive less than £BO per annum, while in salary classifications certificates and terms of service should be considered. It would, of course, tend to lessen the departmental expenditure if all the Coast was placed under one Board. Mr Petrie stated that finance was at the bottom of all their, trouble, inasmuch as It prevented them from paying a living wage, it caused them to have an undue proportion of pupil teachers who could not be termed trained teachers. 'He disagreed with the idea that some teachers were too highly paid. Ability, capacity and experience must be recognised. He held that the profession as a whole was under paid, and especially so the teachers in the smaller schools who had not sufficient to exist upon. In . reply to question, he said he thought it was the duty of the State wherever five or six . , children were located to provide them with education; the lowest salary for a teacher in charge pf a school no matter how small should not be less than £IOO per annnm. A resident Inspector was preferable to an absentee. Inspectors should be under a central control and go fromt district to district. A training school was much required, In the Grey district pupils from the Sixth standard were made pupil teachers without any further training than that obtained in the standards; as a consequence they were often weak. The congestion in the profession was caused by the large number of pupil teachers constantly being created. These appointments were' the result of being unable to pay for experienced and capable teachers. The whole systfem re* quired building up and strengthening." He favoured a colonial scale of salary, provided same was such as would give all a living wage. In regard to male and female teachers he held that- equal pay , should be given for equal work. M Mr. Bundle, President of the Grey Branch of the New Zealand Educational ■ Institute, gave evidence, and on behalf of w the branch stated that the establishment of a colonial scale of staffs and salaries met with the keen appreciation of the'* teachers in the Grey Education district. The Grey Education Board had always done its best for the payment of teachers but through circumstances over which they had no control, they had been unable to pay the average salary paid to teachers throughout the colony. Further on in evidence Mr. Bundle stated that school teachers were among the hardest worked, and at the same time most responsibis c; members of the state ; that he considered a D 4 certificate was too high, and also unnecessary to expect from a female assistant in a country school ; that a pupil teacher in a small country school increased the work of the head master rather than decreased it; and that all schools with over 35 or 40 children should have an assistant teacher ; that 40 children was the maximum number that one teacher could instruct efficiently ; that considering the usefulness of a teacher as a member of society, some system of superannuation or retiring allowances (or old or broken down teachers should bo established. Mr. H. Smith, secretary of the Grey branch of the New Zealand Educational Institute, gave evidence that, in his opinion, the most important question in this district was how to deal with the number of very small schools, of which there are eight with an average attendance of less than 10. To expect teachers to go to these out-of-the-way places and to receive as salary only £5 per head, as allowed by the proposed scale, was ridiculous. Each must have a living wage, and in such cases there should be little or no difference between the amounts paid to men or women teachers. Again, the proposed scale required that / an assistant mistress in a small school with an average attendance of from 35 to To should hold a D 4 certificate. In many of these districts female assistants held an El certific ite, which for the work r

to be done was high enough. The fact that they had reached the first division showed that they had been successful teachers. The proposal to reduce their salaries by one per cent because they had not passed the D examination was unfair, and would press hard upon these assistants. In schools with an average attendance of from 420 to 480, such as Greymouth, the scale proposed to pay the first male assistant £l9O per annum, and the next male assistant £IOO per annum. Seeing that the second male assistant would most probably be ap-' pointed to take charge of a large Standard IV. or V. class, and would consequently have as much work to do as the first assistant, there seemed to be too great a difference between the amounts paid. Salaries seemed to be apportioned more according to positions held than to ' work to be done. In schools of this size there should be three male assistants. As long as the attendance at a school was under GOO, the scale demanded that the first assistant should hold a D 3 certificate, and be paid £220 per annum. Immediately the GOO limit was passed, he required a B2 certificate, and his salary was not raised. Should he hold a lower certificate than E2, it was to his advantage to keep the attendance down. Such an anomaly should not exist. Nothing was mentioned in the proposed 1 scale re the time that an average attendance must be maintained before the school would be entitled to the scale stall’. In a district such as this, much inconvenience would be caused if sudden changes were made. There were quarters in some years when the average attendance was very low, caused chiefly by bad weather. If the staff of a school had to suffer by quarterly changes, hardship would result. Mr. Gilfedder stated that it was proposed to make the changes yearly. Mr. Smith considered this should have been stated in the regula tious.

Mr. Smith was examined at length by various members of the Commission as to his past experience and present position. As his position was not provided for in the scale, members considered it a special case. The Inspector-General tried hard to shako his evidence re little or no difference between the salaries paid to men or women in the lowest scale; but Mr. Smith urged that it cost as much, or nearly as much, for one to live as the other, and the expenses were equal. Mr Adams informed the Commissioners that he did not appear as a representative of the Teachers’ Institute, because he did not belong to that body, and that he was in favour of a colonial scale of staffs and salaries. After referring to the brief

time at his disposal since the Commissionors had to catch the 330 p. m. train for V' 'Hokitika he proceeded to criticise some of the provisions of the scale. He pointed out that it proposes to give such salaries as will attract good teachers or prevent the best teachers from going into other professions, and asked whether those results are likely to be obtained by offering smaller salaries than are paid in Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia, where the cost of living is so much less than in New Zealand which pays its labouring men 10/ per day, the highest rate in Australia, and why it should be proposed to pay teachers less than in those states, that the proposed salary for an average of 100 pupils is, for Head Teachers, less than in Queensland by - £2l and in South Australia by £sl, for an average of 250, it is £l6 less than in Queensland and £6l less than in South Australia, for an attendance of 600, it is £lB less than in Queensland, £26 less than in New South Wales, and £96 less than in South Australia. Again, that Infant Mistresses, in small schools, are to receive £1 less than in South Australia, and in large schools, £SO less than is paid to Infant Mistresses of girls’ departments in New South Wales; that the scheme proposed to remove inequalities and anomalies in the salaries paid in various positions, but at the same time, would create others quite as glaring, for example, the First Assistant in a school with an average of 599 is required to hold only a D 3 certificate which he had known to have been given to a pupil teacher, before his term of apprenticeship had expired (at this the Commissioners looked at the Inspector General, and the Inspector General in amazement asked Mr Adams if he could give the name of the teacher, to which the reply was at once and emphatically made that he could), and he wanted to know if the Commissioners thought such a teacher experienced enough to act as First Assistant in a school of 599 pupils. This was not all, for as soon as the average attendence increased by 1 pupil, that assistant must obtain a B2 certificate or be penalised at the rate of 6 per cent of his salary ; that the A certificate was not recognised at all in the scheme. Why then did it insist in the Department’s system of classification ; that the scale made no allowance for those qualified to teach drill, singing, etc., which many E. D; and O, teachers could teach, but which several graduates could not. He pointed out that the salaries of Assistants are fixed, whereas those of Head teachers vary according to the average attendence from quarter to quarter, so that the assistants need make no special effort to secure a good attendance in their classes, and that in schools with large infant departments, especially in districts subject to rigid and long winters, and abnormal rainfall, the average of a whole school is seriously affected by the infant department, and the teachers are made to suffer from what is utterly beyond their control, for what in legal phraseology is termed an act of God; that instead of having a uniform salary for the whole colony, salaries should be graded so as to provide for the extra cost of living in some parts of the Colony such as the West Coast, portions of Southland, Otago, Nelson- Marlborough etc., that the proposed scheme offers a bonus to the holders of University degrees, without giving all te-ichors equal facilities to obtain those degrees. Whilst the Government, by its appointments to the Commission clearly and unmistakably shows it does not attach great value to the possession of a University degree, as far as practical teaching is concerned, because when it had to cast about in the Colony for the ablest representatives of the teaching profession, it found the necessary ability, not among graduate, but ■ among the D certificated teachers; that until equal) opportunities are offered to all teachers to obtain certificates depending on degrees, such a proposal should not be entertained. The employment of pupil teachers in ordinary schools is condemned by the scheme, on the ground that it has in its favour only cheapness and that the teacher cannot devote sufficient time to their training, especially where there are seven or eight classes to attend to, and it proposes the employment of an assistant at £BO per annum when the average roaches 36. Mr Adams would do away altogether with the present pupil teachers’system, and establish either one fully equipped central training college for the colony, or one such college in each Island to which those who aspire to become teachers would be admitted afeer passing an entrance examination in literary subjects, and also after being pronounced physically fit by a medical expert. He would have periodical medical tests of the trainees made, and all who showed premonitions of physical degeneracy retired. According as vacancies arose the trained junior teachers could be drafted into the several schools of the colony, and then the pupils would be better taught and the country would obtain a more enduring return for its expenditure. He held that under a colonial scale as submitted, a better method of assigning marks for efficiency in school management is urgently needed and rendered imperative, otherwise the teacher who has net already been placed in the highest grade would be at the mercy of an Inspector who has his likes and dislikes, and who himself may not be the most capable judge of the efficient management of the various schools. By withholding marks, he could curtail the teacher’s salary, and Mr Adams stated that ho had in his mind more than one capable teacher whose work has been regularly reported on as most satisfactory, but who nevertheless, for some occult reason, have year after year, been left without well-deserved promotion, because marks had not been assigned them by an Inspector, £BO per annum he considered an insufficient salary for a Junior Assistant who had served an apprenticeship of five years, and the proposal to leave the Assistant at that salary until the average of the school to which ho is attached increases from 330 to 480 is unfair, and would tend to intensify the unsatisfactory state of things the scale proposes to remedy; that , all who have had the management of large schools know a Junior Assistant invariably does work equal to that done by an ordinary Assistant, and frequently has to teach a whole standard class, and that, on this account, there should not be so wide a gap between the salaries of the several assistants. Mr Adams also pointed out that a fourth year pupil teacher would not get including allowance, if living away from home, within £lO per annum of what is paid a successful candidate at the junior Civil Service examination, whose course of study is by no means so severe. The Commissioners considered his evidence so . imoprtaut that they unanimously asked him to attend to-morrow at Hokitika.