Teachers’ Salaries.

Gisborne Times, Volume V, Issue 114, 23 May 1901, Page 3

Teachers’ Salaries.

(Py Telegraph—Press Association.) Invercargill, last night. In opening the Teachers’ Salaries Commission here the Chairman said there seemed to be a slight misapprehension as to the effect of the scale of salaries submitted by Mr Hogben, namely, that it would involve an expenditure of £5355 beyond the four pounds capitation. As the proposal involved a reduction of the staffing there would be a saving of .£4405, so that the increase in expenditure in raising salaries to the highest scale in the colony would be £950. Mr Cowie, Chairman of the Southland Board, said that the boys who offered as teachers were not the brightest, and some inducement should be offered to boys; £l3O was miserable pay for an assistant in a middle-class school as a married man. He favored a colonial scheme of promotion. Mr Neill, Secretary to the Board, quoted the district figures to show that the Board saved £1,600 on nine large ■schools, and that it went to help deficiencies in 138 smaller schools. Otago had 25 large schools, and saved £6,260 on them. On a sliding scale of capitation, the Boards could pay teachers on a colonial scale. The proposed scheme would not help Southland much. Finished pupil-teachers should be offered inducement to go the country. There should be a stepping-stone between pupilteachers and certified teachers. He saw no justification for a sudden increase of salary from the first to the second grade, and he opposed the reduction of ten pounds from a master to pay a sewingteacher. AVhy fifth-year pupil-teachers should be reduced in salary because of removal to another school he could not understand. The present system of education was not national. The tendency was for the best teachers to gravitate to districts where the pay was highest. He thought teachers generally were miserably paid. . Give the Boards better allowances, and -the objection to a colonial scale of staffing and salaries would be removed. Pay should be on the average attendance, and a teacher should not be penalised. His Board paid women ten per cent less than men, but they were not expected and did not do less work.

AV. 11. Clarke, secretary of the branch of the Education Institute', agreed generally with Mr Neill. First assistants, he said, should be better paid. A colonial scale of staffing and salaries, he thought, would give greater inducements to the right class to enter the profession. G. R. George generally favored the status quo, and thereafter the Commission adjourned for the day.