EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 6, 7 June 1913, Page 10

EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE

THE OTAGO BRANCH. TEACHERS' SALARIES. Dunedin, Thursday. At the afternoon session Mr. J. A.elly (Weston School) brought forward a scheme of salaries and promotions of teachers, based on service and efficiency. Speaking of promotion, he said that at the present time promotion was to a large extent the result of chance, luck, or something else. He calculated that there were 1300 teachers looking forward to promotion to one or other of iwU schools. Promotion by increment in contradistinction to promotion by appontment, held out a prospect of the fixed salary. Salaries in towns should rise from £l3O to £l5O, after which a male teacher must spend three or five years in the country. If he returned to town as second bin assistant his salary should advance to £260, or if as first assistant to £3OO. Female town teachers should rise from £IOO to £ 120, no further advance to be made till they had spent two or three years in the country, after which they might return to town as assistants at £l5O, or mistresses at £2OO. The scheme promised to pay according to the work done, and not according to circumstances- over which the teacher had no control. The scheme aimed at evenness and uniformity, and allowed of no jumping by large increases when an appointment was made, as promotion by increment rested on efficiency and length of service. It proposed that all teachers proceed to a maximum in their grades by £lO yearly increments, so that they might participate in increased superannuation. Various speakers approved heartily of the principle of the scheme. Mr. W. Davidson advocated the separate classification of male and female teachers. He said that it was wrong and cruel that teachers might gire long anu faithful service to the State and be degraded as a reward. He did not believe that they had the smallest hope of getting a scale of islaries as proposed by the New Zealand Institute placed on the Statute Book. That would involve an immediate increase of £IOO,OOO, but Mr. Kelly's schema would not involve great expenditure. Mr. O. Flamank said that they should

take at least twelve months to work out and perfect the scheme, which they could then submit with confidence to Parliament.

Mr. Richardson (chief inspector) said

that he was thoroughly in accord with the principle Mr. Kelly had advocated. From personal experience he could give some harrowing statements of the hardships teachers had had to put up with owing to payment by average attendance, and he knew of cases where the hardship was just as great under the proposed system of payment by roll number. He was sure that if the payment by roll were adopted it would be years before any other was adopted, and he thought Mr. Kelly's scheme should receive the immediate attention of teachers all through the Dominion. He did not approve of the proposal to compel teachers to go to the country. If they found that they could get no further promotion they would go to the country of their own accord. The system proposed was in force in Prussia. Mr. Carrington moved that a committee be set up to consider the scheme and report to the next quarterly meeting.

The nation was carried. Mr. Eadey moved "That the executive of the New Zealand Educational Institute he requested not to bring before the Minister of Education any scheme for payment of salaries on average attendance or average roll number until it has considered some scheme based on other principles." The motion was carried. CHILDREN'S TEETH.

In the evening Mr. Armstrong gave an address on "The care of children's teeth." He condemned the present system of admission for treatment at a dental school connected with the Otago University Dental Hospital. Me said that this was a State-endowed institution, and he proposed that every teacher should have the right of sending to the hospital for free treatment any child that he considered could not afford dental attention. He pleaded for a simpler form of admission on the certificate of the teacher, a clergyman, a doctor or a dentist. The matter was referred to the Headmasters' Association. THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Reporting on the meeting of the Now Zealand Educational Institute at Now Plymouth last year, Mr. G. Mac Donald said that there had been a good deal of misconception with regard to the Council's attitude on the Bible-in-Schools question. It was currently said that the Council rejected the proposal by 46 to 7. The actual resolution passed was that the New Zealand Educational Institute, while recognising the value of Bible-teaching and of religion, was opposed to the programme of the Biblc-in-Schools League. He believed the majority were against the proposal to make teachers take part in the work.