15 MARCH 1963, Page 5

Boyle's Law

N advising the Burnham Committee to recon- sider their recommendations for the teachers' pay award in favour of a higher reward for long service and outstanding qualifications, Sir Edward Boyle was not without many influential sup- porters, some of whom were to be found among the teachers themselves. Many people were will- ing to believe that, in accepting only two out of the LCC's twenty-five projects for new schools, he had some reason connected with the scheme for Greater London and would come forward with his own alternative expansion plans shortly. But now there is a good deal of disappointment that the Minister should announce his intention of introducing legislation to enforce his ruling on salaries without having declared his longer-term plans for the future of education as a whole. It looks as if he is moving in the direction of much stronger centralisation, but one might reasonably expect him to say why and how. It would be reassuring, for example, to learn that Sir Edward's ideas on salaries are not in fact going to result in a form of discrimination against primary school teachers, and that he does indeed mean to give such attention to primary schools as his predecessor rightly intended to.