Justice for Teachers ?
The general verdict of the teaching profession itself on the new salary scales announced by the Burnham Committee this week is likely to be that while the increments proposed will materially improve the average teacher's lot (particularly the grammar-school teacher's, because most grammar-school teachers are graduates), the profession is left labouring under considerable injustice still. If the university graduate who chooses teaching compares his lot after fifteen or twenty years with that of his contemporaries who chose law or medicine or many other callings the truth of that is undeniable. But the increases now proposed will cost some £20,000,000 annually, and in the present state of the public finances that is as heavy a burden as can well be borne. What the changes mean briefly are that the initial salary for qualified men teachers will (from April 1st, 1951) be £375 a year instead of £300, with an annual increment of £18 instead of £15. The addition for graduate cwalification is doubled, the special increment for First Class Honours men being, on the whole rightly, abolished. (The women's salaries are on a slightly lower scale throughout.) What this means in concrete figures is that the graduate assistant master with four years of full-time study and training to his credit will begin at 471 a year, and rise to a maximum of £726 in his fifteenth year (less than a good many com- positors earn). To that is added an increment of uncertain amount for holders of " posts of special responsibility," who are necessarily a minority of the staff in any ordinary school. The new scale stands for a three-year period. For that it may be accepted. But the community must no more assume than the teacher that the teaching profession is henceforth being adequately remunerated.
