More teachers—or better ones?
Rhodes Boyson, MP
Will inflation of prices and devaluation of all our values and services continue to escalate under this government? This seems inevitable as the huge wage settlement to the miners is followed by the disillusionment and the revolt of the teachers, the nurses and the local government officers. The clerks and the middle-class professions are determined to obtain a bigger share of the national cake to protect their standard of living and the Labour Government will capitulate to them even if it tries to buy time in the process. Mr Prentice, the Secretary of State for Education and Science, has announced an independent review into teachers' salaries and the structure of the teaching profession. This review body is expected to report' back within six months and it is likely to recommend large increases for the country's 500,000 teachers. The Government will almost certainly accept its findings; the hard-pressed rate and taxpayer will be levied the cost. The review is in addition to the £10.8 million promised to teachers in areas of social deprivation and the promise of substantial increases for those working in London. In the 'sixties the pay of teachers • increased relatively to the rest of ' the population but in the 'seventies it has fallen behind. It now takes ten years for a non-graduate teacher starting on £1,446 a year to reach the average manual wage compared with only six years in 1965. It takes even a graduate four years to reach the average manual wage. This is presuming that a teacher is not rapidly promoted, as many are, to the four higher salary scales. Over 60 per cent of secondary teachers and over 40 per cent of primary school teachers are on scales above the basic and it is an unenterprising or unfortunate teacher who remains on the bottom scale. The average teacher earns some £2,400 a year, some £7 a week above the average manual wage.
Low relative pay, however, is only one factor in the fall of morale in the British teaching profession. New teachers in Russia receive less than a hundred roubles a month and it can be years before they attain the average national wage of 130 roubles. Yet there seems little crisis in morale among Russian teachers or in Russian education. It may be that low salaries has only become a major issue to British teachers because of a fall in job satisfaction or in the respect in which education is now held in Britain.
A survey by the Trade Union Research Unit of Ruskin College, Oxford, found in 1973 that the most common reason why teachers left their posts was the lack of potential with little promotion prospects and poor satisfaction. Pay, housing, and working conditions were only a secondary cause of movement.
The crisis in teaching is certainly not one of teacher numbers. It could be argued that educational standards and the status of teachers have declined as the numbers of teachers have increased. The number of teachers in state schools has trebled since the beginning of the century and is now approaching 500,000. Yet according to Social Trends in December, 1973 education was the only factor about which families were dissatisfied. Most families were happy . about their family life, their housing and their jobs but they received little satisfaction over their children's education.
There are a large number of reports on the relative attainments of pupils in different size of classes. Almost all show that the highest standards are attained in the largest class sizes. Much as the teachers dislike these findings and refuse to discuss them there is little doubt that smaller classes have been used for the introduction of the inefficient 'discovery' methods in replacement for the effective 'formal' methods. The increase in teacher numbers has also brought a fall in quality which reflects on the profession as a body.
It is of interest in the accident-prone Inner London Education Authority with its part-time schooling that there are only 14.6 pupils to each secondary school teacher compared with a national average of 17.6 pupils to each secondary school teacher. This presumably also ignores the army of advisors and inspectors in London. Since even with its vacancies the pupil-teacher ratio in London is below that of the rest of the country Mr Ashley Bramall, the Leader of ILEA, would have been better employed rewriting the timetables of his schools than marching with teachers demanding an increased London allowance.
Instead of appointing an independent review of teachers' salaries the Government should have decided how much it was prepared to spend on education and then have appointed a review to decide how it should be allocated. Increased salaries for more teachers could be a . most ineffective expenditure of money. More teachers have meant worse and the attempt to form an all-graduate profession will lower standards further by degrading degrees. One in five women recruited to teaching, at a training cost of £3,000-£4,000, leave the profession within five years and one in three men leave in the same period. The raising of the school-leaving age and the decline in discipline in schools and society mean that teachers retire earlier and many others who can obtain work outside the profession take it while the good teachers remaining are overstrained.
It might be a good idea if salaries were related to class size weighted for age. If a general practitioner received the same salary whether he had one or 3,500 patients, he would prefer one patient. The teachers cannot have high salaries and small classes and they should be asked bluntly which they prefer. There should also be extra weighting for shortage subjects like crafts, mathematics, science and languages. Over half the teaching of mathematics to the eleven-to-sixteen age group is taken by teachers with no qualification in the subject and no increase in general numbers will end specific shortages. The market will have to be brought into education in many ways if our schools and universities are to be effective again. Vouchers for parents to 'buy' the education of their children will monitor school achievement. Salaries should be related to class size and teacher effectiveness. If this is not done then the overburdened rate and taxpayer will be driven to revolt and our schools as at present organised could be shut. Market forces with their generous rewards to the successful and their financial discouragement to the unsuccessful could be the only way of bringing respect and job satisfaction back to the teacher and standards back to the schools.
Dr Rhodes Boyson, formerly headmaster of Highbury Grove School, is Conservative MP for Brent North
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