The Board of Education has issued a new declaration as
to term of service for teachers to sign when they are appointed to primary schools. The rule is to come into force next year. The women teachers must undertake to serve for five years, and the men teachers for seven years. At present women teachers undertake to serve only two years. The rule at first sight seems unexceptionable, for• the cost to the State of passing teachers through the Training Colleges is considerable, and it is not fair that the teachers should use their advantages at the expense of the taxpayer by accepting other appoint- ments after a brief service in the primary schools. But, as the Daily Chronicle points out, the undertaking in the case of women may be in its present form a serious restriction on marriage. Many education authorities have a rule that the marriage of women teachers shall be equivalent to resigna- tion. In that case a woman teacher who marries within her five years must under the new rule pay a penalty up to a maximum of £25. In other words, it might often happen that a woman would be fined for marrying at the very marriageable age of, say, twenty-two to twenty-seven. We agree that the State ought not to penalise marriage. Probably it would be possible to modify the new rule.
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