LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
SALARIES OF GRADUATE TEACHERS
SIR,—In your issue of November 14th, Janus has a note on the recom- mendations of the Burnham Committee, just published, on salary scales for teachers in the national schools. These have had a frosty reception from graduate teachers, and a number of new associations especially representing this category have sprung up in opposition. Janus, with complete justification, comments on the difficulty which heads of national schools are experiencing in securing, or even in keeping, " properly qualified science teachers," who, I submit, must be, chiefly, if not exclusively, drawn from university-trained graduates. The per- centage of graduate teachers to all other categories in the national
schools was 16.4 in 1938 (Hansard, 22/8/45): This percentage will be much lower in the near future. Some figures given in a Parliamentary answer (Hansard, 21/11/46) indicate that at that date there were in training for the national schools: 1,100 degree-students in their fourth year, 13,500 two-year trainees and 6,500 one-year emergency trainees. This statement would seem to demonstrate that the overall figure for graduates constituted approximately only five per cent. of the forthcoming new draft to the schools. Of the 1,100 graduates, 750 were women and, inasmuch (as Sir Richard Livingstone recently pointed out), sixth forms must rely chiefly on men, this addition of 350 men will make a very small accession to sixth forms in the national schools.
This situation is, I submit, all the more disastrous when one realises that the fourteen-year-olds from the extra-age group will be reaching the schools in the next few months with an ultimate approximation to 540,000 in 1948 (Hansard, 6/6/46) ; and I think it cannot be disputed that the fourteen-year-olds will quite properly demand, to justify their being kept another year in school, to be taught by the best-qualified teachers. London University has at the present moment a total of registered students, internal and external, approaching 35,000 ; its con- tribution to the graduate category in the schools is much larger than that of any other university. As the Member of Parliament for London University for the past twenty-three years, I receive an exceptionally large mail from graduate teachers, and I can confirm Janus's statement regarding the flight of graduate teachers from the national schools. The following example, typical of many, has been brought to my notice.
I am informed that a certain old-established national grammar school over a recent period lost by resignation twenty-one of its graduate staff, one-third going to the independent schools, the remainder to non- teaching posts, chiefly in industry. My informant, himself a high- honours science graduate, after six years' teaching in the sixth form, was receiving £457 a year. Having a wife and family, he very reluctantly relinquished teaching to take a post in commerce, where his remuneration was more than doubled.—Yours, &c., E. GRAHAM-LITTLE. House of Commons.
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