Letters to the Editor
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is that of one .of our " News of the Week" paragraphs. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pscudonym.—E1. THE SPECTATOR.]
THE OVERPAID SCHOOLMASTER
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Whenever there seems to be some prospect of restoring " cuts " in the salaries of schoolmasters there is an outcry from the business world. The scholastic profession is already more than adequately paid, the salary scales are generous, the school hours are short, the work is easy. In particular, we are told that schoolmasters are paid two and a half times what they were before the War. What is the truth ?
In the first place, what are schoolmasters paid ? Secondly, what do they do in return for their salary ? Thirdly, how do their prospects compare with those in almost every other profession ?
Hardly anyone who is not a schoolmaster knows what the Burnham Scale is, nor how much it has been already reduced. Broadly speaking, by the time a graduate master in a Public School has had compulsory deductions made for various purposes, he is given at the beginning of his career just under £200 a year, and at the end of his life's work about £400. Unless he is a headmaster, this is the reward of nearly 40 years of service. A first-class Honours degree may bring about £20 more. Service in preparatory, colonial and some other schools does not count towards service in assessing salary.
I have on my staff masters educated in our greater Public Schools and at Oxford and Cambridge, with Honours degrees, who have to support wives on about £200 a year. This can doubtless be done by those who wear dungarees, and live in tiny houses, but the parents unreasonably expect a higher standard, sartorial and social, on the part of those who educate their children. No margin is left for books or other means of replenishing intellectual stores. Probably at least £1,500 was expended by parents (not the State) on each of these men's education. How does the public reward this sacrifice ?
And then the work. Oh, yes, the masters have three months' holiday, but does that make the cost of living for all the year any less ? Can masters in holidays supplement their wages as temporary gardeners or relief postmen ? In term time they work for anything up to twelve hours a day. -Teaching, correction (some take three hours or more a night over this), reading, preparation of lessons, interviews, supervision of games and societies, fill every moment of their time. In boarding schools men work seven days a week. My school has no boarders, but Saturday. is often a full day up till evening. Rightly—and ungrudgingly —a master is the servant of the school and of parents' sons. Why do parents not relieve him from galling anxiety ?
Masters before the War were paid even worse. Celibacy was expected of them, though vice was reprobated at least as severely as it would have been among the clergy. £200 a year after 25 years of service was the reward of one Oxford scholar of my acquaintance who had sent 20 boys to the University with scholarships.
No amount of hard work can alter the amount of a school- master's salary. He may organize sports, run a careers bureau, or a tuck-shop, build up an orchestra. His reward is the happiness and progress of his boys—a big one—but it does not feed his wife and children. Of course, he may become a Grammar School headmaster and earn £600 less 10 per cent, less 5 per cent.; and have the privilege of heading every subscription, living in a larger house, and taking a leading—and expensive—position in his town.
This is the truth. Does the ordinary business man realize
it ? The wages are not starvation ones, -admittedly ; but if schoolmasters arc to be of the same intellectual calibre as solicitors, doctors, accountants, butchers, and bookies, should the nation not' think twice about restoration of 10 per cent. to their meagre salaries ? After all, it is the childven who matter most, and neither parents nor schoolmasters. They need the best masters possible, and not the ushers I:horn so many business men heartily despise for the very poverty which they think rightly to be their lot.—I am,.
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