The Teacher's Due
The new recommendations of the Burnham Committee on teachers' salaries go some way towards remedying injustices which should never have been permitted to exist. It is an anomaly falling not far short of scandal that we should pay men and women who accept the supremely important task of training youth salaries flagrantly lower than their contemporaries at the university command in almost any other profession. The chief complaint against the existing Burnham scales is that the addition to salary for graduate qualification—£15 a year—is too little, and that the provision whereby even this is lost if a man (or woman) receives a special allowance in ...spect of a post of special responsibility or becomes a head teacher is indefensible. In future the graduate allowance may be held in conjunction with the special responsibility allowance or a head teacher's salary. The new provision of a further special increment for holders of a First Class Honours degree may be generous but is not necessarily wise or just. The difference in intellectual capacity between a Class I Division 3 man and a Class II Division i man is negligible, and there is no reason for thinking the former the better teacher. The new scales leave the assistant-master better off, though not a great deal better off. He can now rise, if a graduate, to a maximum of L615 a year and if a First Class graduate to £645. In the London area the figures are rather higher, and women's salaries throughout are lower. All this, of course, has yet to be approved by the Minister.
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