THE BURNHAM SCALE
SIR,—The maximum salary of an Assistant Master in a Grammar School, before the war £480 per annum, is now £766; the latest Burnham Award offers £821. To this can be added, for about half the masters in Grammar Schools, a special allowance averaging £90. But the 1953 £1 has a purchasing power of 8s., or two-fifths, of its 1938 value. It follows that a salary of £1,200 per annum in 1953 would merely sustain such a teacher's financial status. Moreover, the McNair Report of 1944 acknowledged that the pre-war rates were insufficient and recommended substantial increases.
The 1944 Act set up a new Burnham Committee which decides salaries for all teachers, and abolished the previous separate panel for Grammar Schools. A teacher now receives the same salary in whatever type of school he teaches, but "Further Education" has a separate scale which results in the anomaly of our being paid a good deal less for sixth-form work here which is essentially similar to that of many teachers who work in "Further Education."
The posts filled by our pupils in later life convince us that our work has great national importance, but our salary scales are much below those of other learned professions or of the Civil Service. Meanwhile, the Associations primarily representing Grammar Schools are automatically outvoted on the Teachers Panel of the Burnham Committee: and our unwillingness to back our claim by normal ihdustrial action for fear of harming those who are not in any way responsible for the position is exploited by the Authorities.
The main argument against increased salaries is the increase of rates involved. If this were not so, we believe that the educa- tional authorities would show more concern with the well-being and professional status of their teachers: there is an urgent need for some method by which the Grammar School teacher can receive a salary commensurate with the importance of his work without further burdening the rate-payer.
We are asking for the courtesy of your columns because we think that the public is not well informed on the question of Grammar School masters' salaries. We have no doubt that staffs of similar schools are in general agreement with us.—Yours faithfully,
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