School Building and Teacher Shortage

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 26 March 1963.

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Photo of Dr Horace King Dr Horace King , Southampton, Itchen 12:00, 26 March 1963

I am not sure what that has to do with the argument. I wonder whether he and I are living in the same country if he thinks we are to reach the stags when the deliberations of the House of Commons are decided by quotations and counter-quotations from the Economist, which cancel out, and from The Times, which is not perfectly right about everything, even including its views on the dignity of the Press. We have to argue these things out for ourselves. I think that some of us are getting too Press-conscious.

I was saying that the Minister's intervention comes at the very time when from one end of England to the other local authority citizens are complaining of the increase in the rate burden and local authority councillors are complaining that most of the work they have to do in local government is shaped by the laws and the instructions of the Government.

So much for the local authorities. I think that we can understand the anger of the teachers. I know that the old Tory, like the old Roman, policy is "Divide and rule". The Minister must have hoped—and the quotation which his hon. Friend just made supported that hope—that if he offered more money to some teachers the teachers who were to get more money would back him against the teachers who were to get less. It is not surprising that the Association of Headmasters has come to the unanimous opinion that it is a good thing that money should be taken from poor young teachers and given to them. The head teachers' modestly think that they are worth every penny of it, and when people are selfish it is not to be unexpected.

The remarkable feature about the protest of the teachers today—and hon. Members will see evidence of it tomorrow —is that by and large this protest is an altruistic protest. The bulk of the Executive of the N.U.T. and the bulk of the men and women teachers who will come here tomorrow to protest against the action of the Minister are people who will lose by the Burnham proposals as compared with the Minister's. I can believe that the profession is at last becoming a profession when it is getting that kind of solidarity. I will quote part of a letter from the headmistress and staff of an infant school which says: We who have taught for many years do not wish our salaries raised at the expense of the young teacher, although we know our work justifies a high increment. These may be extraordinary sentiments which are alien to Tory philosophy and the materialist society in which we are living, but they are fine sentiments; these are the views of many of those in the profession whose affairs we are discussing. A deputy head writes to me: I am a deputy head with allowances accordingly. In previous salary negotiations I feel that I have been dealt with quite fairly and I wholeheartedly support the settlement agreed upon by the Burnham Committee. A letter signed by seven teachers from a school in Southampton says: We, the undersigned, who would stand to gain most by the implementation of the salary scheme which the Minister of Education proposes to impose, protest most strongly at his high-handed action.We are all most decidedly in favour of increases in our salaries, but we do not wish to obtain them at the expense of our colleagues. The Minister should note the new feeling which is emerging among the teaching profession.

I believe that what the Minister has done is a blow to the status of the teaching profession. I do not think that a profession can fix its own salaries. This is our own dilemma in the House. But I do think that a profession knows more about the internal structure of its corpus than anyone outside and knows where the shoe pinches hardest. The teaching profession, like the local authorities, has said that the greatest need at present beyond a peradventure is to give to the young entrant into the teaching profession a reasonable income. That reasonable income, which is proposed in the Burnham scale, the Minister is denying the young teacher.

I know that some hon. Members, misled by the expert work of the Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Education, have thought that the issue between the Minister and the Burnham Committee was that the Burnham Committee was egalitarian and democratic and that the Minister believed in rewarding talent and that the teachers did not. Perhaps I can speak with more personal knowledge of this than anyone in the House. During my time as a teacher I had at some time each of the differentials in question under the settlement. Before the war the head of a department in a large grammar school received £40 for that responsibility. He now receives £350. It is a matter of simple fact that every differential in the scale has increased at a rate greater than the basic scale has risen since 1945. No one knowing this could charge the Burnham Committee with being egalitarian or with failing to recognise the academic qualifications, length of service, and so on, which demand extra reward. But here let me enter a caveat—any amount of academic qualifications do not necessarily make a good teacher.

If it were humanly possible to discover who were our best teachers, I would be in favour of giving them almost the sky as their reward, but it is certain that we would find some of the best teachers in the infants schools just as we would find them in the sixth forms of the grammar schools.

My last quotation is from a letter from an infants school which reads: As teachers in an infants school we have very little opportunity of obtaining special posts which carry increases of salary. … We feel very strongly about this since primary teaching is of equal importance to secondary teaching. Our hours in school are fully occupied with teaching … we have no free periods and preparation of lessons must be done in the evenings. Our salaries depend on the basic scale. Therefore, we feel that the Burnham Committee were fully justified in raising the basic scale to £650. After three years' training this is a very poor salary compared with industrial and other workers". The Government have made many blunders. For some of them there is a defence. For this—