Education: Teacher Is Fed Up

Britain’s meek and undemanding state schoolteachers have long existed on rock-bottom salaries. Out of a deep responsibility to the profession, they put up with pay that starts at $1,456 a year (against a national average wage of $2,184 a year) and rises after 17 years’ service to a maximum of $2,800. Many of them must do without such attributes of affluence as refrigerators, washing machines, books, records, playgoing and holidays abroad. Few own cars; typical of those who do is London Geography Teacher Bruce Given, 49, father of three, who recently bought his first, a 1938 model that cost $140. “It took me 20 years of teaching three extra nights a week before I could afford it,” he says.

Last week Given and 270,000 other teachers prepared to show, for the first time in their lives, the limits in their responsibility. In July a neutral negotiating committee urged the Conservative government to grant teachers a raise of $133 million. The goal: a $1,680 starting salary, $3,220 maximum. Then, as a first step in its new austerity campaign, Chancellor of the Exchequer Selwyn Lloyd slashed the recommended increase by $15.4 million and talked of giving no raises at all. Said the London Daily Herald: “A cynical and mean-minded betrayal of the nation’s need for education.”

Britain spends less than half as much per capita on education as the U.S. One result: in proportion of university students to population, Britain ranks 25th among all countries, behind Spain, for example, and even Bulgaria. Another result is such a severe shortage of teachers in Britain’s overcrowded state schools (7,089,791 pupils) that just to cut the size of classes to a teachable 30 pupils apiece would require 110,000 more teachers—an increase of more than one-third.

Feeling that the public is behind them, teachers are devising countermeasures for the opening of school in two weeks. Many plan to balk at supervising extracurricular activities, to refuse to teach overcrowded classes or to conduct and grade examinations. Even a nationwide strike of teachers is being talked about. “I can’t rule it out,” says Sir Ronald Gould, chairman of the National Union of Teachers.