Northants: Northampton County Borough. Northumberland: Newcastle-upon-Tyne County Borough. 32. The scheme is, of course, entirely voluntary, and teachers who are to interchange must be selected from among those who offer themselves. If such a scheme is to be a success it must have wide publicity among teachers and educational authorities both at home. and overseas. Teachers cannot seize the opportunity unless they know that the opportunity is there. Accordingly an extensive propaganda campaign has been necessary, and we are happy to report that there is evidence of a wider appreciation in recent years of the existence and advantages of the scheme in all parts of the Empire. 33. The motives which lead teachers to volunteer for interchange are no doubt varied. The fact that interchanges up to the present have been practically confined to women suggests either that the women teachers are more enterprising and more keenly alive to the advantages of the scheme, or that the cost of going overseas is more easily borne by them than by their men colleagues. The men teachers no doubt have dependents or are preparing to assume responsibility for the support of dependents. It is to be hoped, however, that men teachers in greater numbers may find themselves able and willing to take advantage of the scheme. 34. It is not only important for the scheme to be known; it must be known in the right quarter. A teacher in Alberta, for example, desires to come to Oxford or Cambridge. No Oxford or Cambridge teacher may have volunteered for Alberta, or even for interchange at all. A teacher in Manchester may wish to go to the Cape, and the only Cape application may be for London. This first problem may be called the problem of locality, and its only ultimate solution must be a general desire, in all parts of the country, to spend a year in the Dominions, without close restriction to a particular spot. 35. A second, and perhaps more difficult problem, is that of function or qualification. It is a most difficult problem of adjustment. Each teacher must be properly qualified to perform the functions of the post temporarily filled. This difficulty is greatest where specialisation has gone furthest, and is perhaps the chief reason why, up to the present, there have been no interchanges in technical schools, and very few in secondary schools. We regret this the more since in secondary schools the advantage of having on the staff teachers who love and understand life in the Dominions is particularly great. Even in the most straightforward case, that of the general subjects teacher in an elementary school, the problem arises. The local authority, the managers and the head teacher must needs regard a projected interchange as something of a leap in the dark. It means engaging a teacher for a whole year without a personal interview. In a rural school with only one, or perhaps two, certificated teachers on the staff, this is a serious matter. Will the visiting teacher be as well qualified as the teacher replaced? Representations have been made, both by English and by overseas authorities, that sometimes the qualifications of teachers interchanged are not comparable. Undoubtedly it may happen that a very experienced teacher may be interchanged with one of little experience, or again, an English teacher who has taken a two years' course of full-time training may be interchanged with an overseas teacher who has only had a few months in a Normal School or with a university graduate who has pursued post-graduate studies and, in addition, taken a full training course. In such cases, it is not unnatural that the school authorities on one side or the other should complain on the score of "quality." But there is more in the matter than this. 36. The qualifications of a teacher should be regarded as qualifications for particular duties. English teachers are trained for duty in English schools, overseas teachers for duty in the schools of their own countries, and it is not to be assumed that the training suitable in one part of the Empire will be entirely suitable for another part. A few examples will make this clear. In the Transvaal the schools are bi-lingual, using two languages as media of instruction. Few English teachers can speak Afrikaans, much less teach effectively in that language. Again, the systems of coinage, weights and measures, differ in different parts of the Empire, and in the arithmetic lesson it behoves the good teacher to have such matters at his fingers' ends. In history and geography there are differences in subject-content and teaching method, and important differences of emphasis, between the schools of, say, London and Johannesburg. 2. Salaries. 37. In this country, with so large a teaching profession, it is necessary for salary purposes to have clearly defined categories of teachers, and the salary depends partly upon the teacher's status (i.e., the category in which he or she is placed). The status of the teacher depends to some extent upon the duties of his or her particular post, but as, up to the present, interchanges have been practically confined to assistant teachers without special responsibility, the main difficulty in dealing with an overseas teacher is the difficulty of discovering to what status under the English Code his qualifications correspond. From the official point of view, this is a very real difficulty, since even on paper the arrangements for the training of teachers vary considerably in different parts of the Empire. In England it is customary for the student who intends to qualify as a teacher in an elementary school, after completing a secondary school course, to spend two years in an institution specially staffed and equipped for the training of teachers. In other parts of the Empire, e.g., Canada, the Normal School course is more exclusively professional than our Two-Year Training College course, and occupies a year or less, while in yet other parts of the Empire more stress is laid on examinations and less on professional training. The technical problem in England up to the present has been to determine whether an overseas teacher should be treated as corresponding to a certificated or to an uncertificated teacher. In some parts of the Empire, the status of the teacher for salary purposes depends on a system of grading, based on inspectors' reports and examination results. No other part of the Empire has a classification of teachers resembling the English classification. It is one of the virtues of the plan recommended by the Imperial Education Conference of 1923, that it avoids the necessity for defining the exact status of the visiting teacher. 38. Besides being dependent on duties and status, the salary of an English teacher is dependent on length of service. Service from this point of view has been defined as carefully as for superannuation purposes. At present we may say that, roughly speaking, only service in Great Britain can be counted for salary increments so far as elementary schools are concerned. The importance of this is obvious; the non-counting of overseas service may make a difference of a hundred pounds a year, or even more, in a teacher's salary. In some other parts of the Empire, but not in all, there are salary scales, and the salary of a teacher depends more or less on length of service, though this is not universally the case. 39. Under the plan recommended by the 1923 Conference, each teacher continues during the year of interchange to be paid by the authority of his or her own country and remains technically in their employment, being given a year's special leave for the purpose of interchange. This plan avoids the difficulty of re-assessing a salary on a new scale, and has brought much relief to teachers from overseas. As against the plan there is this to be said, that the cost of living varies in different parts of the Empire, and the salaries paid in each country are presumably related more or less closely to the cost of living in that particular country. A teacher may find himself during the year of interchange in a country where the cost of living is high, paid from home a salary appropriate enough for home conditions, but inadequate in the country of his sojourn. The Board have, in fact, received representations to this effect, though not from the teachers themselves. There is sometimes difficulty also in transmitting money to the teachers at convenient times and in convenient amounts. This difficulty has in some cases been overcome by arrangement with the High Commissioner, a bank, or the League of the Empire to make salary payments to the teacher on behalf of the home authority on production of the necessary evidence of service. 40. Before leaving the question of salary, something must be said about a difficulty which happily only arises in rare cases, but which, when it does arise, is very serious for the teacher concerned ; the difficulty, that is, of payment of salary during sickness. In England, each local authority has its own rules in this matter, but it is usual to find that the length of sick leave, with pay, which may be granted depends upon the length of previous service under the particular authority. Similar arrangements prevail in other parts of the Empire. If an interchange teacher temporarily enters a new service, he may fall ill with only a few weeks, or months, of service behind him, and may be entitled to little or no sick leave. Fortunately, very few cases have occurred, but some of them have been very serious cases. In this country the League of the Empire has tried to ameliorate these cases, not only by providing financial assistance through the generosity of individuals, but also by befriending the teacher and seeing to it that he obtains proper nursing and medical attention. The position of a teacher who falls ill in a strange land and who has provided large sums for travelling expenses out of his own resources, may be so grave that, although it occurs rarely, it requires most serious consideration. The plan recommended by the Imperial Education Conference has at least this virtue, that in such a case the interchange teacher receives sick pay upon the basis to which his "home" service entitles him. 41. We understand that the League of the Empire desires to provide a hostel or headquarters in London for the large numbers of overseas teachers who now interchange with London teachers, and that it is hoped that such a hostel will simplify the difficulties arising in cases of sickness. A certain amount of money for this object has already been collected, and we commend the project to the notice of those who may be willing to assist. 3. Superannuation. 42. In the past teachers who were sufficiently enterprising to volunteer for interchange, knowing that all their travelling expenses must come out of their own pockets, were not deterred by the thought that they might lose substantially under the post-war legislation for the compulsory insurance of their profession. None the less, it was unfair that they should so lose and we are glad to report that they need not lose nowadays. 43. In this country there is now a statutory scheme for the superannuation of teachers, on a contributory basis, providing the following main benefits : (a) A lump sum and annual pension on reaching the age of (b) A lump sum to the heirs of the teacher who dies in harness. The amount of the benefit depends on the length of service. In the case of (b) and (c) the benefit is payable only where the teacher dies or breaks down during service or within a limited time after leaving service. Consequently, a teacher who went overseas on interchange under the old scheme, thereby discontinuing service in this country, suffered important disabilities. He lost a year of service, thus reducing the amount of pension payable on retirement. If he were to break down while away, he might lose the break-down allowance which would have been payable if he had not gone abroad, and if he were to die while overseas, the death gratuity might not be payable. The scheme recommended by the 1923 Conference overcomes all these difficulties, since throughout the year of interchange the teacher remains technically in pensionable service and the year counts in every way as though it were a year spent in one of our schools. 44. What has been said above relates to the temporary exchange of teachers between this country and the Dominions for periods of one year. But, of course, teachers pass from one part of the Empire to another and take service for longer periods; and, in so far as there are any obstacles in the way of such movements, it is desirable that they should be removed. One of the chief obstacles is the absence of arrangements by which service by a teacher in the different parts of the Empire can be aggregated for pension purposes. The Imperial Education Conference of 1923, which considered the whole question, recognised that no general scheme was possible which would secure |