This group payment is a well devised scheme to induce masters to improve themselves, and is applicable to teachers of every grade, and if rightly applied, will operate as a constant stimulus to professional improvement. But in the case of this class of schools, where there are pupils on a varying scale of direct payment to the teacher, the teacher will be tempted to give his particular attention to the pupils who pay best. This can be counteracted by making the masters’ payment depend on the proficiency of the scholars.
To obtain and keep the services of the zealous, intelligent, and very superior men who alone are fit to take charge of navigation schools, I believe a superannuation allowance would be at the same time the greatest and most economical inducement.
I beg to suggest that at 60 years of age a navigation master be allowed to retire with his group money as an allowance. This would be a great inducement to remain in connection with the Department, and to pass in as many groups as possible.
The direct inducement which I propose to give to the educational staff to bring their schools up to the highest state of efficiency is a payment in money, and I have been induced to propose this from the sense of the paramount advantage derived in any undertaking from making it the direct pecuniary interest of agents to act up to their instructions.
I propose that every head master, every assistant master and every pupil-teacher employed in teaching the boys shall receive a sum of money in addition to his fixed salary and his group money to depend on and vary with the success of the school at the half-yearly examinations. The mode by which I propose to estimate the amount of this payment will be detailed further on, when I speak of inspections.
It consists of a sliding scale of payment, so contrived that it is the direct pecuniary interest of the head master to bring all his boys up to the highest state of proficiency, and also the direct pecuniary interest of all the educational staff to refrain from forcing on the clever boys, if by so doing they neglect the duller boys, and also to refrain from drawing the boys into the upper and more showy subjects to the neglect of the lower, more elementary, but more important subjects, errors commonly and but too justly ascribed to schoolmasters in their endeavors to give to their schools the appearance of high efficiency.
I am aware that the sliding scale of payment which I propose has the demerit of novelty.
The Committee of Council, fully alive to the advantage of a sliding scale, have provided that, in the primary schools, the master’s pay shall depend on and vary with the school pence and the capitation grant (a grant which is made to depend upon the attendance of the children,) in the art schools it is made to depend on and vary with the number of prizes won by the students.
The disadvantage of the former plan is that the sliding scale, being made to depend upon mere numerical attendance, both particular proficiency and general proficiency are ignored.
The disadvantage of the latter is that it is made the master’s direct pecuniary interest to force on the clever boys to the neglect of the dull boys, while general proficiency and numerical attendance are ignored.