HC Deb 21 February 1896 vol 37 cc853-66

*MR. YOXALL (Nottingham,W.) rose to call attention to the grievances of Certified Teachers who entered the service of Public Elementary Schools before May, 1862, and to urge that the claims of all such Teachers to the Pension Fund, now available for some of them only, deserve the favourable consideration of the Treasury and the Education Department. He said the responsibility of the House of Commons in this matter was only vicarious; the real responsibility attached to the Lords of the Council on Education some 50 years ago. This miserable story had never been told to the House of Commons without obtaining a sympathetic hearing and some instalment of redress. The Lords of the Council some 30 years ago broke the promise of the nation to a most meritorious and deserving class of teachers. That promise had never been fully carried out. Some 50 years ago there was a difficulty in obtaining a sufficient supply of teachers. The Committee of the Council were anxious to introduce that pupil-teacher system which was then in existence in Holland. They were unable to hold out to the teachers large salaries. They could not hold out any high social position, but the bait they held out and which caught many young people was the promise of a competence for old age. This bond of the nation was broken by the authorities at Whitehall. On the 25th of August, 1846, the Committee of Council adopted this Minute:— That a retiring pension may be granted by the Committee of Council to any schoolmaster or schoolmistress who shall be rendered incapable by age or infirmity of continuing to teach a school efficiently. Another paragraph in the same Minute was as follows:— The amount of the pension shall be determined according to such report, but shall in no case exceed two-thirds of the average amount of salary and emoluments annually received by the applicant during the period that the school has been under inspection. No pension had ever been awarded under the terms of that Minute. In March, 1847, an official letter was sent to the teachers themselves. It was as follows:— My Lords being desirous to offer the strongest inducements to schoolmasters and schoolmistresses to render long and efficient services to the public have opened the prospect of retiring pensions to this class of teachers. A Resolution to this effect was passed by the House by 372 to 47, and in the House of Lords it was passed without a division. These Minutes were placarded in the schools and advertised in every way, the National Inspectors also drawing attention to them. Former Secretaries of the Education Department admitted the interpretation put upon those Minutes by teachers that they were a definite promise of a pension to be a fair interpretation. All this took place between 1846 and 1851. The Committee of Education then went back on a part of their promise, and substituted new Minutes limiting the amount of pensions payable to teachers, irrespective of their number and claims, to £6, 500 a year. In 1861 the Committee broke their promise entirely, and withdrew even the £6, 500. That was done without the cognisance of the House of Commons or without any official act of the Department. The promises of pension appeared in the Code of 1860, but were omitted secretly and dishonourably from that of 1861. That course of action meant a lack of hope, of courage, and of certainty for the future, to hundreds of teachers, and filled them with a burning sense of injustice done to them on the part of the nation they had chosen to serve. It meant a loss to the teachers, the full value of which could not be fully estimated, but it at least amounted to a quarter of a million of money. The facts he had just stated were not new; they had been stated to the House in 1875 and 1884, and this fact showed that the teachers had really an historical claim to the demands they made. The facts, moreover, were not now denied by the officials of the Education Department. They represented, indeed, a gross breach of faith committed in the name of the country towards a class of persons as meritorious as useful, and as much needed as any class of the Queen's subjects. ["Hear, hear!"] That House had never been slow to do justice in cases of proved grievance, and therefore he hoped with confidence to secure a further instalment of justice for those whose cause he now pleaded. From 1846 to 1851 every teacher who went into the employment of the State had a certain promise of a pension, but in four years the Department said they would not give what they had promised; that they would only give the teachers what they thought fair out of the £6,500; and during the 14 or 15 years from 1862 to 1875, even this small sum of £6, 500 was not applied to the purposes of the pensions. The Department could not have treated its servants in a more beggarly, mean, and miserable way. In 1875 the House agreed that injustice had been done, and called upon the Government of the day to do something to remedy it. An instalment of justice was then granted by the £6, 500 being put back into the Code. But that was but a very small instalment of what was due. In 1884 the House again determined that all the teachers between 1846 and 1851 should receive pensions, irrespective of the limitation of the grant of £6, 500 a year. In 1893 the question again came before the House, and a unanimous Resolution was passed that the superannuation for elementary school teachers should be established at an early date. The Government of that year gave an additional grant of £5,000 to meet the more pressing claims of the older teachers who were still living, and from that time to the present the amount of the Pension Fund had been augmented by a few hundred pounds a year, to meet every claim made upon it by existing teachers, but to this extent only, the granting of pensions of £20, £25, or £30 a year. That was the extent to which the country had so far gone in discharging its duty to please old teachers who had spent the best of their lives in its service. Those meagre pensions did not nearly represent the promised two-thirds of their salary—nay, they did not represent one-third of the average salary and emoluments of the teachers at the time he referred to. The House of Commons had done justice before in cases of proved grievance; the facts of injustice were established in this case, and all he claimed now was a further recognition of the claims which the old teachers to whom he had referred, undoubtedly had upon the nation. One thing at least could be done, and that was to honour the claims of those teachers who were still living, and who had given their services to the public under conditions which had not been fulfilled by the nation. A case had recently been brought under his notice which proved that the claims of those old teachers were not being met with generosity. Inquiry was being made, it seemed, by the Education Department as to the present income of the teachers whose claims he was advocating, and the object apparently was to withhold from them the small amount that might be granted if they were already in receipt of 10s. or 12s. a week. The case to which he referred was that of a widow 60 years of age, who had been a teacher since 1848. She had a private income of £65 a year, and although out of this income she had to support a daughter who was deaf, and a son in his apprenticeship, a pension allowance was likely to be withheld from her on the ground that others needed it more. Was it possible to conceive conditions in which a great nation like this could behave with greater meanness or injustice? Considering the whole of the circumstances he felt sure that he had the sympathy of the right hon. Member for Cambridge University with him in the matter, that he might ask him with confidence to make an appeal to the Treasury to meet the claims of the few deserving teachers still living whose cause he pleaded, and that the House would support the right hon. Gentleman in making the appeal. When they had done that they would not have done justice to these teachers. They would not have done justice to all their number, nor to the body of which they were a part, and they would not have wiped out this long-standing debt of the nation's to those who taught the schools of the nation. The proper way to discharge this outstanding debt would be for Parliament to apply the £250,000 or whatever the sum might exactly be determined to be as part of the nation's subsidy towards a teachers' superannuation fund. They had a very hopeful reply from the right hon. Gentleman, the Leader of the House, on this subject the other day, when he expressed a hope that he might be able to introduce a measure this Session. He hoped the First Lord's hope would prove a sure and certain hope. He hoped that with the introduction of a measure of that kind and the adoption of this plan, they might wipe out this blot on the history of their Educational Administration. So long as this was not done, they in this country were allying themselves with some of the most backward and despotic countries in the world. In Ireland they had a teachers' superannuation system, and in Scotland School Boards had power to make grants to teachers. In -England and Wales nothing of the kind existed. Nor did it exist in the progressive and enlightened country of Spain, nor in the clement and most religious country of Turkey. This Triple Alliance between England and Turkey and Spain was one which he hoped might soon be dissolved. He urged that the House should approve of the suggestion he had made—that the Treasury should be encouraged to contribute to the pensions of existing teachers the small additional sum necessary to pension all of them, that the outstanding debt should be wiped out in the general peace which would result from a satisfactory system of teachers' superannuation.

SIR FRANCIS POWELL (Wigan)

said, he had taken an interest in this subject for many years and took part in the deliberations of the Select Committee which sat during two Sessions of the last Parliament to consider this most difficult subject. As a manager of schools, and as a member of the councils of training colleges, he had watched the conduct of teachers in their calling, and had felt admiration for them, and when they began to fail, under the stress of work and advancing years, he looked upon them with respectful sympathy. The hon. Member who had just spoken, perhaps somewhat exaggerated his case as regarded contract, still he thought on moral grounds the case could not be exaggerated. He remembered having a conversation with Mr. Forster upon this subject, and he was quite sure that if he had thought there had been any breach of faith, he would have been the first to move in order to fully fulfil that obligation. Mr. Forster had the strongest desire that teachers should have pensions and any movement in that direction received from him every encouragement and every support. He felt himself that whatever was the technical construction of an official document, the teachers had laboured during many years under a keen sense of disappointment. That feeling, he thought, was just, and he believed the time had now come when that disappointment should be removed and the fullest justice done to all teachers who had, inferentially and morally, any claim upon these pensions. There had been a grave misunderstanding on this matter between teachers on the one hand and successive Ministers on the other, but he hoped that before the present Government left office justice would be done. He would not venture to allude to the financial part of this case further than to say that he believed they could arrive at such a figure as would be amply sufficient to meet the case and to do full justice to all. If in the days of Mr. Forster there was great anxiety felt by him to pension teachers, the case had since become much stronger. The claims of the teachers had become greater because their numbers had increased. In almost every department there was a desire to pension those who, by age or infirmity, were no longer capable of doing good service. They had pensions in the police, in the army, in the navy, in branches of civil service and in municipalities throughout the country, and it was an act of signal injustice to the teachers not to give them a corresponding advantage; and not to afford them hopes of that support in old age, which was given to every public servant in various departments. But it was not only for the sake of the teachers that he desired it. He desired it for the sake of the schools. They desired to have in these days of progress a succession of teachers. The demands of the Department had increased, and the claims of the Department on the teachers as regarded intellectual proficiency were increased in the same proportion. There could be no doubt that many teachers of great merit who had passed many years in the service, were no longer able to meet those new requirements, and did not command in the market as high salaries as they were entitled to on the grounds of intelligence and merit. That acted detrimentally on the schools.

An hon. MEMBER

called attention to the fact that forty Members were not present, but a quorum was made by Members entering the House.

SIR F. POWELL,

continuing, said, he regretted that an attempt should be made from his own side of the House to interrupt a Debate which so much interested the Members of the teaching profession. He wished, in a few words, to summarise what were the defects of the present system. First, it was eminently incomplete. Many deserving teachers had to go entirely without pensions; and the wise exercise of choice between those to receive pensions and those to be refused was very difficult indeed—in fact, almost impossible. Each individual teacher was the victim of constant uncertainty as to the future. No teacher, however meritorious, could be quite sure that his case would be considered an urgent one. This feeling of uncertainty must always be accompanied by a sense of hardship. A man who failed to obtain a pension felt that he had been treated with injustice. This uncertainty and risk must be highly injurious to the good work of a school. There was another aspect of the matter worth mentioning, and that was the difficulty of the task which the pension system imposed upon the Minister who had to administer it. He must feel that he could not hope to do justice under circumstances of extreme difficulty and embarrassment. A Minister of State ought not to be involved in such entanglement. This was not the first time he had spoken to the House on the subject. After the part he took on a Committee two or three years ago, he felt bound to submit his views to the present House, and to say a few words in support of that meritorious class of public servants, the teachers in the elementary schools. He felt that to deprive them of pensions would be a great wrong, while to give pensions to all who deserved them was to inspire all with new hope, to stir them up to new zeal, and to give them greater interest and emulation in the pursuit of their high and valuable calling. ["Hear, hear!"]

MR. R. CAMERON (Durham, Houghton-le-Spring)

said, he could not allow the appeal made by the hon. Member for West Nottingham to pass without saying a word on behalf of men, some of whom he had known from 40 to 50 years, and almost all of whom, like himself, were getting old, some of them being 70 years of age. He considered they had a special claim, because they were made to understand that the Government would put them on the pension list. They ought to remember, as had been stated by the last speaker, that a teacher was practically past work at the age of 60, that at that age the strain of his past employment began to tell upon the brain and the nerves, and that he was really incapable of maintaining his best working standard after that. If he had not been placed in circumstances to save something for old age, it must be a dreary outlook for a man, as his powers begin to fail, and the consciousness must, more or less, unfit him for his work. Every man ought to have a sense of security that if he laboured earnestly for the community he would not have to face poverty in old age. The men who became teachers in the forties had very hard work to do; it was pioneer work which they had to do; they had to deal with stolid ignorance and indifference on the part of parents; they had to break ground and bring children under discipline, and on these rounds they had a very special claim. In those early days salaries were not what they are now, though even yet teachers are underpaid. If we were to have the best men to give the best education we must see that public provision was made for teachers which would put them in a position to do their work with devotion. If it were so willed, let them be made independent of pensions, but that had not been their position hitherto. When he was at college in 1846, and for many years afterwards, while there were a few prizes in the profession, the great body of teachers were paid on a scale which clearly precluded any provision for the future. He could trust to the sympathy as well as to the sense of justice of the President of the Council, because he had already appealed to him in the case of a teacher who had been incapacitated by a serious accident, and he got a reply that this teacher should have a pension. This was an indication of the disposition that prevailed, and he felt that he could leave this appeal in the hands of the right hon. Gentleman. On the general question he would ask why, if we pensioned old soldiers, we should not pension those who were more valuable to the community? A man who made money, it might be millions, might imagine that he did something for the community, but the teachers did more, because they made men, and moulded the characters of future generations. They developed the whole nation, and, when the nation learned to prize their services as it ought to do, it would not grudge them small pensions such as were now asked for on behalf of the early pioneers. [Cheers.]

VISCOUNT CRANBORNE (Rochester)

said, that no one could have listened to the speech of the last speaker (Mr. Cameron) without being struck by the fact that it was dominated by an earnestness which must command almost universal sympathy in the House. He was glad to hear from the hon. Member the declaration that the future character of children was being moulded in the elementary schools, and he earnestly hoped that, when another aspect of this question was brought before the House, it would be remembered how important it was for the future of the country that the characters of the children should be moulded aright. He should like to associate himself with those who had addressed the House in their appreciation of the noble work and high character of those who were now engaged in teaching. They were men and women, not only of high character, but of great intellectual acquirements; and he should be the last man to say that for their ability and for their services they were overpaid. But when he had said that he should like to suggest the division of teachers broadly into two classes—those who were fairly well paid, and those who were very badly paid. When they were thinking of how they were best going to lay out their money, they would rather devote it to those who were badly paid than to those who were fairly well paid, and especially would they do that when the sum already expended on behalf of elementary education had reached its present enormous figure. Therefore he would like to remind the House that a general pension scheme would, in effect, be an increase of the emoluments of teachers, alike of the well paid, of the moderately paid, and of the badly paid, and the increase would come to a heavy figure in the Annual Estimate. He should be sorry that the Government or the House should for a moment forget that there was another charge which would be made upon the resources of the country on behalf of elementary education, and which should be devoted largely to the increase of the salaries and the emoluments of the teachers who were badly paid. Until the unfortunate teachers in the Voluntary Schools could be better paid than they are at present, and put more on the level of Board School Teachers, he should be loth to consent to any expenditure of public money which would help those who at present are much better paid. Although, undoubtedly, a great deal was to be said for the superannuation of teachers, yet much would depend upon the treatment of the other subject to which he alluded. Until the urgent demands of Voluntary Schools were satisfied, he should like to enter an emphatic protest against the devotion of money to the purpose of pensions, an object which, though good in itself, must stand second. He hoped the Government would not diminish by one halfpenny the sum they might devote to the great and important purpose to which he alluded. In order that that might be done, this granting of pensions, though good in itself, must take a second place.

MR. G. H. MORRELL (Oxon, Woodstock)

desired to recall attention to the form in which the matter had been introduced by the hon. Member for Nottingham. They had not before them the question of the superannuation of teachers generally, on which many of them had strong feelings, but now they had to consider only the definite and specific case of certain teachers who were engaged in the work of education before May, 1862. In support of their claim, appeal was made to two Minutes of the Education Department. By that of 1846, unquestionably teachers entering the service had put before them the proposal of some species of superannuation, to some extent, to some amount. Although he did not go so far as to say there was a direct contract in the undertaking of 1846, because it contained the word ''may,'' and not ''must'' or ''shall,'' thus leaving it optional with the Department to say whether, in individual cases, an applicant was entitled to a pension, he yet held that there was a moral obligation which made it incumbent upon the Department to meet the cases of those who entered the service at that time. The restrictions that were introduced in 1851 were obviously a consequence of the large number of applications, and, indirectly, those restrictions were an acknowledgment of the fact that there was an undertaking and a moral obligation. There was, therefore, a strong case in support of the claims of teachers who entered the service, and one which merited the approval of the House. He earnestly hoped the House would give fair consideration to the proposal of the hon. Member on the conditions exactly described in the Motion, and not go further into the question of superannuation at large.

SIR JOHN GORST

entirely sympathised with the observations made in the several speeches on the subject of superannuation, but with the leave of the House he would not enter into the subject that night. A former House of Commons unanimously determined that there should be State assistance in the way of pensions to elementary school teachers, and he earnestly hoped many weeks would not elapse before he was able to ask the House of Commons for leave to bring in a Bill to give effect to the Resolution of a former House of Commons. He would confine a few observations he had to make to the subject of the notice given by the hon. Member for Nottingham, which had reference entirely to the case of teachers who entered the service of elementary schools before 1862. In 1862, by that celebrated revised code, all pensions were put an end to, whether wisely or unwisely he need not now discuss. But the teachers after 1862 had not the same claim as those before, who were induced to enter the service of the State by a promise of pensions of some kind or another. He would not attempt to go into a defence of the Committee of Council on Education of days gone by. It was a matter of history, and although the language of the hon. Member for Nottingham was somewhat strong on the subject, he did not think he was called upon to take up cudgels for former Committees of Council on Education. All he had to do was to see that justice was done now. With regard to the teachers prior to 1862, they belonged to two distinct categories—those who entered between 1846 and 1852, and those who entered between 1852 and 1862. As regarded the former, it was admitted by the Government in 1884, and had been practically admitted ever since, that they had an undoubted right to a pension of some kind, and for many years past all teachers appointed prior to 1852 who had become incapacitated by age or infirmity, had received pensions from a fund upon which there had been no limit. The hon. Member for Nottingham said they had not had pensions of as great an amount as they were entitled to. He was afraid that was always a very vexed question in the public service. The Minute of 1846 did not specify any particular pension, but it certainly said that their pension was not to exceed two-thirds of their salary. He knew it was often contended by pensioners that when it was stated the pension was not to exceed two-thirds of the salary it was to amount to that. But it was a contention never admitted by any Department of the State with which he had ever been connected, and he did not know here was really a very strong case to clam a pension of that amount. At any rate, they had had a pension of some kind or other. As regarded those who entered between 1852 and 1862, the case had been much more cruel. In 1851 clear notice was given by a Minute of the Committee of Council as to what the amount of the pensions would be, because in 1851 it was expressly laid down that there would be 20 of £30, 100 of £25, and 150 of £20 each, and special gratuities amounting to £400, making altogether a sum of £6,500, which was to be the limit, after that date, appropriated to teachers of all classes—both those between 1846 and 1852 and those who entered after. It was a very meagre provision, and one which from the first, was unsatisfactory. As regarded teachers appointed before 1852, they were long ago taken out of that amount of £6,500, and were awarded pensions out of a fund to which no limit was attached. As regarded those appointed between 1852 and 1862 they were restricted for many years to this sum of £6,500, and not a penny more was spent by the nation in pensioning those unfortunate teachers. In 1892 Sir George Kekewich, then Mr. Kekewich, in his evidence before a Select Committee pronounced the amount of £6,500, though it had long been appropiated to teachers appointed between 1852 and 1862, as absolutely inadequate, and he said:— There is no sadder task that we have to consider than the pension applications, because we can only award to the most wretched and pitiable cases, and not to one quarter of these. That was the state of affairs in 1892, and in that year there was a very cruel grievance on the part of these retiring teachers. It was not a breach of contract, because the amount in 1852 was specifically limited; but although it was not a breach of contract on the part of the State, it was a very hard and cruel measure which was meted out to these highly deserving public servants. He was, however, bound to inform the House that since 1892 that state of things had entirely altered, and the grievance which was so acute in 1892 existed no longer, because although this fund of £6,500 was limited in the Minute of 1851, the Treasury had favourably considered the case of those teachers on every occasion when the Committee of Council on Education had had occasion to apply to the Treasury. In 1893 an addition was made to this fund of £6,500 of £5,000, or nearly double. In December, 1894, a further addition of £1,425 was made to the fund; in June and November of last year a still further addition of no less than £2,155 was made, and he might tell the House that in the present year a further handsome addition had been made by the Treasury to the fund in order to enable that favourable consideration to be given to the cases which the hon. Member for Nottingham demanded in the notice he had given. Practically there was no limit to the fund, and all deserving cases of teachers appointed between 1852 and 1862, who were entitled to pensions, and who in the opinion of the Committee of the Council on Education ought to have them, would now be pensioned.

MR. YOXALL

Is that for this year only, or will it apply to subsequent years?

SIR J. GORST

could not pledge his successors or the Chancellor of the Exchequer's successors. This, however, had been done in the present year, and if he should remain in the office he now held he should ask for a similar grant next year, supposing that, in the meantime, the superannuation scheme had not passed through the House, as he hoped it would have done. This was rather done as a temporary measure to tide over the interval before the introduction of the superannuation scheme which the House had desired should be passed. All he could do was to assure the hon. Member for Nottingham, and other Members of this House who justly sympathised with this deserving class of public servants, that at the present moment there was practically no grievance at all. Of course there might be differences of opinion as to whether pensions ought or ought not to be awarded; but the Committee of Council on Education were at the present moment able to award to teachers who had entered their service before 1862 pensions in every case in which they thought a pension ought to be granted. He hoped the explanation he had made would be satisfactory to the hon. Member for Nottingham and other hon. Members of the House.