HC Deb 15 June 1950 vol 476 cc41-2W
113. Miss Hornsby-Smith

asked the Minister of Education if he is aware that among the staff employed by the local education authority in the Chislehurst and Sidcup urban district area, clerical assistants, clerks, caretakers, laboratory assistants, secretarial staff and school inquiry officers, all receive the London allowance, but the teachers themselves, employed in the same establishments, do not receive this emolument; and if he will consider taking steps to remove this anomaly in salaries paid.

Mr. Tomlinson

I cannot add anything to the answer which I gave on 25th May last in reply to a Question put to me by the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter).

Major Bevins

asked the Minister of Education if he will give an estimate of the gross total cost to his Department and local authorities involved by increasing all teachers' salaries, so that the minima and maxima are 80s. above the 1938 figures; and also the percentage such increased cost bears to the gross total cost of education.

Mr. Tomlinson

The salaries now paid to teachers are at rates above those applied in 1938, but owing to the changes introduced by the Education Act, 1944, and subsequent Burnham Reports, any calculation of the cost of an increase by a specific amount would be difficult to make and misleading.

Wing-Commander Bullus

asked the Minister of Education what was the total cost of salaries of teachers in England and Wales for the year 1938–39; what was the cost of salaries of administrative staff for the education service as a whole in the same year; and what are the comparative figures for the latest available post-war year.

Mr. Tomlinson

The total expenditure of local education authorities on the salaries of teachers in maintained schools and other maintained educational institutions was, on the basis of the pre-audit actual returns of authorities for 1938–39, £53,819,500, and on the basis of the revised estimates for 1949–50, £104,723,800. I have no separate statistics of the cost of the salaries of the administrative staffs of local education authorities. The gross expenditure of authorities on administration and inspection which includes, in addition to salaries and wages, other items such as stationery, postage, travelling and other general office expenses, was about £3,568,000 in 1938–39, as compared with about £11 million on the basis of the revised estimates of authorities for 1949–50.