Catalogue description Records of the Salaries Branch and Burnham Committees

The payment of teachers has generally been the concern of local authorities and other bodies of employers. Prior to 1917 there were no prescribed nor generally accepted scales of salary, but each local education authority and each body of employers arranged their own terms with the teachers. This resulted in competition between the various employers and area authorities to secure teachers, and agreements made with teachers were unstable owing to fluctuations in the cost of living and the supply of teachers. The first step towards standardisation was the introduction by the Board of Education of a supplementary grant, effective from April 1917, in aid of teachers' salaries, a measure which was precipitated by the war conditions of that time. Payment of the grant was conditional on a specified minimum salary being paid to certificated teachers.

In 1918, the recommendations of a Departmental Committee on the construction of scales of salary (Cd 8939), paved the way for the first Burnham report of 1919, which established a provisional minimum scale for elementary school teachers payable from January 1920. This initial stage was followed in 1921 by four standard scales of salary allocated by areas, which were to operate for four years. The scales were introduced in three annual stages but before these were fully implemented a voluntary abatement by the teachers of five per cent of their salary was made in 1923 in sympathy with the drop in the cost of living. A deduction of five per cent had already been made as a contribution towards superannuation benefits under the School Teachers (Superannuation) Act 1922. Negotiations for scales of salary to operate following the four year settlement ended in disagreement and was finally decided by arbitration, Lord Burnham acting as arbiter. Four new scales were formulated as well as some re-allocation scales for individual authorities.

In 1919, the Standing Joint Committee on Scales of Salary for Teachers in Public Elementary Schools, representative of the local education authorities on one side and the National Union of Teachers on the other, was established at the request of the President of the Board of Education 'to secure the orderly and progressive solution of the salary question in Public Elementary Schools on a national basis and its correlation with a solution of the salary problem in Secondary Schools'.

Similar committees were subsequently established concerned with the salaries of teachers in secondary schools and those teaching in technical schools. The committees became known as the Burnham Committees after the chairman Lord Burnham, and following his death in 1933 the title was officially adopted. Reference committees were also appointed by these main committees and were charged with giving interpretations of the reports. In fact they acted in the dual capacity of reference committees for the main committees and advisory committees to the Board of Education.

Within the Board of Education itself, work on salary questions was initially dealt with by the appropriate school branch, but in order to secure greater uniformity between scales in different types of school, a Salaries Branch was set up in 1925 to coordinate the work.

The 1931, the salaries of teachers along with other services suffered a reduction of ten per cent under the National Economy (Education) Order 1931. This reduction was applied for three years and extended a further year at five per cent before the cuts were finally removed.

The reports of the Burnham Committee in 1938 were the last before the committees were reconstituted to meet the requirements of the Education Act 1944. Section 89 of this act secured mandatory powers for the Minister of Education. Since education was to be redefined by stages instead of types, the term elementary would disappear, therefore a Burnham Main Committee was appointed for the salaries of teachers in Primary and Secondary Schools and a Technical Committee for teachers in Technical (including Commercial and Art) Colleges and Schools, the latter transmitting recommendations through the Main Committee.

New scales each for a period of three years were introduced in 1945, 1948, 1951 and 1954. Similar orders have been made in respect of recommendations of a further committee set up in 1946 to consider the remuneration of teaching staff of farm institutes and of teachers of agriculture (including horticulture) on the staff of local education authorities. Recommendations were also approved by the minister on behalf of teaching staff of training colleges other than training departments of universities or university colleges.