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For refresher courses to be successful it is necessary either to give the teacher some incentive for attending the course, or at least persuade him that it is worthwhile. However, since the teacher gains, because he be- comes better trained and is therefore more likely to gain promotion, and the school gains from his taking the course there is a good case for half his training to be in his own time and half in the school's time. The Government accepts this principle in respect of courses which it wishes teachers to attend. The Government will also continue to provide courses of general interest which teachers may wish to attend entirely in their own time.
(c) Supervision of School Resources
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Proposals to improve Educational Television (ETV) services to include taping facilities and the dual use of TV receivers to cover both ETV and film projection facilities are contained in Chapter 11. There will be a need for a teacher to coordinate the use of TV sets and to order tapes for use with them. Furthermore, the development of class libraries will need careful supervision and co-ordination and there will also be duties connected with the general acquisition and distribution of other teaching aids.
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Experience has shown that without a teacher specifically responsible for teaching aids in a school few of these aids get used. While a clerk could take orders for materials, the teacher has a much wider responsibility which includes exploring all the sources of material, having some knowledge of purpose and content, but above all the responsibility of encouraging other teachers to use the material available.
Conclusion
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In order to carry out these additional duties. It is estimated that an increase in staffing ratio from 1.1:1 to 1.15:1 will be required. However it is proposed that in order to avoid the use of fractions of a teacher, the number of teachers resulting from the application of this formula should be rounded up to the nearest whole number above, where the fraction of a teacher is 0.2 or more. Smaller fractions will be neglected.
Small schools
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Small schools of one or two classrooms have only one teacher per class and their problems are discussed in Chapter 8. It is suggested that the number of teachers per session in these schools should be 1% and 2% respectively. This is the only exception to the general rule that the staffing of a school should be based on whole numbers of teachers.
Senior staff
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The first promotion step for an ordinary teacher (Certificated Master or CM) is to senior teacher or head of a small or medium size school (Assistant Master or AM), a post carrying specific additional responsibilities. There is a further promotion step to head of larger schools (Senior Assistant Master or SAM).
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The chances of promotion are low and even the more energetic teacher is discouraged especially when he gets to the top of the CM scale. Previous
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