teachers are considerable.
20
The salaries of permitted teachers are
generally lower than those of registered teachers by virtue of their
lower qualifications: the few in the public sector are placed on lower
scales laid down by the government, and the bulk in the private
independent sector (where salaries are a matter of negotiation between
the individual teacher and the school management) are generally paid
lower rates than registered teachers, with or without training, in such
schools. From this situation stems several difficulties. First, because
permitted teachers are cheaper to employ, those private independent schools
in which the profit motive is dominant prefer them to registered teachers
and ensure that registered teachers are 'unavailable' by offering
salaries which are far below those which a registered teacher especially
if trained could command elsewhere: hence, the standard of teaching
in such schools remains low. Second, the ambition of most permitted
teachers is to become trained by means of the government ICTT courses,
in order to obtain a comparatively well-paid post in a public-sector
school. Those accepted for such training, however, are usually replaced
by fresh permitted teachers, with the result that the reservoir of
permitted teachers never dries up, however much training is provided
(though it is becoming smaller: see below). Third, some such school
authorities place obstacles in the paths of teachers applying for ICTT
courses, knowing that acceptance will cause inconvenience for the
school (because of the part-time nature of the training, some of it
being by means of day-release courses), and that on becoming qualified
the teacher will move on to another school, with the whole process
eventually being repeated by his successor. (In fairness, it must be
said that some private schools are willing to retain the services and
increase the salaries of teachers who become qualified in this way,