SAVINGRAM
Sec.5/1570/47.
To Secretary of State for the Colonies.
From the Governor, Hong Kong.
Date 20
No. THI
April,1948.
36
i
Staff
Your telegram No.980 saving of 30th December,1947. Salaries Commission. Point (a) Education scale. I do not favour the proposal that the time scale for Mastersin the Education Department should start at $720 a month with provision for entry higher up the scale for candidates with certain qualifications and recommend that the scale should start at $800 a month as originally suggested by the Salaries Commission.
2.
In Hong Kong there is in normal times an adequate supply of locally trained teachers to meet the ordinary needs of the Education Department. There will, however, for a long time be a need for specialist teachers who are specialists by reason of special training or experience. The Salaries Commiss- ion declined to accept the view that the superiority of a man who had an ordinary degree from a United Kingdom University and a teaching diploma but no experience over a local man with similar Hong Kong qualifications was so assureć that the former must inevitably be in a superior service. The Commission took the view that to get access to the superior service the man from overseas must have qualifications and experience that would in normal cases make him a more valuable recruit than a local man to the Department. The initial salary on the scale recommended by the Commission for Masters was therefore designed for candidates recruited from overseas who had in addition to the normal degree and diploma at least three years' practical teaching experience. The average age of entry envisaged by the Commission when recommending this scale was 25 years.
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The effect of lowering the initial point of the scale would be either to depress the scales for Assistant Masters and Certificated Teachers to points below those which the Commission considered locally trained certificated or graduate teachers should command on entry to Government service or to nullify the system recommended by the Commission and approved for other branches of the service of having an assistant grade as a training cadre for local officers leading up after a certain period to the main grade of fully qualified professional officers.
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The Commission considered that a local University graduate who joined Government service without teaching experience immediately after obtaining his academic qualifications would normally take ten years to reach the same degree of professional efficiency as is to be expected from a qualified expatriate officer with three years of approved teaching experience in England. This is naturally a generalisation and there will clearly be local candidates who will reach the required standard in a shorter period. Others may never reach that standard. The salary structure recommended by the Commission for the Education Department and accepted for other branches of the Service such as for doctors and engineers is based on the assumption that the professional time scales are for men who have had professional experience in addition to academic qualifications, whereas the time scales for assistant professional officers are designed for men with no professional experience at all who enter immediately after qualifying academically.
5.
It might be suggested that although candidates possessing the qualifications and experience envisaged by the Commission should commence at $800 a month, candidates recruited overseas with no experience should enter at a point some way up the Assistant Masters' scale. It would in my opinion be open to objection to allow the scales for Assistant Masters and Masters to overlap or to appoint expatriate officers with no experience at a point on the upper half of the Assistant Masters' scale and local officers at the commencement of the scale. It may well be that the present shortage of teachers will make it difficult for you to recruit qualified overseas candidates with the length of experience emisaged by the Commission and I