CO129-569-7 Revision of salaries 6-7-1938 - 11-10-1938 — Page 49

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(2)

this Colony, and the relation of the education service to other branches of the Colonial Service employed in it, the proposed salary scales for European masters do not appear to compare unfavourably with those offered in West Africa or in other parts of the Colonial Empire. It does not appear that the Hong Kong officer will at any stage be in a worse position than his West African colleague performing comparable duties. The proposed scale for senior headmasters and inspectors must

The senior be regarded as superscale to the masters' scale. masters may similarly be taken to correspond approximately to the senior grade in West Africa, although there is an important difference to which I will return later. petitioners make close comparison with the opportunities for promotion open to educational officers in Nigeria.

The

It appears

to me, however, that in a unified service such as the Colonial Education Service the higher posts in any individual Colony are not, on the one hand, intended to be reserved for time scale officers in that Colony, nor, on the other, are they the only higher posts to which a time scale officer in that

It is natural that in a large

particular Colony can aspire. territory such as Nigeria the number and the importance of the higher posts will be greater than in the smaller territory of Hong Kong, but after allowing for that difference it does not appear that the opportunities for promotion in this Colony are less favourable than those generally prevailing in the Colonial Empire. It is an important consideration, also, that a mere increase in the number of higher posts here would not necessarily improve promotion prospects because the more numerous and the more attractive they are the ore likely will it be that appointments to them will be made from outside the

Colony.

2.

There are, however, two matters on which I think Government might go some way to meet the petitioners.

First