Teachers paid lower than unskilled casual labour!

I was shocked and ashamed by the information about wages paid to teachers that was revealed, on July 20, by a leader (Mahinda Jayasinghe?) of a trade union of school teachers. A graduate teacher is paid some Rs.33,000 a month on initial appointment and some Rs. 45, 000 a month after 15 years in service. A teacher fresh from a Teacher’s College receives even a lower salary. A friend of mine, a graduate in science from the Colombo University, who retired from teaching after 32 years, receives a princely monthly pension of Rs.48,000. They accept these low wages because there is widespread unemployment in the country and any employment with superannuation benefits is a bonus. The alternative is often domestic service in West Asia. In 2020, the income, per person, in this country, was about Rs. 60,000, a month. The last year for which data is available (2019) gives the income of per person income in Sri Lanka as Rs.57,400 per month month. (Take the total income in the country; divide that among the total population, including infants and old men and women and you get income per person in the country. These figures are a rough assessment.) A graduate teacher in school is paid a little more than half the income of an average person in this country. It is hard to imagine that and far harder to believe that. Believe that, you had better. They live, at best, in genteel poverty. Is that fair, is that just and is that productive? Some years ago, in this newspaper, I showed that in 1960, a graduate teacher in this country, on first appointment, was paid three times the per capita income at that time and university teachers double that. Imagine a young family of two university graduate teachers and a child, today. The monthly income of all three of them would be about Rs. 66,000, a bit above the average income of one person in the country. Then the income per capita income of this family is Rs.22,000, (divide 66,000 into three and you get 22,000.) about $7 a day-not far above the poverty income. An MP legally earns roughly about Rs.500,000 a month. Many politicians come to Parliament with debt payable to banks. Within two or three years they are rich men. They send their children to expensive elite private schools and have no interest in public schools. Graduate teachers, even after 15 years in service, earn ¾ of today’s average income per person. How dare anyone find fault with school teachers who earn an extra rupee giving private tuition to their own pupils? I should not be surprised if some teachers earned extra money driving a three-wheeler. A member of Parliament with no university degree, who becomes a minister supplements his legal income with millions of dollars, which enables him to live in much opulence and conspicuous grandeur. Governments that pay school teachers so niggardly, and the public who approve of that action, must take responsibility for poor outcomes in schools. Politicians, the bureaucracy and the public at large (We went to public schools and our children and grandchildren go to them now.) all must stand with teachers to get them a decent wage.

The portfolio of education has been held by some brilliant men and women: Bathi-ud-Din Mohammed, Ranil Wickremasinghe, Lalith Athulathmudali, Bandula Gunawardena and G.L.Peiris, all who nevertheless inexplicably allowed teachers wages to fall so low as now. Perhaps politicians, as a whole, found the employment of young people at sub-living wages a convenient way to collect votes at elections. This façade of 18 students per teacher is part of the cheating and hoodwinking that is characteristic of our politicians. How can MPs earn a minimum of Rs.500,000 a month, a rich pension after, as short as, five years in Parliament, travel about in most comfortable tax-free vehicles, eat so sumptuously in Parliament at ridiculously low prices and yet pay teachers beggarly wages? Politicians, and the bureaucracy, especially, must not play games with teachers in our schools. The public must not allow this indecency to continue beyond this year. They must stand with and not against teachers. It is not fair; it is not just; and it is ignominious to debase our teachers with hobbling low wages, as now. Let there be 30 students per teacher. Transfer excess teachers out. Teachers and parents in many rich countries bear with higher student loads and students come out fine. Double teachers’ wages, now. Do not postpone doubling teachers’ wages declaring that such is your intention, as Bandula Gunawardena, who was the minister of education for five years, did on 24 July. Do it now and arrange for its payment in a government strapped for cash at every turn. The public must find the extra resources because the government is a mere agent who disguises itself as a principal. If the public stops paying taxes government must cease functioning. By the same token a public that keeps government on a short leash must have it run as the public wants. Do not let the dog put the leash on the public.

I am astonished how elegantly our female teachers dress to school and how decently male teachers do, on those measly wages. How well they feed their children and themselves, only the kitchen sink knows. (apa kana hati lipa dani.)

Usvatte-aratchi