they receive a smaller maintenance grant.  At a residential college, while men receive L40, women receive L20; at a non-residential college the grant for men is L25, for women L20.  As the whole supply of teachers for each year leaves the Training Colleges in July,[6] it follows that many of these must wait for varying periods before finding employment:  during these periods the burden of maintenance must again be borne by the parents.  The need for legislation in the economic interests of teachers is borne out by the fact that highly trained students of good character are unable to find employment, even at low salaries.  Of 4,384 teachers who left the training colleges in July 1908, at least 1,226 were, three months later, without employment, and 259 were known to be without employment even twelve months later; whilst of the 4,386 students who left the Training Colleges in July 1909, 1,528 were still without employment in October 1909.  These figures are for both sexes, but by far the larger number of teachers are women.

These facts explain why it is that local authorities, bent on keeping down the rates, have been enabled to obtain the services of certificated teachers at the scale of salaries which they advertise for uncertificated teachers:  in fact many fully qualified certificated teachers have been forced to work for a rate of payment lower than that received by an unskilled labourer; a natural corollary to this condition of things is that many would-be teachers refuse to expend time and money on training.

This state of affairs has had one other effect which is of vital importance when the economic position of women teachers is being considered, namely, that local authorities, in order to appease the popular outcry against this apparently overstocked market, have been led to sanction regulations for the compulsory retirement of women teachers on marriage.  Happily the London County Council has not succumbed to this temptation, and there are other equally enlightened authorities.  But constant watchfulness is needed in order to prevent retrogression in this matter.  Young teachers, anxiously awaiting promotion, sometimes foolishly resist the appointment or retention of married women.  This is a suicidal policy, to be resisted at all costs, both in the interests of the teachers and of the children.  Salaries are bound to remain low, while women are forced to consider their profession in the light of a stop-gap until marriage, and not as a life-work.  Moreover, there are real dangers in entrusting girls’ education entirely to unmarried women.  The salaries of assistant teachers vary very considerably.  In no single instance is a woman teacher paid the same rate of salary as a man of the same professional status.  This is true even when the work is identical in character, as is the case in mixed schools and pupil teachers’ centres.  One of the results of this inequality of payment is that women teachers are often employed