9/6/13 To the Chairman and members

School Board of Farr

Gentlemen,

We the undernoted (signed) being all the certificated teachers in the service of the Board, hereby beg to (acknowledge) tender you our sincere thanks for the great favour and benefit conferred on us at your meeting last month, in agreeing to pay our contributions to the Superannuation Fund ; and we desire to assure the Board that it will always be our chief aim to render the best service in our power for the advancement of education in the parish.

Yours respectfully,

 

 

 

 

 

Superannuation

The Superannuation Scheme provides for the annual value of the Schoolhouse for the purpose of calculating your pension. The Clerk to the school Board is entirely wrong. Ask him to communicate with the Scotch Education Dept. ……. a ruling.

Infn.Bur.Ed 21.11.13

 

Rural Education

Sir,

It seems that the rural school is still to be sacrificed to the ideals of centralisation, and that the net result of the recent agitation is that the victim of the sacrifice, who once went nameless, shall now have their names recorded upon the Intermediate Certificate, the Department’s substitute? for triple ….it is a just and reasonable claim that every rural pupil who desired should have the facilities for securing higher education; but there are still rural schools , with average attendances far above forty, in dealing with which the Dept. has made no material advance towards the realisation of this ideal. Wherever convenient it is declared that the pupils should be drafted to a centre at once; but the Depts. Idea of convenience is, to say the least of it, somewhat peculiar. Is it convenient for parents in the Highlands of the working class to send their children to endeavour to ……in expensive centres, on the meagre bursaries the Dept. provides, or, leaving money out of the question, is it convenient to allow them to spend some of the most important years of their lives so largely under the eyes of strangers! These years are important both spiritually and physically and for neither spiritual nor physical welfare does the Dept. make due provision . Homesickness and sickness of body- concerning both of which children are shy in speaking to strangers-lower their spirits; and the result too often is that the health of the pupil is seriously impaired, if not completely shattered. \from a certain rural school a few years ago two pupils in normal health went up to the Centre for the district. Of these one is at present in a sanatorium , the other child under medical treatment.

The Bursary is a present our only hope and it requires hope in an eminent degree to believe good of it. It is not enough that the amount is inadequate; the policy of two blacks making a white must be pushed to the extreme, and the inadequate amounts maladministered. The Dept. can no more state the principles on which these bursaries are awarded, than it can control the action of the County Committees, who are not above the suspicion of wire-pulling. We are asked to gaze on this system of thorough organisation, and try to forget that it hurts us, (but systems) as imposing and splendid have ere now been built on grievous wrongs. If the fetish of mere intellect is the Dept’s ideal in education it is well on its way to secure its ends but if it desires to build up men with the hearts and the faith and the vision of men, to guide the nation’s councils and carry on its arts of war and peace, of these the country has in the past produced many notable samples, then the future is given ample scope to train them in accordance with the ideals of the country, it can still produce them.

(D.C.M) Ed.News. 21.11.13

Resignation of Teacher (letter pro forma )

 

Taken from a Paper given by J.D.Morison, Solicitor General , at Aberdeen Congress : Dec. 1914

For the purposes of discipline and correction the schoolmaster in the service of the implied authority conferred on him by the parent, may inflict moderate punishment. This includes reasonable corporal punishment as well as power to detain a pupil, by way of reasonable punishment, for disobedience or failure to fulfil a duty.

Transcribing stopped- long paper

 

Tongue Mail Service People’s Journal 20th June ‘14

 

For some time past Mr. A.C. Morton M.P has been trying to get maintained the postal service between Thurso, Skerray, and Tongue. He has now received the full owing letter from the Postmaster General on the subject:-

My Dear Mr Morton, I have carefully considered the question of the postal arrangements at Skerray and Bettyhill, about which you spoke to me on the 9th of March.

I find that the present contract for the Thurso Tongue motor mail service terminates next month, and it would not be practicable to continue that service except at a large increase in expenditure, which would not be justified. The motor mail car will not therefore proceed beyond Bettyhill; but in order to meet the desire of the residents in the skerray district to retain a direct means of communication with Thurso, I am arranging for Skerray to be served by horsed vehicle from Bettyhill although this will involve some additional expenditure.

I understand that the opinion in the district is divided on the starting the mail car from Thurso in the early morning or at midday instead of at 4.30pm. It would be more expensive to provide a service in the morning, as you suggested when you saw Mr Samuel in January last, and it has therefore been arranged the motor mail car shall continue to leave Thurso at 4.30pm,

Yours Truly

Cecil Norton.

 

Education (Scotland) act, 1908. Section 21

At any time within 6 weeks after the adoption of a resolution for the dismissal of a teacher in terms of section 3 of the Public Schools (Scotland) Teachers Act, 1882, a petition shall be presented to the Department by the said teacher, praying for an enquiry into the reasons for the dismissal, the department shall make such enquiry as they may see fit, if as a result of such enquiry they are of opinion that the dismissal is not reasonably justifiable they shall communicate such opinion to the School Board with a view to the reconsideration of the resolution in the view of the School Board not departing from the resolution within 6 weeks thereafter, may attach to the resolution the condition the School Board shall pay to the teacher such sum not exceeding one year’s salary as the debts may determine; and any sum so determined may be recovered by the teacher as a debt from the Legal Board provided that nothing herein compared shall effect the powers of a School Board summarily to suspend any teacher from the performance of his duties.

From “Omnibus” Chaffe. N.A..?? Code

In order that a School Board may dismiss a teacher, the following procedure must be followed:-

(a) 3 weeks notice of the meeting with a copy of the notice of motion for such dismissal must be sent to (the teacher at less than 3 weeks previous to the meeting) to each member of the School Board.

(b) The same notice of motion for his dismissal must be sent to the teacher not less than three weeks previous to the meeting.

(c) A majority of the full (members of) number of members must agree in order that such resolution shall be valid (? Act 1882)

 

Farr Primary School

Bettyhill

28th July 1914

Hugh Gunn Esq.,

School Board Clerk,

Melvich

Dear Sir,

 

I beg respectfully to solicit the attention of the Chairman and members of the School Board of Farr to certain personal grievances , which by reason of their adverse effect on educational administration of Farr Public School, would seem to call for the intervention of the Board

The first grievance which I am to submit for their consideration is one relating to my present appointments under the School Board of Farr:-

I venture therefore to remind the Board that; so far, no definite status has been assigned to me in my capacity of teacher in Farr School at any rate no written statements to this effect has at any time been communicated to me. In departmental forms and documents, the qualification given to me is “assistant” whom or in what do I assist? Is it to be understood that I assist the official Headmaster of Farr School? Is a person who has the express sanction of the Scotch Education Department to teach intermediate subjects in the post- elementary division, where this is the highest department of the school, to be regarded as an “assistant” merely? The Chairman and members of the School Board of Farr know that my qualifications to teach intermediate or secondary subjects in Farr Public School have been recognised by the School Education Department. Is the official Headmaster of Farr High School so qualified? If not; I fail to perceive whom or with what I “assist”.

It is a fact nevertheless that up to the present no official intimations? to take charge of the post-elementary division of the school referred to, have been given to me; but shortly after my arrival in Bettyhill certain alterations within the structure of the school buildings made it fairly obvious that my principal duty was to develop a new departure? curriculum; even? so it eventually appeared:?

I have given no instruction in the elementary divisions of the school not because I seemed? to do so, but because I anticipated, what afterwards I found to be true, that if the supplementary or intermediate Department of a rural school is to be developed to any degree of efficiency, the person in charge of this department must devote his attention primarily to the Intermediate work, no time therefore being available for instruction in the lower departments of the school. It is on this principal which I have communicated that I have asked since nearly two years, but where the ‘assisting’ part comes in, I am at a loss to comprehend.

And being the case, I crave? permission to request of the school board to assign to me a designation? And definite status in Farr School thereby removing and ambiguity which may hitherto have existed.

The other matter to which I would like to draw the attention