Women Workers in Seven Professions | Page 7

£52 to £90 or £110 a
year for a minimum of 3 years (of 30 to 35 weeks).
Non-residential Colleges From £20 to £55 a year for a minimum of 3
years. (The cost of maintenance must be reckoned at about £40 a year,
as a minimum.)
Students who desire to do advanced work will need at least one, and
probably two, additional years at the University, while all women who
intend to teach in schools ought also to spend one year in training.
A large number of County Councils provide "senior" scholarships to
cover or partially to cover college fees. In some counties only one or
two such scholarships are given annually, and there is severe
competition: in others they are comparatively easy to obtain, though
there are never enough for all candidates who desire a University
education. Most of these scholarships are not renewable for a fourth
year of training--an extremely short-sighted policy on the part of the
authorities.
At practically every University, entrance or other scholarships and
exhibitions are awarded annually. Competition for these is usually very
severe, and they are extremely difficult to gain. At Oxford and
Cambridge only quite exceptional candidates can hope to secure
scholarships at the women's colleges. Moreover, scholarships seldom
cover the complete cost of maintenance and tuition; at Oxford and
Cambridge they never do so.

Most secondary teachers, then, must incur liabilities varying from £60
to £350, apart from school, holiday, and personal expenses, before they
obtain their first degree. On the other hand, a graduate with good
testimonials can very often obtain her professional training at
comparatively small cost by means of a bursary: with luck, she may get
maintenance as well as free tuition. Every year, however, as training is
more widely recognised as essential, the proportion of scholarships
available becomes smaller. With the advent of the new Teachers'
Register, which makes training indispensable after 1918, girls will
more and more often be obliged to find means to pay for their own
training. At present it is often possible to borrow for this purpose from
loan societies specially formed to meet the needs of women preparing
to enter professions.
The training for kindergarten and lower-form mistresses is less
expensive, arduous, and lengthy. Students are required to give evidence
of having received a good secondary education; they can then take their
First Froebel Certificate after one year, and their Higher Froebel
Certificate after about two years' training. The cost of such training
varies from £30 to £58 non-resident; £120 to £150 resident. If they
elect to go to the House of Education at Ambleside, the training is for
two years, and is specially suited to those who wish to teach in private
families. The cost amounts to £90 a year, including residence, which is
obligatory.
Kindergarten assistant-mistresses usually obtain from £90 to £100
salary for part-day work, while for whole-day work the rate is the same
as that of their colleagues. Mistresses in charge of a large kindergarten
department often receive additions to their stipend if they are willing to
train student-mistresses for Froebel examinations.
The Ambleside students usually teach small private classes, or accept
posts as resident governesses in families. Their remuneration varies in
accordance with the work done, but it is usually about the same as that
received by kindergarten and lower-form mistresses.
The stipends of other secondary teachers are considered in the article
by Dr O'Brien Harris (see p. 32). It should be noted that in good private

schools where the standard of teaching is equally high, the salaries are
approximately on the same scale as in public schools. But private
schools vary enormously in standing. When they are inferior, the
teachers are paid miserable pittances, and are often worth no more than
they receive. Such schools, however, are rapidly decreasing in number,
since they cannot survive competition with public State-aided schools.
The best private schools, on the other hand, supply a real need, and, as
a large proportion of their pupils do not enter for public examinations,
it is possible in them, to make valuable experiments which could not
easily be tried in larger subsidised institutions.
In boarding-schools, the conditions do not markedly differ from those
obtaining in day-schools. The chief danger is lest the teachers should
suffer from the strain of supervision-duties in addition to their work in
school. But in the better schools this is avoided by the appointment of
house-mistresses, the teaching staff living apart from the girls, either in
lodgings or in a hostel of their own. When they "live in," the value of
their board for the school terms is usually reckoned at about £40 a year,
which is deducted from the ordinary salary of an assistant. The cost of
living in a mistresses' house is usually higher, but there are many
counterbalancing