These statistics are indicative of the urgent need for total abolition
of uncertificated and supplementary teachers, since the recognition
of these grades offers a direct incentive to girls just to bridge
over the period between leaving school and getting married, without
qualifying even for what ought to be regarded as the lowest ranks of
the profession. This fact is at once realised, when one contrasts the
percentage of women teachers who are untrained, viz., 54 per cent, in
England, 49 per cent, in Wales, with the corresponding figures for men
teachers, viz., 30 per cent, in England and 29 per cent, in Wales.

Every candidate for teachership, who has passed through a Training
College, is required by the Board of Education to serve in a
recognised school--a woman for five out of the first eight years after
leaving College; a man for seven out of the first ten years after
leaving College--or pay the whole or part of the Government grant
in respect of College training. But, notwithstanding this agreement,
enforceable under Act of Parliament,[5] the Board of Education neither
takes steps to find employment for such candidates in the State
schools of the country, nor admits any responsibility on its part for
the conditions under which teachers are employed. By the Education Act
of 1902, local authorities, of which there are 318, were made
chiefly responsible for the work of education, and it is these local
authorities who lay down the conditions of appointment.

This refusal by the Board of Education of responsibility for
appointments and conditions of appointment to teaching posts, leaves
it for local authorities to fix scales of salaries, and to decide such
questions as, for example, whether married women teachers shall be
employed. The grave effect of this state of things on the economic