Straits Times, 29 August 1863

This news item is extracted from The Straits Times of 29 August 1863, more than 150 years ago, when the Penang Free School was barely 47 years old then. It highlighted the remuneration of junior teachers (or who were then called Stipendiary Monitors) at the school, who were paid 15 Straits Dollars per month.

We extract the following from the Pinang Gazette, of the 8th instant.

For some reasons, we are sorry to hear that both of the Stipendiary Monitors who accepted service in the Free School a very short time ago, have now left their employment for a more remunerating, agreeable, and promising one, even forfeiting their pay for the period they have served rather than continue at their posts for the twelvemonth. We say we are sorry for some reasons, and chiefly because it is very unsatisfactory for the institution to be unprovided with a permanent staff of teachers. So far as the lads themselves may benefit their prospects, we of course cannot be sorry on their account; and we would remind the subscribers that so long as intelligent youths who may be engaged as teachers in our Free School are not remunerated at least as well as they would be were they employed in Beach Street or Government Offices, they will make but short stay in their uninviting situation. Several lads who leave the Free School obtain employment even here, after gaining a little experience, at $15 and upwards per mensem; while in Singapore, Burmah, China, Saigon, &c., they command yet higher pay. There seems to be no means whatever or supplying our school with anything like willing and proper junior teachers except by offering higher pay or binding the youths by legal Agreement. We are not sorry that the failure of the Stipendiary Monitor scheme (solely on account of the lads services being more highly valued elsewhere), has made it fully apparent that the assistance of a Second Master should no longer be withheld. The Singapore institution will have one in a mail or two, and we think that the time has fully come for the carrying out of the measure of organizing the Free School classes as we have already suggested. The plan, we think, would meet the wishes of many European parents, and would probably tend, in time, to restore the balance in the school funds lessened by the expense of a Second Master from Europe. The Committee, in its Annual Reports, has long recommended the employment of proper assistance: and we hope they no longer withhold it. The school-fees might be raised in the Upper school and the Higher Remove; and as the expenses of the Boarding school are rapidly dwindling away,since Heathens are no longer admitted to it, some further adjustment of the finances may be expected. The community, Native as well as European, moreover, is always willing to respond to a Special Appeal.