The teachers' decision to go back to work today was the right one; the shame is it took so long.

Certainly, there can be no doubt about the depth of teachers' unhappiness with current pay levels, even if there are many who feel the point was well made after the strikes that preceded last week's five-day walkout.

Still, the strike is over now and it is to be hoped that the teachers will demonstrate their professionalism by getting right down to work and helping those in their charge to catch up on the work that was lost last week. Doing that will only make their case stronger in arbitration.

While it has been maintained throughout in this space that now is not the time for the profession to look for a major increase, it is hard not to agree with those who feel the Government was wrong to reject the union's proposal in negotiations of a three percent increase with a commission of inquiry to look into the whole state of the profession.

It may be that the Government felt that it would then run the risk of getting a further increase tacked onto the three percent raise already given, it would have had a chance to make its argument against that to the commissioners.

What Government may have feared was an open hearing on the general state of education on the Island and the lack of materials that teachers have to deal with.

When the Department of Education has a $77 million budget, the equivalent of more than $12,000 per student in the system, it begs the question of why there is not enough text books for students to take home for homework and why teachers must spend hundreds of dollars out of their own pocket to buy materials.

These are real issues that go to the heart of the lack of confidence in the public education system. A proper hearing would expose the problems and might find some solutions; it is a shame that this Government, which has dedicated itself to education and has managed to make some improvements, will not take this step.

As the two sides get down to to arbitration, there will be an elephant in the hearing room, so to speak, that will be ever-present but which no one will talk about.

The issue is the Government's proposal - which deserves the support of the whole community - to introduce teacher licensing. Sadly, the union has never been more than lukewarm on the issue, presumably because it is afraid of alienating those of its members who would not make the grade and would be drummed out of the profession if it was put in place.

The good teachers about whom the community has heard so much this week are the ones who work the extra hours, tutor the students who are falling behind or who want to leap ahead, buy materials out of their own pockets to make their classrooms better, club together to buy computers for lesson plans and the like, pay for extra training out of their own pockets and spend their summer holidays planning for the next year.

They deserve a raise and they would be licensed in a minute.

But the poor teachers who don't do those things and treat teaching like an 8.30 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. job do not deserve raises and should not be in the classroom. They exist. Just as most people remember their great teachers, they remember the awful ones too.

The union should throw its support behind teacher licensing and become full partners in determining the standards teachers will have to be met. And in return, the Government should give teachers a "professional" salary, because they all will be doing a professional job.