|
||
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
||
|
|
Issue No. 139 | 07 June 2002 |
|
||
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
With Prejudice
Interview: Class Action Safety: A Mother's Tale Unions: The Hottest Seat in Town International: Defensive Enterprise Economics: A Super Deal? History: A Radical Life Media: Cross Purposes Review: When the Force Is Unconscious Poetry: Wouldn't It Be Loverly
The Soapbox The Locker Room Bosswatch Week in Review
 Romeo and Juliet?Robbo's RaveLatham Ad NauseumOur Home Is Girt By WireHands Off Hooligans!
|
|
|
Interview Class ActionInterview with Peter Lewis
**************** The State budget came down this and it was obviously an election budget. As far as the Teachers Federation concerned, was it a good budget for public education? Well it was good in parts, but it didn't address other issues that we would have thought should have been addressed. Clearly in terms of capital works it provides a large increase in the budget over what was previously provided and that's on top of the $70 million provided earlier this year for school maintenance. So in terms of capital works, we would say the budget has delivered, albeit on some of things that are long overdue, but its certainly on track to deliver the sorts of capital works program that schools have needed for quite some time. Having said that, our major campaign this year is around the reduction of class sizes in the early years of education, years K-3. The first part of the Vinson Inquiry that was released on the May 22, indicated that a reduction in class sizes ought to take place. The disappointing part of this budget is that it provides only $5 million for a pilot, the details as yet unannounced, presumably so that Australian research can be done into the benefits of such reductions. The overseas experience would indicate that reduction of class sizes in the early years of education is without doubt of benefit to kids across their education years from Kindergarten right through to year 12. So we would say there is no need for an Australian pilot to look into this matter. The Government if it had been serious would have announced a much bigger amount of money to fund it. If it had provided $12 million they could have reduced the size of kindergarten classes in every disadvantaged school in New South Wales. Five million is a drop in the bucket. It's no secret that you had a really difficult relationship with the previous Education Minister, John Aquilina. Now there is a new boy on the block John Watkins. What does he need to deliver for your members before the next election to regain some sort faith? Well, I think in terms of those areas where we are currently campaigning, clearly John Watkins has said that he knows that we will judge him on what he delivers. So far in terms of capital works in this budget he has started to deliver but in the area of class sizes, he hasn't. Our concern is that a pilot scheme is in fact one way of avoiding the real issue and thus avoiding a debate about the issue in the lead up to the next state election. We are concerned that indeed the Government will give no further undertakings about implementing a reduction of class sizes until well after the state election. In terms of the sorts of disagreements we've had with his predecessor, I have to say that, this minister does welcome dialogue, he does meet with the Teacher's Federation. His predecessor certainly did not meet with us and obviously avoided dialogue at every opportunity. So, I guess it's true to say that if the lines of communication are open, then that's a positive outcome from the change of ministerial portfolios. The other concern for our members is that the bitterness of the dispute a couple of years ago over salaries, has not gone away. It doesn't matter where you go, teachers raise the issue of salaries and particularly the way in which they saw themselves being denigrated by the then minister and the Carr Government in that dispute. I was at a meeting of teachers on the north coast last evening and they raised with me the next salaries campaign, and a lot of what they had to say is based on the angst they still retain from the previous dispute. I think this Minister is going to have to make, and this Government is going to have make, a statement about teachers' salaries before the next state election. He is going to have to give a commitment about teachers' salaries before the next state election because the Government has not been forgiven for the previous dispute. It is a perennial issue, the under funding of public sector jobs, important public sector jobs when you compare what's paid in the private sector. What should a public school teacher be paid? What is a fair wage?
Well that's one of those questions you just can't answer. You could say a classroom teacher should be paid $60,000 a year. Look at other professions and people who are in the early years of their profession are being paid those sorts of rates of money. Teachers in the early years of their profession are paid much, much less than that, and it's only by the passage of time that they actually start getting to figures like that. At this stage our classroom teachers at the top of their scale will earn just over $50,000 when this salary agreement expires, and that's not acceptable. The community has to decide what it thinks teachers are worth, to borrow a phrase from our colleagues in the Nurses Association, and certainly if people think that teachers with four years of training at university are going to stay in a profession which at the top of the pay scale as a classroom teacher is going to pay them just over $50,000, well I don't think that's going to be the case. The stats are showing, quite clearly that teachers leave the profession in the first half a dozen years of their employment as a teacher. I think there are a couple of reasons for that, but one of them clearly has to be they are not being paid enough. Should teaching be a profession someone does for life, or should it be a profession maybe that everyone does for a bit of their working life? I don't think it's a profession that anyone can do for a bit of their working life. I think you have to have people in the profession who are committed to it, and most public school teachers are. Opposition Leader John Brogdon this week actually said that he criticised Michael Egan for not funding decreases in class size. What is the attitude to the Liberal opposition. There's obviously some baggage there as well? It was a previous Liberal Minister who in fact changed the staffing formula without consultation. Terry Metherell changed the staffing formula in a way which meant class sizes increased. Now obviously the Leader of the Opposition is jumping on a bandwagon. Our deep fear about Opposition policy, is not about class sizes, it's about what their intentions are with public education generally. I would say that not too far beneath the surface is lurking the spectre of a voucher system in this state if the Opposition gained the treasury benches. A voucher system would accelerate the drift away from public education, and would certainly mean the funding that would go to public education would decrease in comparative terms rather than increase. The Teachers Fed has seized the public agenda through their commissioning a funding of its own enquiry into public education. What was the thinking behind doing that a what's been the cost benefit analysis of that project? It occurred because we had been calling on the Government for some time to do a proper analysis of the needs of public education and of students attending public education institutions. The Government simply refused to do so. In making that call we had the support of parent organisations in this state. Our call was based on the fact that successive governments had started to accumulate, what I call, bright blue shiny objects. Somebody would have a bright idea about establishing a certain model of education here and somebody elsewhere in New South Wales would say, well we should have a collegiate group here, but we want to be different. So something else would be established over there. None of this was based on any good educational research but was simply political decision making, and as I said, bright shiny objects to give the appearance that something good was happening when in actual fact nobody knew what the educational outcomes would really be. The continual refusal of the Government to undertake proper research into the needs of public education system, led to us and the parent organisations to decide, that we would do it. Hence we commissioned Professor Tony Vinson to head an independent inquiry into the needs, structures and other organisational matters for public education in this state. Tony has brought down findings in the first three chapters of what will be his ultimate report. There are some things in there which may cause difficulty for the teachers union, but a lot of what he is saying in his report are things that teachers and parents have been saying for a long time. I think that's based on the fact that the teachers union in this state is a very democratic organization. It's in touch with its members, the parent organisations are in touch with their members, we're all in touch with our schools. So we know what people have been saying and they've been saying the same sorts of things to Tony Vinson - they've been saying the sorts of things that governments over a large number of years now have wanted to ignore. You actually levied your members extra to come up with the funding for this enquiry. How tough a sell was that? Well, it wasn't a tough sell. For some time our members have been saying that they believed the Federation should undertake a publicity campaign around the needs of public education and the positive promotion of public education. At our annual conference three years ago we increased our fees by providing a proportion of those fees, 0.035%, to what we call the Public Education Fund. That Fund has been used to pay for our television commercials and our radio commercials, and other activities, such as the public education convention last year. These activities have been planned to extol both the virtues of public education as it exists and to say it could be even better if governments properly funded the system. Last year we made a decision that some of that Public Education Fund would be used to pay for the costs of the independent Vinson Inquiry, so that's only one part of what we've been doing in terms of promoting public education. In terms of, cost benefit analysis, well we haven't really done a cost benefit analysis in those terms, but I have to say that just from the impact surrounding the launch of the first three chapters of the Vinson Inquiry, it clearly has made people sit up and take notice. The government is taking notice, and the Department of Education and Training is taking notice. We've certainly got very good support from the community, expressed to us in terms of the outcomes of the recommendations Vinson released on the 22 May, and there's more to come. The teachers are one of the Labor Council's largest affiliates, but they are not an affiliate of the ALP. It must be interesting view to sit back and watch the current debate going on between the role unions should play in the ALP. Do you have a perspective on that? It's one of those times when you have the luxury to sit back and watch other people have their different point of view about something which indeed might be close to yourself, but not in any official way. I come at it from an individual perspective as the Federation does not have a position on the matter since we're not affiliated with the ALP. But from my perspective, I would say that the ALP was born out of the union movement and it owes a lot of its success to the union movement. I'm absolutely amazed that it would want to turn its back on the organisational strength and support it has drawn from the union movement. The niceties of the debate seem now to be coming down to words about 60/40 representation or a 50/50 representation. But underneath that layer there really is a view that's been around in some circles for some time about making it a party of the membership, as opposed to a party that has union input. My view of the ALP, and I must say I'm not a member, if the ALP was only to depend on its rank and file membership, I don't think it would be doing very well at all. Do you think there's a sense amongst the non affiliated unions, that that ties actually a burden when it comes to you selling the virtues of unionism amongst your membership, that your tarred by the ALP brush, as it were? It hasn't been expressed to us that the Teachers Federation has a problem because other unions are affiliated to the ALP. Our membership generally realises, certainly our activist membership knows, that the union is affiliated with all sorts of organisations, such as the Labor Council of NSW and via the Australian Education Union, with the ACTU. Where regional Labor councils exist, we've actively encouraged our local associations to affiliate. That is a well-accepted policy amongst our membership. We've never really had it said to us, that because a lot of other unions which are affiliated with those organisations are affiliated to the ALP, we shouldn't. That's never been expressed to us, its never been a matter for debate amongst our membership. Finally, how do you think the teaching professions going to look in another 20 years time. Well, the teaching profession is one of those that adapts most readily to all sorts of changes in our society. I think that's one of the things that makes it a fairly stressful occupation. Changing community expectations are reflected in our schools and colleges. For example community demands about drug education are met in our schools. Education will clearly change. Our schools and colleges are at the forefront of educating for the IT revolution. I'm constantly amazed that my eight year old son knows a whole lot more about the computer than I do and he learns that at school. In fact, I might say that one of the good things in the budget, was an additional $56million for IT in schools. It is true to say that the profession of teaching will change. It will keep pace with and lead the knowledge revolution and the IT revolution. Our schools and TAFE colleges will continue to meet the increased demands placed upon them. But at the end of the day the most important part of the education system, no matter what evolves in terms of IT or the demands of the knowledge revolution, will still be the teacher.
|
| Search All Issues | Latest Issue | Previous Issues | Print Latest Issue |
|
© 1999-2002 Workers Online 
|
|
