Page 4019 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 16 Sept 2009
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combination of performance and learning. It has been determined that teachers will eventually leave the profession if the salaries and working conditions are unsatisfactory. Salaries are competitive for teachers but plateau after about eight years, at a time when salaries in other professions tend to rise.
Compared to most OECD countries, our teachers rapidly rise to the top of the incremental scale. The Committee for Review of Teaching and Teacher Education in 2003 produced a report for the commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training. It found evidence of a largely hidden resignation spike after eight to 10 years of teaching, which coincides with teachers reaching the top of the various salary scales. Therefore, it is important that any initiatives that the ACT government or the federal government develop to improve pay and retain teachers take into consideration the exit rate and options to retain our experienced teachers.
We note that there is broad support for a performance-based system for recognising and rewarding teachers. The Australian Education Union’s policy statement, Professional pay and quality teaching for Australia’s future, proposes a professional standards-linked career reform to recognise and enhance the high-quality teaching which students need to meet the challenges of the future. Under the policy, teachers gaining higher standards would be rewarded through salary increases, not one-off cash bonuses. Teacher unions have long sought reform of career structures with the purpose of providing recognition and reward aimed at retaining highly accomplished teachers in the classroom.
The Council of Australian Governments has also identified the need to further recognise and reward quality teaching and to assist in the development of a national partnership between the commonwealth and state and territory governments. They are all committed to funding research to inform effective ways to achieve this.
The Australian Labor Party’s policy statement, released in 2006, also committed the government to enrich teacher career paths through negotiated awards or collective agreements and additional payments for teachers who meet higher standards. Of course, that policy is still in place. Professor Geoff Masters, author of the paper Education: some policy considerations, which was prepared for the Business Council of Australia in 2007, noted the necessity for the establishment of a pay structure for teachers that attracts able young people to teaching as a career.
ACT Greens education measures support the review of pay, conditions and career opportunities of ACT education professionals, as I have said earlier. This is a commitment we have held for a long time and will continue to hold. In the commonwealth Senate yesterday, Greens Senator Christine Milne, when speaking on the education revolution, said,
… it is time as a society we thought much more about the place of schools in our community and about how we value teachers in our community and the job that they do. The whole society must recognise the value of teachers and what they bring to the classrooms.
Because it is neither desirable nor practical to pay differential amounts to teachers other than by an accountable system of promotions or to encourage teachers into
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