Why Teaching Conditions Matter
And what the proposed agreement gets wrong
As we sit with an in-principle agreement and as we’re about to be asked to vote either YES or NO, we need to ask ourselves, what makes this job so challenging?
Pay
A lot has been written about the shortcomings of the pay offer compared to our log of claims.
We demanded 35% over 3 years (11.67% average annual increase). Critically, education support staff have been offered only ~24% over the 4 years (6% average annual increases compared to 11.67% in our log of claims!) whilst teachers have been offered 28.3% to 32.4% over the life of the agreement.
To make up the difference for ES, the offer stipulates an annual 4% ‘allowance’. The allowance will be paid as a lump sum and will attract higher tax. This is rubbish. There must be an increase to ES base salary and this is reason enough to vote NO on this agreement. We can't leave ES staff behind.
Conditions
Many teachers will welcome this pay bump. As inflation continues to rise and interest rates rise, seeing an increase in our salaries by the end of the year is welcomed. However, focusing solely on pay obfuscates the real challenges of this job - the increasingly high demands and bureaucratic expectations of our day-to-day.
Classrooms are becoming more complex. A day in the classroom requires significantly more preparation - greater differentiation and adjustments, individual timetables, ready to learn plans, behaviour support plans, increased assessment and observational data. All while dealing with increasingly challenging behaviours, and the administration that accompanies it. The average teacher is working 10+ hours a week overtime.
So, what does this agreement do to improve our conditions? Well, nothing really.
Four Professional Practice Days (PPDs) are a welcomed inclusion but we need to be realistic about the impact. Firstly, this is simply reinstating the pre-2022 conditions. But more importantly, while a day a term is helpful, it doesn’t meaningfully alleviate the complexities and stress of our daily classroom workloads.
Beyond PPDs, conditions will remain the same. If you’re one of the 6 in 10 teachers who are planning or considering leaving the profession primarily because of burnout, will an extra 3 days a year save you?
Avoiding Burnout
A pay rise will certainly boost teachers’ morale in the short term. For some it will mean being able to comfortably put food on the table for our families. Others will be able to pay off the mortgage without undue stress. Some might be able to take the kids on a holiday. This is great and reduces stress outside of work.
But does it avoid burnout?
By Term 2 2027 when reports are due and you have upcoming DI profile meetings, is the extra pay in our pocket going to magically make the days at work easier to manage? Will working into the night and over the weekends feel justified because we’ll be paid more? The money is necessary, but if it’s not paired with improved conditions, we’re talking about a temporary fix.
We need improved conditions that will meaningfully reduce workload if we want to save teachers leaving the profession.
These include:
Reduced class sizes to allow us to appropriately address the more complex needs of our classrooms
Reduced face-to-face time to allow us to plan and prepare differentiated lessons for all learners
Reduced weekly meetings to let us do our bloody job!
These three measures would make a meaningful impact on our daily lives at school. Reducing the number of meetings wouldn’t even cost the government anything. We aren’t asking for much.
While immediate improvements would be ideal, we understand that some schools literally don’t have the physical capacity to implement smaller class sizes tomorrow. However, there is no excuse to commit to reducing class sizes from 2028 onwards and plan for appropriate facilities to be organised.
This log of claims was always about pay and conditions.
Vote NO and be ready to STRIKE until we receive improved conditions that will actually help us manage our daily classrooms.