BY NORRIAN RUNDLE & MICHAEL O'REILLY

MELBOURNE — After seven years of working under no certified agreement on pay and conditions, Victorian teachers have finally been offered one — but it won't deliver what they've been promised.

If you listen to the leadership of the Australian Education Union (AEU), the agreement will improve teacher working conditions and class sizes. If you listen to education minister Mary Delahunty or Premier Steve Bracks, however, no new teachers need to be employed to implement the agreement. The reality is that this proposal will not deliver improved working conditions to teachers or maintain quality programs in state schools.

Since their surprise election in October 1999, Bracks' Labor government has done very little to redress the cuts to education implemented by the previous Coalition government of Jeff Kennett. Although 8000 state school teachers lost their positions under Kennett, so far Bracks has only created 913 teaching positions, with a promise of a further 650.

The proposed certified agreement includes class size maximums for secondary schools, but maximums aren't specified for primary schools. Lack of new classrooms (Kennett sold off all the available portable classrooms) and lack of specified staffing levels means primary class sizes will not improve.

Secondary teachers have had their maximum face-to-face teaching time lowered marginally, from 20 hours to 19 hours and 10 minutes, but primary teachers receive no reduction from what was already specified in the federal award they're currently covered by.

Between 900 and 1200 new teaching positions, in secondary schools alone, would be required to implement the specifications on face-to-face time and class sizes, or even to maintain the already reduced programs that many schools are running.

The staffing levels specified in the agreement fall far short of that. The agreement will add 350 primary teachers and 300 secondary teachers — but those 300 teachers will be tied to initiatives in years 10-12 and will not be distributed equitably across the state's 300 secondary schools.

The union leadership admits that there are not enough teachers to implement the agreement, but claims that there will be more teachers announced later this month, as an outcome of an inquiry into state education. But these extra positions will be targetted to specific programs and won't help cut teacher workloads or class sizes.

The basis for the AEU's pitch to teachers is the pay rises contained in the agreement, claiming it will give Victorian teachers parity with their NSW counterparts. The agreement specifies a 9% pay rise across the board over three years, with the 63% of teachers at the top of the salary scale receiving an 18% pay rise.

The pay deal involves several hoops, however. Both Delahunty and Bracks have said that any pay rise over 3% per year will be tied to improved student performance in literacy and numeracy, as well as other, unspecified “performance indicators”.

The union is rushing through ratification of the agreement. Members will receive the full details in the AEU News on October 9 and the ratification meetings will all be over by October 12.

No opportunity has been provided for opposing views to be distributed to members. A group of members have managed to fax out some information calling for members to reject the agreement, but not all members will see this information and members of the group will not be able to attend all ratification meetings.

Rather than being the result of member input and a statewide industrial campaign, the agreement is based on the union leadership playing factional politics within the ALP. A rejection of the agreement would allow for the launch of a real industrial campaign for a far better agreement.

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