ACT Budget slashes Public Education
From the Australian Education Union
The dispute between the ACT Government and teachers is about to widen with the ACT’s public education community also up in arms over school closures and job cuts in education.
The Budget at a glance:
160 teaching positions cut
85 DET Central Office positions cut
39 schooling sites to close
$100 million in staff savings over 4 years
CIT cut of $3.1 million pa. by 2008
secondary teaching loads to rise
massive profit taking by Government on back of modest 4% pa wage increase
meagre funding for “renewal” of systemAny good news?
$5 million pa for 4 years for ICT upgrades
$1.8 million over 3 years for the Pacific Schools Games
$90 million over 4 years for refurbishment.In return for a 4% pa over three years salary increase, the teaching workforce is expected to increase teaching contact hours by 2 hours per week in secondary and 15 minutes in primary schools to compensate for the loss of teaching positions in schools. In secondary schools, the loss of 120 teaching positions equates to some 10% of the workforce. In addition to the extra teaching, the workload of teachers - particularly in secondary schools - will increase through additional preparation, assessment, supervisory duties and other administrative and curriculum duties.
The savings made by the proposed cuts in positions will produce revenue beyond that required to fund the salary increase of 4% pa that teachers are seeking. This money will be added to savings generated by a reduction in ACT Government superannuation contributions to new entrants from 15.4% pa to 9% pa. This represents a remuneration cut of some 6.4% to any new employees.
The Australian Education Union has highlighted the extreme difficulty that the public school system will face in recruiting when the private sector will be paying higher salaries and superannuation than that available in the public sector. The differential could be as high as 10% in total remuneration by 2007.
New Education Minister, Andrew Barr has maintained that the cuts in teaching positions will be managed through natural attrition. This would see no new recruitment of secondary staff for the 2007 school year leading to shortfalls in specific curriculum expertise as experienced teachers retire or resign. ACT secondary schools will be among the worst staffed in Australia.
Further complications to the dispute over teaching positions, wages and conditions include the major program of school closures and amalgamations that have now been announced in ‘towards 2020 renewing our schools’. However, the Government’s insistence on staff cuts in schools and the Department’s central office will add to the destabilisation of the school system generated by a closure and amalgamation process. The impact of this disruption to enrolment numbers in the public system is expected to be severe on a system that already has less than 60% of total student numbers.
Let’s look at those amalgamations and closures. In the Budget papers there is much talk from the Minister of a new package to woo the community back to public schools. What has been delivered? Largely a smoke and mirrors exercise. Not one cent of additional new money for new school buildings. The West Belconnen and Harrison P-10 schools have long been on the drawing board, and the feasibility study for a college in Gunghalin is old news. There is no new money for new facilities promised to attract students and parents back to the public system?
The ACT community are being offered a system of amalgamated sites which make more or less sense depending on which geographic area you happen to live in. The thesis is that a smorgasbord of options – P-6, P-10, K-6, K-4, P-4, 5-8, 9-12, 7-12, 7-10 – every permutation you can imagine, will somehow blind the community to the fact that these options are being created at the expense of having your own school in your own suburb run by your own principal. Principals will now run “administrative units” of up to three discrete and physically separate schools, with fewer staff do so.
Teachers and community members are asking why a lick of paint to an ageing school building, a few computers and a bit of new carpet, is going change the mind of the average parent contemplating pulling their child out of a system in upheaval? $90 million has been allocated over four years for school infrastructure upgrades. That’s $22.5 million per year. More, certainly, than the $4 million offered last financial year for older school and preschool refurbishments, but only enough to complete a fairly minor refurbishment of around 10 schools per year, or 40 schools in total if evenly spread. That’s less than a quarter of the sites remaining if 39 sites close as proposed. To put it in perspective, the Belconnen West P-10 school is costing $45 million, so the equivalent of two new facilities is to be spread across 120+ remaining school sites with ageing infrastructure, over then next 4 years. The windfall gains made from the sale of preschool and school sites, which would equate to tens of millions of dollars, are completely written out of this Budget and budgetary forecasts for the future.
All of these relocations of students and staff, all of these amalgamations, closures, twinning and tripling, collegiate groupings, new centres for the gifted and talented/VET/ICT, all of these new models of early childhood schools, middle schools, upper secondaries, old style 7-12 secondaries etc, are to be done for a meagre $1 million per year in “transition arrangements ”over 4 years. That’s equal to the cost of one feasibility study for a new college in Gunghalin.
The Government’s “Towards 2020” proposal is a hastily conceived piece of work, crafted without input from the parents, students or teachers whose lives it will impact. It may contain some decent ideas, the germs of a possible conversation, which must now be had in schools and their communities. But its value is severely tarnished by the circumstances of its conception – the economic rather than educational imperative which framed it.
In its desperation to get its projected deficits in order, the ACT Government has decided that it needs to alienate constituencies that it has traditionally supported targetting education, health and other community services. It is also expected to pursue significant revenue increases to deal with the expected deficits for the next three years. The Chief Minister and his colleagues believe that they need to take this action more than 2 years before the next election in an attempt to shore up their economic credentials. Their actions represent a significant gamble given the degree of ongoing alienation and disruption to be created in the ACT public sector and particularly in education.
Teachers are being balloted on possible strike action over the projected job loss, salaries and conditions issues as this article is being written!