Performance ignored in WA teachers' hefty pay rise
"In lifting the salaries of its most experienced teachers in remote and unpopular urban schools to $110,000 by 2011, Western Australia has broken new ground. The need to boost Australia's education standards by lifting teachers' salaries has long been recognised, with the Business Council of Australia advocating a doubling of top classroom pay to $150,000. Under the new rates, graduate teachers in the west will start work on $58,000, a $10,000 increase.
"What is regrettable about the offer by West Australian Education Minister Mark McGowan is that the rises of 15.8 to 21.7 per cent are to be paid across the board. Far outstripping inflation, the deal does not require the 21,500 state school teachers and administrators to work harder or smarter, become better qualified, mentor younger colleagues or take on extra co-curricular duties. [Has The Australian's editorial writer been studying OBE maths??? See the comparison at the top of the home page. Web]
"Nor are the rises linked to performance in terms of student results. Good, bad or indifferent, teachers will continue to be paid at uniform rates, based on years of service, with allowances for working in unpopular areas. As such, the rises are yet another cave-in by a state Labor government to the "provider capture" dominance of a powerful public sector union.
"In May, when Victorian teachers were granted rises of 15.2 per cent in return for an extra 10 minutes a day in the classroom, blue-collar and public-sector unions seized on it as an example of the catch-up increases unions wanted under federal Labor. WA has gone much further, tying larger rises to slightly less time in the classroom. The new deal includes a 20-minute-per-week increase in duties other than teaching (DOTT), time teachers spend out of the classroom. Inevitably, the rise will heighten the chances of similar breakouts adding to wage-push inflation. Teachers in other states, in all sectors, will now have a strong case for their salaries to follow suit. Other public-sector unions are also stepping up claims, with doctors in Victoria pushing for an 18 per cent pay rise over two years.
"Inflationary concerns aside, The Australian has long argued that a shake-up of teaching career structures is needed to make the profession more attractive to the most able graduates and reward quality performance. It is unacceptable that in recent years teaching courses have consistently admitted large numbers of school-leavers from the bottom half of the results spectrum to what is one of the most important professions.
"The West Australian education system needs as much quality control as authorities can muster after years in the wilderness as a hotbed of outcomes-based education. OBE is an education fad in which set curriculum content, objective testing and clear reporting of results are replaced with woolly, new age concepts about student attitudes and their development as lifelong learners using their individual talents. Concepts such as pass and fail are anathema to OBE. So discredited were the west's Year 12 courses that English students were being asked to study the Big Brother TV show and Mr Men children's books, and music students were not required to read music or play an instrument.
"In December, after strong parental dissatisfaction, the Carpenter Government finally reintroduced syllabuses nine years after they were scrapped by a former Liberal government. But they are not mandatory. Unfortunately, in lifting salaries to overcome a serious teacher shortage that has become acute because of population growth from the resources boom, WA has missed an important opportunity for reform. Making such hefty rises conditional upon improved performance or greater quality would have made students the winners."
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