John Della Bosca
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Minister talks productivity savings and reforms
By Kerri Carr
Any salary increases above 2.5 per cent must be funded through productivity savings or reforms, Education Minister John Della Bosca told Federation Council on August 11.
"The NSW Government's wages policy is that increases should be no more than 2.5 per cent per year if we are to manage the economy successfully," he said.
Federation's salaries, status and superannuation claim, initiated at Annual Conference for membership consultation and final confirmation at February Council, 2008 is for full funding for a three year award, with 5.0 per cent per annum increases for salaries, payments and allowances, an additional 1 per cent increase at the top of the incremental scale (this would also flow on to part time casual teachers in TAFE), the removal of step 7 of the common incremental scale to bolster step 8, and the pursuit of the Unions NSW public sector union claim for 1.0 per cent per annum increases in superannuation for the life of the award. Priority in this claim is to be given to those members in accumulation-only schemes.
Mr Della Bosca said the current agreement ran out at the end of 2008 and the State Government would enter into negotiations with Federation in the second half of next year.
Performance pay
Mr Della Bosca said the State Government did not support proposals that would directly link teacher salaries to student test results.
"There is very little evidence to support the notion that performance pay, in any of its manifestations, is an effective method of improving teacher performance," he said.
Mr Della Bosca also said the Commonwealth has said there would be no extra money on the table for any scheme.
"This means that some teachers will have to be paid less for others to get more," he said.
"This agenda would do little more than pit teacher against teacher and destroy the collegiality that we know delivers the best outcomes for students."
He said pay arrangements for teachers should never be a specific condition for any future Commonwealth funding agreement.
Howard Government
Mr Della Bosca said Prime Minister John Howard and Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop were "attempting to use educational, industrial and financial levers to reconstruct public education in their own image".
"If the Howard government is re-elected, they will require compliance with its agenda as a condition of federal funding of government schools," he added later.
He also said the federal election would be crucial for public education in NSW and also for the context in which salaries and working conditions would be negotiated.
Questions and answers
Jason Gerke, Guyra TA:...We are aware that at least one of your senior bureaucrats has been actively undermining the staffing agreement, promoting Howard/Bishop's local hiring and firing of teachers in a deregulated system. [DET Deputy Director-General] Trevor Fletcher actually did this...Will you publicly reject the Howard/Bishop model of local hiring and firing and commit to a new staffing agreement consistent with the principles embodied in the current agreement?
John Della Bosca: It's a very easy thing for me to do to reject the Howard/Bishop model and I think I have done that on a very large number of occasions already, and of course I share the idea and [have] certainly had quite a few discussions already around the issue of the way the staffing agreement works and why it's of value both to both public education and to teachers and what we'll be doing is having further discussions in term 4. I'm not going to pre-empt those discussions but I agree with my colleague and the previous Minister that they are a great achievement and what we will be doing in discussions we have, we will build on making them better, not pulling them apart.
OCAA Councillor Anne Gates: Will you guarantee that there will be no net reductions across the state and regions to the already bare-to-the-bone consultancy?
John Della Bosca: You won't like the first part of my answer but I hope you will like the second part. I can't enter into a guarantee that I don't know the consequences of and I'm not going to but the intention of myself and the Director-General is to obviously deliver what the Budget requires which is 1.0 per cent savings across all agencies but we intend to do that by what Treasury people call non-labour costs -- not teachers and not the application of frontline educational work and, indeed, the target is, of course procurement and I believe we can say what we need to say through procurement and related changes which will not affect either your educational capacity or your professional industrial problems.
Salaries, superannuation and status of the profession
Della Bosca condemns Australian Technical Colleges
Private school proposals put NSW Minister under pressure
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August 2007 contents
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