Plan aims to dismantle staffing system

The Futures Project will be used to increase managerial prerogative in the staffing of our schools, writes ANGELO GAVRIELATOS.

Recent reports and statements attributed to the Director-General Andrew Cappie-Wood, indicate that the Department of Education and Training (DET) Futures Project will be used by DET and the Government to increase managerial prerogative in the staffing of our schools.

Under the guise of flexibility and accountability, DET will seek to pursue a change that will ultimately undermine and dismantle our statewide staffing system.

Mr Cappie-Wood is quoted as saying, "We want greater capacity for principals to be able to choose their staff." Local selection is the antithesis to a statewide staffing system.

Federation's submission to the Futures Project, and in negotiations on the staffing agreement (due to commence this term) will pursue the maintenance of the statewide staffing system and in particular its centrepiece, a system of transfers which is the essential element in ensuring the appointment of teachers in every school across the state.

Critics of the statewide staffing system who advocate flexibility and local selection too easily dismiss one of the most important principles of public education. The right of a student to be taught by a qualified teacher, in all parts of the state, must always be a higher priority than a desire by a particular school to locally select a particular teacher. Geographical and socio-economic factors across the statewide system do not constitute the 'level-playing field' upon which such misguided theories of choice are based.

The highest responsibility must be to ensure the right of every child to a quality public education through the provision of a qualified teacher.

All members are encouraged to articulate, by way of submission to the Futures Project and other means, the importance of ensuring the maintenance of transfer rights for all classroom teachers and promoted teachers including principals.

Federation is aware that teachers continue to feel disappointed and demoralised by limitations that are placed on transfers by what are meaningless staffing codes. The belief that codes are being abused to manipulate the staffing process continues.

While Federation was successful in achieving a dramatic decrease in the number of staffing codes in the last round of negotiations, the need to review codes to ensure the maintenance only of relevant codes as discriminators for schools is a high priority for Federation.

The union will also pursue the importance of building on existing incentives aimed at attracting and retaining experienced teachers in difficult to staff schools. Federation has been able to achieve:

a) significant gains in rental subsidies for Teacher Housing Authority rentals in eight and six point schools;
b) the introduction of personal leave for teachers in schools which attract the incentive transfer benefit; and
c) the maintenance and partial extension of the $5000 retention benefit in a number of the most difficult to staff schools.

However we need to pursue the expansion of incentives and also staffing policy aimed at attracting experienced teachers to difficult to staff schools.

Federation will also continue to pursue significant improvements in the current method of promotions. In the lead up to the state election the Labor Government committed itself to reviewing the promotions procedures to "make them fairer, more transparent and more excellence-focused by exploring options for an on-the-job component in the assessment and promotion of teachers". It now refuses to provide funding for this initiative.

Federation supports a credentialing process which would establish one's eligibility to apply for vacant positions not filled by transfer. The credentialing process should involve an independent on-the-job assessment of teachers aspiring for promotion. Teachers would need to exhibit their skills in the workplace, in the classroom and in interacting with their peers. On-the-job assessment would lead to an assessment deeming one either ready to apply for a particular category of promotion or not. A favourable assessment would be valid for a period of five years, during which time one would either "use it or lose it".

Angelo Gavrielatos is the Senior Vice President.

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