Local hiring attacks equity and tenure

Attacking the principles which underpin the staffing agreement is an attack on equity, stability and tenure, writes ANGELO GAVRIELATOS.

The Deputy Director-General, Trevor Fletcher, has continued to destabilise the staffing agreement and promote a Howard Government-style deregulation of staffing (see below). Federation has received reports of him doing so on at least two occasions since the state election -- at the meeting of Metropolitan South West principals on March 29-30 and at the Illawarra/South East Region's 4th Annual Principals Conference on May 4.

On May 4 Mr Fletcher told principals that it was his job to convince the new Minister and the new Director-General to effectively change staffing policy in support of a policy of local hiring of staff and devolved staffing budgets.

If one takes the 2006/2007 staffing operation when there were 2682 vacancies as a case study, the effect of a staffing operation as desired by the Deputy Director-General would have been be as follows:

There would have been

• no incentive transfers;
• no compassionate transfers;
• no service transfers; and
• no nominated transfers.

In the period described above there were almost 1825 nominated transfers -- 1520 classroom teachers, 229 executive and 76 principals. They would have all lost their jobs!

The politics of devolution dictate that, in attempting to abrogate the responsibility of government to fund quality government services, under the façade of "flexibility" and "local control", governments devolve operational budgets, including staffing budgets, to the local level and in doing so shift responsibility and, more importantly, blame. Devolution ultimately leads to defunding.

The statewide staffing system and its centrepiece, a system of transfers, is the essential element in ensuring the appointment of teachers in every school across the state and therefore a curriculum guarantee for all students. It is also the only guarantee for job security/tenure.

Apart from an incentive to teach in difficult-to-staff schools, a statewide staffing system and the transfer system provides an opportunity for teachers to move between schools and therefore further develop their professional skills in a range of settings.

The statewide staffing system is also the most efficient way of staffing our schools. Filling each vacancy by local selection would result in schools waiting between six to eight weeks to fill vacancies. The resulting domino effect of necessary backfilling would cause further instability.

As part of the Howard Government's attempt to impose its extreme industrial relations laws on teachers, Federal minister Julie Bishop has stated their desire to force the states to deregulate school staffing by devolving to individual principals the hiring and firing of teachers, effectively abolishing tenure.

Prior to the March 2007 state election, on two occasions the then Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt affirmed the Government's commitment to the terms of the current staffing agreement.

Ms Tebbutt described the staffing agreement as one of her "proudest achievements as Minister for Education". She acknowledged that the staffing agreement provides the greatest guarantee in achieving the equitable allocation of staff to all schools, regardless of location.

Opposing the agenda of deregulating staffing, she said: "The NSW Government takes responsibility for making sure that every school in NSW is staffed with experienced teachers and we will continue to do so. The Coalition will destroy the NSW staffing agreement. We know they tried in 1989 and their desire to do so has just got stronger with Howard's industrial relations fixation...They believe in an unfettered market and the result will be chaos. Schools in favourable locations, in cities and along the coast, will take their pick of applicants. Schools in less favoured locations will be forced to accept what they can and in many cases they will not have sufficient staff. A deregulated workforce would change forever public education in NSW. We would no longer be a public education system but rather 2240 schools pitted against each other. That is not the vision for public education that a Labor Government has."

Research shows that NSW has enjoyed relative stability in staffing and is in a better position than other states which have devolved systems of staffing to deal with the effect of teacher shortages.

Angelo Gavrielatos is the Deputy President.

Julie Bishop plays politics with performance pay

Business could have role in determining school curriculum

More scholarship and less ideology needed on rewarding good teaching

Business comes out fighting in support of Howard

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June 2007 contents