Country teaching loses its lustre

The rejection of offers to teach in the bush has begun now that transfers are not assured.

By Kerri Carr

Education Minister John Della Bosca's attempt to placate public school teachers in western NSW through a belated and half hearted attempt at guaranteeing some existing transfer entitlements was not well received by members of the Cobar Teachers Association at its March 14 meeting, Cobar TA President Mark Ippolito said. Mr Ippolito's letter to the editor of the Cobar Weekly (published March 19) was in response to comments by Mr Della Bosca in the Cobar Weekly's March 12 edition.

Mr Ippolito wrote morale among Cobar teachers continues to dissipate.

"Some Cobar teaching staff in the position to apply for transfers back to a school near their families are now reluctantly contemplating doing so," he said.

"It is no secret in teaching circles that the much vaunted head teacher appointment to a school in our region that has recently attracted so much media attention and was used by those supporting the dismantling of the staffing agreement as proof positive that the new system was effective has fallen flat with the applicant rejecting the offer of the position in light of uncertainty over the current staffing agreement. That another district high school commenced the year five teachers short of establishment numbers is further cause for concern."

He said Mr Della Bosca's and Director-General Michael Coutts-Trotter's recent flurry of emails to teaching staff in schools considered hard to staff offered nothing concrete to replace the existing successful three year staffing agreement.

"The NSW Director-General of Education and Training and the NSW Minister for Education, in dismantling the current staffing agreement and not replacing it with an enforceable industrial agreement have set in train a course of events that can have few positive benefits when it comes to staffing NSW schools, particularly those in the west," he wrote.

"Will the last public school teacher leaving Cobar please turn out the lights?" he added.

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Last Modified: 03 Apr 2008