10 May 2019

Jeremy Rockliff, Minister for Education and Training

AEU Executive endorses Government wages offer

I welcome the AEU Executive unanimously endorsing the Government’s latest wage offer and we look forward to members having the opportunity to also accept this offer.

The Government and the AEU have been working collaboratively to develop a new Teachers’ Agreement and the offer, tabled by the Government yesterday, is as a result of this work.

Finalisation of this agreement will enable the Hodgman Liberal Government to employ 345 new teachers, this is 95 more than our original election commitment.

We value our teachers and the work they do to support students to reach their full potential. I am confident this agreement delivers teachers a pay rise that recognises teachers’ impact and cost of living pressures, addresses workload issues, supports a high quality workforce and, most of all, benefits our students.

Importantly, this offer delivers a pay rise that is fair and affordable, with savings agreed to which will offset salary increases above two percent and a range of improvements to current terms and conditions.

As well as improved pay and conditions, the offer includes:

• Recognition of the Department of Education’s most experienced teachers including the introduction of a new Band 1 Level 14;
• Improves the delivery of primary education by offering every primary school student access to two hours of specialist teaching (music, drama, art, agriculture, robotics, etc.), per week by 2022, allowing classroom teachers more time for preparation and planning;
• Provides our early career teachers with the support that they need to become great teachers, by acknowledging that experienced mentors make a big difference, and providing increased access to increased professional learning;
• Acknowledges the considerable complexity that Principals must manage, day to day, in leading our schools, by providing an additional 10 FTE to assist them to discharge their role, including assistance with managing critical incidents and managing staff; and
• Improves relief arrangements, by proposing a pool of permanent relief staff to ensure that hard to staff schools have ready access to relief teachers.

In addition, the offer provides a clear career pathway for Teacher Assistants by proposing that positions requiring para-professional qualifications to be classified under the teaching award.

We all want the best possible educational outcomes for our students and ultimately it is students who will benefit most from these improvements.

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