Rural teachers protest exposes Victorian government agenda

Vanguard November 2012 p. 10
by Jack D.

Teachers held a very strong protest meeting in Shepparton on 17 October. About 200 teachers, support staff and general public showed their anger at the delaying tactics of the Baillieu government outside local Liberal Wendy Lovell’s electorate office.

 

Grahamvale Primary teachers said their inclusive school’s culture of working together would be damaged by the divisiveness of a performance based pay system. The school philosophy is that student welfare is everyone’s responsibility. Instead of sharing knowledge for the benefits of the students, teachers would be forced into competition with each other.

The Australian Education Union is fighting to attain wage parity for teachers in Victoria with their counterparts in other states. This would mean an increase of around 30%. Most Australians, according to ongoing surveys, agree that this is just and it is tied up with any effort to maintain top level teaching and maximise opportunities for young Australians.

Teachers are also fighting for better working conditions. They seek to turn around the explosion in short term contracts that as well as forcing teachers into insecurity, interferes with engagement and continuity of education for students. They need teachers who will be there for the long haul.

They also need better resources and smaller class sizes, where individual needs can be better met. Teachers are fighting for these things as well.

Therefore, the teachers’ ongoing battle is not only for themselves, but for their students, and by extension, for the broader community of the Australian people.

Baillieu government agenda exposed

The Minister responsible for teaching, Peter Hall, has exposed the real intent of the bastardry of the Baillieu agenda. He has previously stated that their intent is to encourage new, young people into teaching and “move on those who did not make a strong contribution to our students and our school communities”. In reality, this should read “sack those who are active in their union and refuse to conform to what we ‘born to rule’ conservatives demand should be the case”.

Of course, they want these new young and inexperienced teachers. Baillieu wants them to use as pawns in his rich-man’s ideas of de-unionising the profession, of developing a compliant, terrorised and cowed profession that will not question anything. That is why some 45% of these young people are on six to twelve month contracts now. Job insecurity via a short term contract system is his weapon of choice right now.

Fight for the future of our kids!

We can see clearly that the “Bullshit Castle” wallahs in Spring St. will never do it! It is up to us, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents to come out fighting. We need to get out there to every protest action by the teaching profession workers. We need to lobby, to march, demonstrate, picket and sit in or whatever else it takes to force this and any future government to value the following generations as much as we do.