Vote for Marcus Knill, Male Vice-President

MARCUS KNILL
Current Vice President (06/07)
Vice Presidential Candidate (08/09)

ABOUT ME
I am married and have a beautiful daughter who is 17 months. We live in Cheltenham.

I began my teaching career in 1994 at Ceduna Area School. The multicultural town with a relaxed lifestyle, professionalism of the staff and the spirited students saw me there for six years as a middle primary teacher. One of these years I had the opportunity to be a Primary Counsellor and in 1999 was the Assistant Principal (R-5 Focus).

This was followed by an appointment of Assistant Principal (3-6 Focus) at Roxby Downs Area School. In addition to the leadership of ten primary classes, I had responsibilities in Special Education, Aboriginal Education and OSHC.

An opportunity as Principal at Kimba Area School presented a move in 2004. I resigned from this position at the end of 2005 to take up my current role as Vice President.

Throughout my working life I have been a passionate unionist and advocate for public education. I have been a Branch Council delegate since 1995 and always been an active member of workplace organising committees. I firmly believe that collective activism at the sub-branch and branch levels has a powerful impact on keeping the employer in check. We cannot leave issues such as resourcing, social justice and progressive education ideology to the Governments.

WHAT I CAN OFFER
· Classroom teaching and leadership experience in R-12 schools
· Two years’ experience of the Vice Presidency
· Ability to negotiate in a measured way
· Ability to listen and analyse issues
· Understanding of the need for work/life/family balance
· Strong social justice principles
· Comprehensive knowledge of curriculum and other professional issues
· Collaborative leadership at both the SA Branch and Federal level

RUNS ON THE BOARD
Curriculum
· Rigorous opposition to the Federal Government’s A-E grades
· Established the AEU/DECS SACSA Implementation Reference Group
· AEU response to the SACE Inquiry with the Secondary Education Committee
· Development of “Secondary Public Education Renewal in South Australia” paper with the Secondary Education Committee
· AEU representative on SACSA Executive – keeping workloads and usability of the framework in check
· Led AEU input into the SSABSA Legislation Bill.
· Drafting the AEU Assessment & Reporting Policy with the Curriculum & Professional Development Committee
· Represent SA Branch on the Federal Curriculum and Professional Issues Committee
· Consultatively developed a position in response to the TRB’s introduction of standards linked to teacher registration.
Band 3 (Leaders)
· Successfully negotiated operational guidelines for Band 3 classification, including improvements for Deputy Principals
· AEU representative on the Principal Classification Review Panel
· Convened meetings with the Heads of Associations
· Joint exploration of administration time with DECS, including interstate visitations
Aboriginal Education
· Convened Aboriginal members with Research Officer to develop a response to Howard’s inappropriate intervention in the Northern Territory
· Developed a position on DECS’ Individual Learning Plans initiative for all Aboriginal students in consultation with the Aboriginal Education Consultative Committee
Work/Life Balance
· Successfully negotiated improvements to the DECS HR04 Special Leave Policy including protracted negotiations on the ability to take special leave with pay in hours
· Successfully negotiated the formation of the HR14 Part-time Policy
· Developed the AEU position on Part-time Principals
· Attended numerous sub-branch meetings hearing the views of members on work/life balance
Country Education
· Taken several forums to the country to listen to the views of country members, including SACE, housing and country incentives
· Working with the Roxby Downs sub-branch in attempt to avert a rental crisis for 2008
· AEU representative on the PEHAC (Public Employees Housing Advisory Committee)
· Developing a campaign with the Country Conditions Standing Committee on service provision to country areas

Newsletter Aug 27, 2007

Instrumental Music – AEU members secure another win!

Just prior to the successful 1000+ gathering at the Capri Cinema, Goodwood on 12 August 2007, DECS CEO sent the AEU a letter that backed away from the proposed model with a range of concessions. These are:

• No changes to Instrumental music in 2008 for primary or secondary schools or students.
• Instrumental music teachers to remain part of the Instrumental Music service, north, south and country and will not be forced into schools.
• Trials to commence in 2008 of a range of different instrumental music delivery styles, including the original Year 5 whole class approach.
• Trials will be paid for by DECS and from outside the Instrumental Music Service budget.
• Trials will be voluntary for both school and Instrumental music teachers. That is; no school or teacher can be compelled to participate.
  

AEU members have always supported quality teaching and an excellence in the Public Education system. AEU members support the critical evaluation of teaching methodology and pedagogy. On this basis the AEU also supports the trials where the following preconditions are met:

• All staff involved, including Instrumental Music Teachers, are provided with appropriate Professional Development that meet identified needs.
• All staff participation is on a voluntary basis.
• Trials will not contribute an additional workload impost upon those who volunteer, that is; trials will be fully resourced; e.g. to allow for any release time required for planning and evaluation.
• Trials are conducted within an action research framework and outcomes are critically evaluated by a centrally established “Trial Review Committee’ consisting of representatives from Instrumental Music Service, primary and secondary classroom teachers and the AEU.

Regardless of the outcomes of the trials, no Education Minister is going to hastily adopt any changes that will bring about another public show of strong opposition.

Speaking of common sense….

Why can’t DECS leadership and the Minister snap out of its unquestioning reliance upon the miasma of poor advice that is passed upward as well informed strategy and initiative by DECS middle level bureaucrats – many of whom have either never taught or are from Victoria and were appointed by Spring or are so long out of the classroom that memories have become very dim?

Here’s an incomplete list of the matters that DECS and the Minister have been poorly advised on and forced one way or another to back down on since September 2006:

• Threat to cut 10 metro permanent relieving teachers
• Imposition of 1% Workcover levy
• Threat to cut Swimming and Aquatics programme
• Threat to cut Instrumental Music programme
• Threat to Schools to pay more for temporarily placed teachers
• Threat to increase travel distance from 45km to 70 km

The two directorates within DECS that think they are a part of the wild, wild west are Industrial Relations and Human Resources.

How many times has DECS Industrial Relations ignored advice from AEU Industrial Officers only to learn the hard way in the commission since 2005? Five times!

One DECS officer from IR is rumored to have openly defied the Assistant CE in a meeting over permanency for Aquatics Instructors.

Country PATS and contracts exploited

Country PATS and contract teachers who have demonstrated a clear commitment to country schools deserve to appointed to on-going vacancies. Instead, a number are being shunted from pillar to post while inexperienced early exit teachers are being placed first, in ongoing vacancies.

It is a matter of convenience for DECS to keep country PATS and contract teachers filling short term vacancies as these teachers are already in the country district - a ready made pool of exploitable labour.

This issue needs to be raised by the AEU on behalf of country PATS and contract teachers. Names and circumstances are important to build the case. We suggest that anyone who feels that they have been “passed over” by a graduate appointment, should alert the AEU so that the issue can be dealt with.

Have you been worked over by Education Works?

The Minister’s Education Works ‘Team’ is supposedly working with communities to examine the feasibility of preschools and schools co-locating or amalgamating. Remember that any restructures under education works are meant to be voluntary. Not so apparently, according to one lower north primary school!

AEU elections - make your vote count!

Election time is in October. Make sure you vote as soon as you receive your election papers in the post. Less than a third of AEU members voted in the last election.

Stay tuned!

10 reasons why women’s votes count at the next Federal Election.

1. Amber: sacked and offered her job back on an AWA that cut her pay by $40 a shift.

2. Jane: sacked after four and a half years when she questioned whether she was being paid correctly. The employer then called her to dismiss her, saying that he couldn’t possibly work with Jane any more because she had questioned him.

3. Ana: an administrative worker for a small company. Two months before her long service leave was due she was sacked. The reason given for her dismissal was that her employer’s relative was coming into the business.

4. Valerie, 54, full time manager at a small transport company. She had worked there for over two years and had never been paid any superannuation. Valerie raised the issue of the non payment of superannuation with her employer before she went on annual leave. While on leave she was not paid. When she contacted her employer about payment for the annual leave he was abusive and dismissed her over the phone.

5. Helen, receptionist, had a miscarriage and had to attend several follow-up medical appointments. The employers made it difficult for her, and were not happy that she had to leave work for these appointments. One day Helen was upset and teary at work and notified her supervisor that she needed to take a break. She was gone for an hour. She was then accused of abandoning her position and dismissed for this reason.

6. Suzy, 35, worked between 10 am to 4 pm, which suited her child care arrangements. Suzy’s employer asked her to extend her hours to 5 pm. When she said she couldn’t because of the high cost of after school care, Suzy was told she had to do the extended hours or leave. She refused and was dismissed.

7. Larissa, sacked after refusing to sign an AWA that included a $200 fine for workers who take sick leave without giving 12 hours notice.

8. Single mother Amie was sacked from her job of five years on the day she stayed home to care for her sick daughter. Her five-year-old daughter had spent the night vomiting. The next morning, Amie telephoned the Adelaide real estate office where she worked and told the office manager she needed to take Natasha to the doctor. In the afternoon, the office manager arrived at Amie’s house and handed her a letter of dismissal. “When I was sacked, I was most worried about paying the mortgage — I didn’t want to lose my house and I didn’t know how I would pay the bills. I feel disgusted. You can’t play with people’s lives like that.”

9. Joan, 58, had worked as a cook for nearly ten years, early morning to lunchtime Wednesday to Sunday. Joan’s employer handed her an AWA individual contract to look at overnight and told her if she refused to sign it she could look for another job. The AWA provided no sick or annual leave, no public holiday penalties, and she would have to be available on call seven days a week until 10 pm.

10. Gender pay equity is slipping beyond the reach of working women. Since the introduction of the Howard Government Work choices legislation, women in full time jobs now earn around $100 less than men (2007 ABS data). For those in part time or casual employment, the gender pay gap for hourly rates is as high as 20%
This is not the only area where women are particularly at risk of being affected by Workchoices. Others include: loss of unfair dismissal rights; reduced working conditions and entitlements such as paid leave; conversion of part time work to casual employment with no leave or flexible work options attached.

AWAs are not about negotiating better conditions for employees, they are being used as a means to reducing working conditions and to prevent unions from representing employees. Statistics from the Office of Employment Advocate show that only 25% of AWAS have included family friendly provisions. This has had a significant impact on employees with family responsibilities as there are no guaranteed entitlements to penalty rates or shift pay under the “fairness” test.

These stories are real. Names have been changed to maintain confidentiality for people who are speaking out about what has happened to them under the Howard Government IR legislation. The stories are not isolated and are happening to women all around you, your friends, your neighbours, your students, your families. Make your vote count for women in the next Federal Election.

Anecdote source: http://www.actu.asn.au/

DECS proposed Instrumental Music model compounds disadvantage

Instrumental Music funding and jobs were saved though union member campaign, but DECS wants to implement a new model for delivering instrumental music that will cease opportunities for students to learn from Year 3 and begin instead at Year 5 learning an instrument as a whole class.

While DECS asserts that the evidence is that students learn musical instruments better as a large group no one can be sure about exactly what circumstances that might be the case.

Instrumental Music Teachers’ professional judgment is that that the more time spent with a qualified music teacher on an instrument the greater the student’s capacity to learn. Small classes improve student learning outcomes.

DECS want to reduce secondary students’ access to Instrumental Music by 20% every year until nothing is left – forcing students wishing to continue studies in an instrument to pay for private tuition - during the school day. This will make it tough for secondary students to satisfactorily complete their music component of SACE.

This is not only socially unjust; it is a breach of the contract between the Public Education system and students and parents for the government must ensure the provision of a broad and comprehensive curriculum is accessible by all. Under DECS’ flawed model Parents will pay for public education music twice - once through state and federal taxes and second through instrumental music tuition fees.

Specialist Music Schools have been quarantined for the moment at least, which is a relief for those metro based students who can at least attend one of the four specialist music schools in the state.

While some might herald the announcement of a scholarship for country music students, it won’t take long for country parents to realise that a music teacher shortage has implications for the quality of music tuition. City students get at least some access to registered and qualified teachers. Country kids are likely to be taught by unqualified, unregistered tutors without police checks.

DECS has lost its way. Too many middle level bureaucrats too long out of the classroom (if indeed they’ve had any education background at all) are calling the shots without a focus on student learning outcomes or understanding of teaching.

DECS is attempting to censor education department employee critics exercising their professional judgment about the educational value of this new model with threats of disciplinary action.

DECS’s crash through or crash approach is a disgrace.

Open debate, critical analysis and reflection

As bureaucrats and bean counters attempt their mealy minded public service takeover of public education the only antidote are educators with strength of character and commitment to students to begin to challenge the DECS bureaucracy with professional and open debate based on critical analysis and reflection.

We should always be asking ourselves what is the best for our students learning? What is the best for our profession? What and who is hindering? What and who is helping?

Whose interest and what purpose do we serve when we unquestioningly act or implement any matter in our preschools and schools? Students? Educators? Departmental Bureaucrats? State Government? Federal Government?

Professional and critical debate and reflection in every public education forum and meeting from the site to the centre is not just our right, it is our responsibility. Committed educators everywhere must ensure that the Public Education system remains focused what is best for students as opposed to what is best for AAA credit ratings or what is best for populist politics.

Bishop's uneducated power grab

Julie Bishop has contracted a marketing/polling firm to survey school principals about 'autonomy'. They are 1 hour face to face interviews. With Howard's taste for grabbing power from the states, watch out for Julie Bishop's Education power grabs. The various Principal Associations (considered by many Principals as unrepresentative Liberal Party fronts) already softening up the public with curriculum concerns.

Speaking of Bishop power grabs, Julie B. has jumped aboard the PM's Mersey Hospital intervention in Tasmania. She's suggesting that public schools apply to become self governing trusts outside the state system and get direct Federal funding. Similar to Thatcher style Opting Out in the UK. Not sure how it would work constitutionally, but wasn't it only recently that she said that the Feds could no longer afford to fund public education, and invited her big business pals including the head of Maccas in Australia, to step in and bail them out?

APPA’s Draft Charter captured by Federal Agenda

The Australian Primary Principal’s Draft Charter on Primary Schooling seems to have taken an unexpected turn with a proposal that would be very encouraging for the Howard Federal government education agenda of attempting to control and limit curriculum that might cause students at any level to develop skills in critical analysis and independent thinking.

No surprises there since the development of the Draft Charter was funded by federal Education Minister Julie Bishop.

The draft errs from the outset by stating that, “the main purpose of primary schooling is ensuring that all children learn and gain a permanent love of learning.”

Learn what though? No point at being good at learning if somebody has already made a decision about what should be learned. Surely the main purpose of schools (primary and secondary) is to educate. An educated individual would be recognised as one who has knowledge, skills and understandings in a broad range of disciplines.

One might be simultaneously clever in maths but also incredibly ignorant about their personal contribution to global warming, or be a gifted scientist but unable to consider the ethical issues surrounding their research. Clever and gifted perhaps, but not educated.

In April 2007 the original concern voiced publicly by APPA was that the primary curriculum was “cluttered” What was the primary curriculum cluttered by? Leonie Trimper, President of APPA stated that, “Governments expect schools to give equal weight to the eight learning areas while also dealing with a host of other needs and issues.”

Ms Trimper identified curriculum add-ons such as children’s emotional, nutritional and physical health problems, their interpersonal issues and a host of other things from road safety to limiting television viewing and teaching safe behaviour near dogs.

Fair enough and in fact, in five minutes AEU members from the Murraylands Area listed 26 separate ‘curriculum initiatives’ outside of the eight learning areas.

Primary and Secondary teachers could all tell of politically driven curriculum initiatives that are foisted upon schools without adequate resourcing for professional development or funding for teaching materials or time for implementation.

This is the real issue. More and more, populist politically driven curriculum components are foisted upon schools. Education Departments have bowed to politicians and promoted the curriculum add-ons, without addressing resourcing for schools in terms of cost in time, funds, professional development and implementation or consideration of the impact upon teacher workload that will detract from the eight learning areas.

Members report that principals and schools will commit to any number of these ‘initiatives’ without analyzing the school’s capacity to implement the add-on in terms of the current teaching workloads of staff or the priority of implementing that particular add-on compared to existing initiatives or even the essential learning areas of the curriculum.

There’s only so much time in the day. What stays and what goes?

What is really needed is for teachers to exercise their professional judgment about the value of the curriculum add-ons and their capacity to teach these without compromising the real curriculum.

And then there’s the hours of mind numbing anti educational bureaucracy and administration geared to increasing levels of accountability for state and federal governments who are decreasing funding to public education

This is the second flaw of APPA’s draft charter. Instead of taking a strong position about the workload of teachers because of bureaucracy and inadequately funded politically driven curriculum add-ons and the expectations upon principals to slavishly implement them APPA has chosen to make a comparative judgment about the value of the eight areas of learning.

APPA has stated that it values most highly English literacy and Mathematics (including numeracy) – the core. Next most important is Science and History. What about the Arts? Design and Technology? Health and Physical education? Languages?

Teaching literacy and numeracy are so important that they should and do feature within the eight areas of learning. Certainly literacy and numeracy are necessary skills to be mastered in order to learn effectively and should be taught in conjunction with a broad and inclusive curriculum.

Primary teachers put a great deal of emphasis upon ensuring that every student experiences success. Not all students will come to love learning maths or science or English or history. Many will develop an affinity with one learning area or another. Pity the poor student whose only chance for success in primary education is through physical education or music or a second language.

APPA’s Charter fails to address the real cause of curriculum overload and teacher workloads. Teachers by and large want to focus upon literacy and numeracy and the eight learning areas of the curriculum with control over the implementation of politically driven add-ons and mindless administrative tasks.

The AEU supports a broad and comprehensive and inclusive curriculum for all students.

The AEU supports the professional judgment of its members to determine what contributes and what detracts from student learning and the curriculum in collaboration with parents and students.

Progressive Educators Quiz Night

QUIZ NIGHT

Supporting the Progressive Educator fundraising campaign
- AEU Principal Officer and Branch Executive Elections

Come along and meet the candidates for:
2008 President and Vice Presidents

Saturday, 18th August
6:45 for 7.00pm start
Prospect Town Hall
128 Prospect Road, Prospect

Parking available
Enter car park from Vine St. or Olive St.
Tickets: $15.00 per person
Tables of 8-10

Put together your own table or join another table
BYO drinks and nibbles

RSVP: Correna Haythorpe, Marcus Knill, Anne Crawford
E-mail: proged@adam.com.au

Phone: 04033 08633