Newsletter Sept 25, 2007

Instrumental Music – AEU members take industrial action to support AEU colleagues

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 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.
  

However, since then, the situation for the Instrumental Music sub branch has become much more complex. 2 staff members have been informed that they are under investigation by DECS for alleged complaints of bullying. These members have been outspoken activists in the IMS campaign and have the support of their sub branch. In question is the process used by DECS for the investigation. The DECS Special Investigation Unit has been instructed to conduct a “preliminary investigation”. This process is in breach of DECS policy which specifies that the DECS Grievance Procedures be used to investigate bullying allegations.

The IMS sub branch has voted unanimously to engage in a further campaign in support of their colleagues. Last Tuesday and Wednesday, members gathered at 31 Flinders St for a rally. This was followed by the withdrawal of goodwill and the refusal to use private vehicles to travel to schools.

On Wednesday 26th September, IMS AEU members will take a one hour stop work from 2pm – 3pm.

Members are calling for:
· an immediate reinstatement of the employees to their positions; and
· a commitment by DECS to act within agreed procedures and specifically the DECS Grievance Procedures.

The Progressive Educator team supports the IMS sub branch in taking strong action to resolve this matter.

AEU elections - make your vote count!

AEU ballot papers will be sent out to you on Friday 5th October, 2007. The ballot will remain open until Friday 26th, October, 2007.

Please talk to members at your worksite about the importance of voting.

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.

We are very pleased to announce that 2 members of our team have been elected unopposed. Anne Crawford will be AEU Female Vice President and Jack Major continues in his role as AEU Branch Secretary. Congratulations to both Anne and Jack.

To complete the AEU leadership team, we ask that you vote 1 Correna Haythorpe, Branch President and vote 1 Marcus Knill, Male Vice President.

"I believe that this team has the experience and ability to deliver strong outcomes for all members and for public education".
Andrew Gohl, current Branch President


Please vote for the following Branch Executive candidates:

Andrew Gohl, David Smith, Lesley Lindsay Taylor, Peter Trethewey

Correna Haythorpe, Lara Kelly, Daniel Pereira, Mick Braham

Marcus Knill, Jackie Bone-George, Lyn Waller, Chris Champion

Anne Crawford, Kelvin Jeanes, Carmen Kowalski

Film Screening:

Sunday: 30 September
Time: To Be Advised
Palace Cinema, Rundle St., City
Tickets: $15 full, $11 concession
BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL
Bookings Call: 0412 231 011, 0423 213 690, 0418 894 366

Howard Haters Art Exhibition

This is an invitation to attend the opening of Matt Walker's brand new art exhibition, featuring commentary on the Howard regime. Matt’s art is very popular with Howard haters and he also puts it onto T-Shirts on request.

This exhibition opening is a timely artistic contribution on the eve of a watershed election.

Free entry.

The exhibition opening is 7.30 pm Thursday October 4th at the Wheatsheaf Hotel (a striking piece of his work is on the invitation above).

Music teachers fight back

On Thursday 20 September Instrumental Music Services members are withdrawing their goodwill and are refusing to use their private vehicles to travel to schools.

The Commissioner for Public Employment has advised that public sector employees cannot be compelled to use private vehicles for work purposes. The Acting Chief Executive at her meeting with AEU President Andrew Gohl and Organisers Group Coordinator Bill Hignett on 18 September 2007 confirmed that employees could not be compelled to use their private vehicles.

Gohl and Hignett today attended the two IMS branch offices at Dover Gardens and Klemzig to ensure that there were no high jinks by DECS Officers to undermine this action.

In an attempt to scuttle action by IMS teachers, an email was sent after 4pm yesterday telling the teachers to report to the school they will be teaching at tomorrow.

The advice the AEU have given to the teachers is that they are to report to their base which in the metropolitan area is either the Dover Gardens or Klemzig Office and to ask for a government car or taxi chits to travel to their schools.

This withdrawal of IMS teacher goodwill follows two successful rallies outside the offices of DECS in Flinders Street (photos above and below).



Yesterday’s rally began with an instrumental version of the Simon and Garfunkel classic Mrs Robinson (DECS CEO’s surname is Robinson), ended with a sing-along to a rewrite of Paul Kelly’s Special Treatment.

Notice: Pilger Film "The War on Democracy"

Sunday 30 September

Time: To Be Advised

Palace Cinema, Rundle St., City

Tickets: $15 full, $11 concession

BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL

Bookings Call: 0412 231 011, 0423 213 690, 0418 894 366

The impact of the Howard years on Public Education

by Correna Haythorpe

Since the Howard Government was elected to office in 1996, it has reduced federal funding for public education from 42% of the total school’s education budget to 35% despite the fact that 70% of students are educated in public schools. If this trend continues, federal funding will be down to 31% by 2010.

In a recent Australia Rising address, John Howard made his views very clear about public education when he responded to a question about school vouchers. He expressed opposition to a wholesale voucher approach to education funding because that “undermined the fundamental value and strength of public education as the safety net and guarantor of a reasonable quality education in this country.” Note the word “reasonable” which sets a low bench mark for Howard Government policies on public education.

There has been a massive shifting of funds from public education to private schooling and this comes with the government rhetoric of “choice”, otherwise known as shifting the cost of education to parents by convincing the populace that public education is failing our students. It reflects the Howard/Bishop view that quality education should be located in the private system, with the public school providing a “safety net” for the poor and the dysfunctional – those whom private schools would not accept.

In the run up to the 2007 federal election, the Howard Government has engaged with the insincerity of pork barrelling. In education, there has been an injection of $489 million of additional public funds into private schools which are located in marginally held electorates. The 2007/8 federal budget delivered a $1.7 billion increase to private schools over the next five years, a total of $7.5 billion. Public schools received a $300 million increase taking their total to $3.4 billion. This same budget also ignored preschools and TAFE.

Further analysis of the funding issue must focus on corporate sponsorship and tied funding. Federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop, has stated that schools should explore corporate sponsorship because it is beyond the capacity of governments to give them the resources they deserve.

She also argues that “increasing links between business and schools would enhance student learning, their employability and skills”. Under a corporate sponsorship arrangement, the question can be asked about how schools would maintain their independence in curriculum delivery and professional matters. In what capacity would business be involved in the daily management of the school, the students and staff? How long before we see a “MacDonald’s syllabus” in the Vocational Education sector? Corporate sponsorship is just another strategy employed by the federal government in their refusal to face their responsibility and duty to appropriately fund public education.

In recent years, public schools have faced the issue of tied funding used to enforce implementation of Federal government imperatives. Grants for flagpoles in schools came with the proviso that a Liberal or National Party politician must “unveil” the flagpole. The A-E grade directive that all schools must produce a report that had a common grade was tied to the threat to withdraw federal education funding for each state. This federal attempt to undermine the professional judgement of educators to assess their students, placed enormous pressure on teachers to engage in a grading process, which was seen by many to be psychologically damaging to students.

From 2009 the Federal Government(if re-elected) will use tied funding to require state education authorities to introduce “initiatives” such as performance-based pay for teachers, reporting against national benchmarks with school and state comparisons (otherwise known as league tables) and greater principal autonomy in hiring and firing of staff. State ministers are likely to accept this funding blackmail in order to have the $$$$ for education. Effectively, this will be a move away from hard won employee rights and entitlements, wage security and the concept of equal pay for equal work. It also has the potential to create a staffing crisis in socio economically disadvantaged schools as performance pay will be based on meeting benchmarks set by the federal government and not about delivering a curriculum that enables each student to achieve optimal learning outcomes.

Tied funding has been used recently in the TAFE sector to blackmail state governments into offering all employees Australian Workplace Agreements or face the loss of federal funding. Combine this with a serious national skills shortage, chronic under funding of TAFE, the duplication of services via the Australian Technical Colleges (which are yet to produce graduates despite millions of dollars of public funding) and you have more than 300,000 people being turned away from TAFE since 1998.

The inability of the Howard Government to engage in genuine consultation and partnership with Aboriginal communities about the educational well being of Indigenous students is a national disgrace. It is estimated that in the Northern Territory alone, there are as many as 5 000 Indigenous students who miss out on access to basic secondary education and many thousands of Indigenous children who miss out on preschool and early childhood education programs. The Howard government has shown its lack of commitment to the appropriate resourcing and implementation of long – term strategies needed to provide quality schooling and to address the educational disadvantage faced by Aboriginal communities. Instead the federal government has opted for a quick fix based on political opportunism in the face of an election it looks likely to lose.

For migrant and refugee students (non English speaking background) John Howard expects “[new Australians] to master the common language of English” yet his government is responsible for the scandalous under-funding of essential English language programs for NESB migrant and refugee students. For the provision of required English language services, it is estimated that the current federal funding shortfall is $85 million per annum.

The 2007 Benchmarks - Work and Family Policies in Election 2007 state “A high quality early childhood education and care system is a public good and so requires significant public investment”. As previously mentioned, the Howard government continues to ignore the early childhood sector by refusing to accept responsibility for funding and supporting quality early childhood learning. Research shows that by the time children begin the compulsory years of schooling many of the factors contributing to future inequality are evident. Disparities in access to early childhood learning and the corporate takeover of childcare facilities by profit driven companies further exacerbate those inequalities.

In the past 11 years, the Howard government has continually undermined the professional and public face of the teaching workforce. The recent attacks on history teachers - "a fragmented stew of themes and issues.... dominated by Marxist, feminist or green interpretations of history"; and women - "ageing female primary school teachers are contributing to the nation's obesity epidemic" contribute to the undermining of public schools and educators, values, cultural tolerance and understanding.

The Howard Government education policies have damaged public schools, educators, students, families and the community. However, educators and school communities will continue to fight for a vibrant, strong system where all students can be part of a quality, secular and equitably resourced public education.

We owe it to the children of Australia- our future- to ensure that this happens.

Principal Association slanders public education and teachers

What are the principal associations up to?

This morning's front pager in the Advertiser is a real wake-up call as to what we can expect if the principal associations-backed ticket of AEU Presidential candidate Jan Webber is successful in the forthcoming AEU elections.

Essentially, the principals have gone on strike, refusing to advertise Round One vacancies in the 2008 placement process.

This is the round in which teachers in the Priority Placement Pool are matched first against vacancies.

The impression given by the Primary Principals Association, and splashed as a sub-heading across the Advertiser, is that this results in schools being forced to accept substandard staff.

This is an outrageous slander of the public education system and a despicable attack on teachers by a crew that wants to run the union!

It is worth restating the composition of the Priority Placement Pool from the current Enterprise Agreement:

2.2.1 The Priority Placement Pool would be centrally managed and contain:

2.2.1.1 Teachers with an approved Work Cover claim who need to be placed would be given a priority.
2.2.1.2 Permanent teachers who have an approved priority compassionate placement request….
2.2.1.3 Teachers who still hold a guaranteed right of return to the metropolitan area from the country….
2.2.1.4 Country teachers seeking transfers to metropolitan locations who are eligible…
2.2.1.5 Teachers who are eligible to transfer and are in at least their 4th year of continuous service in an Index of Educational Disadvantage Category 1 school
2.2.1.6 Teachers who are eligible to transfer and are in at least their 5th year of continuous service in an Index of Educational Disadvantage Category 2 school
2.2.1.7 Teachers who have been placed as involuntary PATS for a period of at least 4 years.

These seven categories of teachers together comprise a group of 350, only a few of whom are involved in underperformance issues.

But all teachers and all schools in the public system are now in doubt in relation to their quality because of this contemptuous action of the Primary Principals Association.

Principals who advertised some 700 vacancies for Round One in 2007 are deliberately withholding vacancies this year. Only 230 vacancies have been advertised, fewer than the number of teachers in the PPP.

Let us be clear about what the principal associations want.

Principal associations want to jettison the rights of permanent teachers to a placement.
They are happy to leave teachers forever in remote and difficult schools.

They made this clear in the latest edition of SAPPA News, where Glyn O'Brien, SAPPA President writes: “Currently there is an emphasis still on placement of permanent staff at the expense of true local selection.”

She adds, “SAPPA will continue to expect merit selection.”

This view was also expressed by secondary principals last year in a paper produced by their association's Human Resources sub-committee.

It is a view that means the abolition of the rights of permanent teachers and the opportunity for transfer dependent on the whim of a principal!

We know there is an entrenched culture of bullying both within DECS itself, and out in the schools.

This same group of principals, who aspire to lead the Australian Education Union in SA, are set to further entrench the capacity of principals to bully and intimidate staff by their opposition to the current selection process.

And they have no scruples in fostering a public perception of a “Second Class” public education system, to quote today's main Advertiser heading, in order to get their way.

Principals ticket firms up

Two incidents over the past 24 hours have confirmed that the AEU faces an organised “takeover” bid from the DECS-funded Principal Associations, with the support of 31 Flinders Street.

Firstly, Glynn O’Brien (SAPPA President) has confirmed that the Primary Principals Association is endorsing Jan Webber and her predominantly principal member ticket in the AEU elections. It is likely that SAPPA talk and SASPA chat lines will be used (again) to lobby for support amongst principal level members.

Secondly, DECS sent an email to the AEU declaring that “This is just a courtesy e-mail to advise you that election material for Jan Weber (sic) and Richard Baxter et al will be distributed through the DECS Distribution Centre. This service may be “extended” to other candidates on the proviso that: a service fee was payed(their spelling!) and the material presented is not inimical to DECS’ interests”.

"Inimical", of course, means "contrary, opposed, unfavourable". It's a sad reflection of where this principal-led ticket wants to take us with DECS that DECS is so comfortable with their election material!

So obvious was this DECS-Webber arrangement that wiser heads prevailed over in Flinders Street, and the deal was withdrawn a few hours later “after further consideration of the issues”.

This, combined with the recent attitude of a DECS officer in declaring” that things will be very different at the AEU after the elections, we won’t have to deal with things like we have to now” paints a grim picture of a future for the AEU that none of us wish to see. It also emphasizes how important your work over the next few weeks , and classroom teacher votes during the balloting period, will be.

We know there will be a bloc vote by DECS-funded principal associations in support of a conservative, principal-led faction.

Classroom teachers, other education workers, and progressive school leaders concerned about the quality of public education must encourage a huge participation rate to counter the principal push.

Talk the issues up as widely as possible.

Support the Unity. Action. Strength team led by classroom teacher and Women's Officer Correna Haythorpe (below, centre).