aeu news vol 15 issue 6

v o l u m e 15 I i s s u e 6 I s e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9

Branch conference | How business took over education | ES Week

on the roadtAFE4ALL

AEU

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contactseditorial enquiries Nic Barnard tel (03) 9418 4841 fax (03) 9415 8975 email [email protected] enquiries Lyn Baird tel (03) 9418 4879 fax (03) 9415 8975 email [email protected]

AEU News is produced by the AEU Publications Unit: editor Nic Barnard | designers Lyn Baird, Peter Lambropoulos, Kim Flemingjournalist Rachel Power | editorial assistant Helen PrytherchPrintPost Approved: 349181/00616 ISSN: 1442—1321. Printed in Australia by GEON on Re Art Matt 100% Recycled Paper. Free to AEU members. Subscription rate: $60 per annum. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the AEU News are those of the authors/members and are not necessarily the official policy of the AEU (Victorian Branch). Contents © AEU Victorian Branch. Contributed articles, photographs and illustrations are © their respective authors. No reproduction without permission.

Contentscover story

AEU Victorian BranchBranch president: Mary BluettBranch secretary: Brian Henderson

AEU VIC head office address 112 Trenerry Crescent, Abbotsford, 3067 postal address PO Box 363, Abbotsford, 3067 tel (03) 9417 2822, 1800 013 379 fax 1300 658 078 web www.aeuvic.asn.au email [email protected]

country offices Ballarat (03) 5331 1155 | Benalla (03) 5762 2714 Bendigo (03) 5442 2666 | Gippsland (03) 5134 8844 Geelong (03) 5222 6633

COVER IMAGE: Anna Kelsey-Sugg

AEU

NEWS

7International incidentAEU member Jeff Daniels found himself at the centre of the diplomatic row over a film about the Muslim Uighur people at the Melbourne Film Festival.

A dirty businessLeague tables are only the latest stage in the capture of education policy by corporate interests. Sharon Beder reports on a business takeover.

the teacher whispererWith seven out of 10 teachers new to the profession, Carranballac College needed a strong support program — so it turned to Jenny Costello.

AEU branch conferenceThis year’s AEU branch conference heard a call to return to the grassroots to win public support for the fight against league tables and for fair funding.

3 president’s report 27 safety matters

4 letters 28 classifieds

11 christina adams 29 international

23 women’s focus 30 culture

25 on the phones 31 giveaways

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tAFE 4 All on the roadWith mobile billboard in tow, the campaign against TAFE fee hikes has hit campuses across the state.

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when you see one?What about a fabulous team?

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The Disability Support Worker Awards recognise up to five individuals and one team of disability support workers. The awards provide the

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Who is eligible?Any individual (employed as a disability support worker for at least two years) or team of disability support workers, employed in a Victorian disability services managed or funded service is eligible.

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The Awards will be presented at the Disability Support Worker Conference on 19 November 2009.

To locate a nomination form visit: www.dhs.vic.gov.au/disability/dswawards

For more information contact (03) 9096 2980 or email: [email protected]

NOMINATIONS CLOSE ON 18 SEPTEMBER 2009A combined initiative of National Disability Services Victoria, Disability Professionals Victoria, Health and Community Services Union, Australian Education Union, Australasian Society for the Study of Intellectual Disability and the Department of Human Services.

2 aeu news | september 2009

JULIA Gillard’s release of the research report Rewarding Quality Teaching on August 16

provides a strong launch pad for a genuine debate over teachers’ pay — and to shift the terms of that debate from John Howard and Julie Bishop’s narrow focus on “performance pay” based on student results to a broader professional pay structure.

We welcome that debate.Incredibly, the report was commissioned by the

Howard Government, which makes its recommenda-tions all the more interesting.

It notes that “most (stakeholders) prefer to use agreed professional standards and other school and system-based performance indicators”, and finds “an increasingly sophisticated approach to teacher’s standards setting in Australia that may form part of the basis of teacher assessment.”

Importantly, it concludes: “Any reward regime should be designed and evaluated to ensure it achieves its aim of guiding teachers toward high performance and retaining high performing teachers in classrooms across schools in Australia”.

The AEU has long advocated a career structure which allows teachers to stay in the classroom. The sad reality is that the current career structure requires teachers to progressively leave the classroom to achieve promotion (and higher salaries).

Politicians often opine that “quality education depends on quality teaching”. It certainly does. Why then don’t we recognise and reward quality teaching with a classroom-based career structure?

A growing coalition is calling for this to happen.The Business Council of Australia has proposed

a remuneration structure that values quality teaching, saying these teachers should be able to access salaries between $100,000 and $150,000.

Meanwhile, in Victoria…The Education Department is currently asking schools to participate in “Teacher Rewards” — its cute name for performance pay. Two models are being trialled:

• Individual awards where 80% of the money goes to the top 30% of teachers at each classification level

• Whole-school rewards where the school has to determine how the money will be paid.

The AEU was consulted, but has not agreed to it as it does not meet our policy of professional pay based on defined standards.

Teachers are supposed to be consulted about whether or not they want to take part in the trials. However the AEU has heard reports that some schools in the Northern, Eastern and Hume regions are being pressured into participating and some

principals are agreeing without consulting staff. If your school is participating and you have not

been consulted, contact the AEU and we will act.Given the recent report endorsed by Gillard, one

has to ask the question why Victoria is spending precious education dollars on Teacher Rewards?

TAFE 4 ALLOur TAFE 4 ALL campaign trail has included visits to 15 TAFE campuses and 13 secondary schools (see pages 5 and 12-16). This Victorian Government policy puts barriers in the way of so many people trying to engage in education and training.

TAFE students tell us they are fearful of huge fee hikes and a HECS-type loan scheme giving them debts they cannot afford.

Despite a $16 million government advertising budget to sell their changes, secondary schools had until late August received no information to help them advise students on their TAFE pathways!

I urge AEU members to visit tafe4all.org.au. Get informed and spread the word. A strong, afford-able public TAFE system is every Victorian’s right. ◆

Poor performance over payJulia Gillard has endorsed a study that supports the case for professional pay based on agreed standards. So why is Victoria wasting money on a divisive, ill-considered performance pay trial?

AEU Vic branch president

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sEMinArs RV will hold retirement seminars at the AEU Building on the following dates: Tuesday 22 September at 10am (Holidays) Tuesday 29 September at 10am (Holidays) Saturday 24 October at 10amBookings: Call Rhonda Webley on (03) 9418 4844.

FinAnCiAL PLAnsWe continue to see examples of so-called financial plans. These documents are lengthy, computer generated, full of technical jargon and meaningless long term calculations. They are not personalised and have no strategic perspective. Why not experience a professional personalised approach and book a complementary first appointment in the near future.

lett

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Letters from members are welcome. Send to: aeu news, po box 363, abbotsford, 3067, fax (03) 9415 8975 or email [email protected]. Letters should be no more than 250 words and must supply name, workplace and contact details of the writer. Letters may be edited for space and clarity. Next deadline: 7 October, 2009.

CCV_Workplace Giving_art.indd 1 17/8/09 4:18:12 PM

Guilt edgedTHANKS for a very informative AEU News but being a business manager I felt very guilty when reading the article What A Relief (AEU News, August 09) as I do not give CRTs a superannuation choice!

I think most schools use VicSuper as a default for efficiency reasons — please correct me if I’m wrong. I would also question the complimentary tea and coffee as our staff pay for their own, so it would come out of their pockets.

What do other schools do?— Linda Taylor

Croydon PS

no to Gillard’s attacksI WATCHED, with growing anger and frustration, Julia Gillard talk about so-called transparency in education on Insight (SBS, August 18).

She explained that policy-makers needed tests like NAPLAN to know where resources and high-performing teachers needed to be placed; that we require comparisons between “like schools” so they can share teaching strategies; and that in some low-performing schools principals may need to be changed. In the New York model on which she bases much of

her plans, low-performing schools are closed down.

She also stated that she under-stood that these measures will put more pressure on all of us, but that this was needed to improve outcomes.

What these measures will mean is that principals will be obliged to coerce their staff to work harder. It means performance pay, which in turn will mean the erosion of colle-giality and less sharing of resources and ideas. The pressure to improve test results will mean a narrowing of the curriculum.

As one principal on Insight stated, what we really need to lift literacy and numeracy is smaller classes.

What we also need is time to sit and reflect, discuss and tease out ideas with our colleagues. We need time to share ideas and create plans to deal with difficult students, to phone parents, to talk with students one to one. We need time to create individual learning plans, to mentor graduates and assist colleagues. We need time for professional development.

We do not have adequate time to effectively do these things because we have large classes, large allotments and too many extra tasks to perform.

This “blame the teacher” mentality

will not benefit students. It will create a pressure cooker system, a dog-eat-dog mentality for which entire school communities will pay the price.

We must determinedly oppose such measures and call for measures that we know will benefit both students and teachers.

— Mary MerkenichMill Park SC

suspend this flawed policyTHIS motion was passed unanimously by the St Helena Secondary College sub-branch and the Diamond Valley regional AEU meeting:

“This sub-branch and region call for a suspension of the implementation of the new Student Engagement Policy Guidelines pending a thorough review of the workload issues for staff and the impact on student learning and

safety. The current policy dilutes the strategies available to schools to deal with students with difficult behaviours.

“We strongly object to the lack of consultation with teachers and prin-cipals in the formation of the Student Engagement Policy Guidelines.

“Additional resourcing and advice to schools must be made available with any changes to the Student Engagement Policy Guidelines.

“We strongly object to the reorgani-sation of education support and call for an urgent review of the current triage model.”

Schools who share our concerns are requested to make your voices heard to the department and the AEU by passing similar resolutions and forwarding them for publication and action.

— Kirsten Finlay St Helena SC sub-branch

GamblinG projeCtThe Australian Council for Educational Research is recruiting primary

and secondary schools for a national study on young people’s attitudes towards and participation in gambling and wagering activities. The Victorian Government has given schools permission to take part.

If your school is interested in participating, email Nola Purdie at [email protected] or call (03) 9277 5481 or Gina Milgate at [email protected] or (03) 9277 5472.


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THE AEU is calling for an independent statutory body with registration and

disciplinary powers to maintain teaching standards in the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector.

The call comes as media reports over “dodgy” training colleges ripping off international students underline the dangers of the Brumby Government’s plan to open up VET and TAFE funding fully to private competition.

The AEU has warned that private providers will swoop to cherry-pick the cheapest, most popular and most prof-itable courses — and undercut TAFE by hiring untrained and undertrained staff. Nine out of 10 TAFE teachers have a formal teaching qualification.

“Why should registered training organisations be the only exception to requirements for registration of its teaching staff?” demanded branch president Mary Bluett at the AEU’s TAFE conference.

TAFE vice president Gillian Robertson said: “No matter what sector you work

in, teachers should be registered, deemed to have necessary character, competency and standard of knowledge in order to practice.”

And she warned: “We all know that poor business practices flourish when the agenda is to maximise profits.”

The conference marked the next stage of the TAFE 4 All campaign — bringing the fight to Melbourne after a blitz of regional TAFE campuses and secondary schools. So far it has found little public awareness of the reforms introduced on July 1.

“Without exception none knew anything about these fee hikes,” said Robertson. “Parents will turn up to TAFE cash registers next year expecting to pay $55 and face a bill of $2000. It’s a disgrace!”

The conference heard concerns from across the spectrum, including students, principals, community services and unions.

Joshua Gallagher, a community welfare student at Gordon TAFE in Geelong, said his course had changed his life. But faced with a debt of $2,500, “I would not have taken that chance,

I would not have learned what I have, and I would not be here today.”

Chisholm TAFE student Eloise Tuai told how she and fellow students had started their own “No HECS for TAFE” campaign. “Not a lot of secondary students understand the skills reforms, but they understand the word HECS,” she said.

The skills reforms have already seen diploma and advanced diploma fees almost double from $877 to $1,500, with further rises to $2,500 to come. The concession rate of $55 has been abolished for diploma and advanced diploma courses, with no guarantee it will exist beyond 2012 for Certificates I–IV. ◆

Register VEt teachers now: aeUTaFe conference told that the best way to clamp down on dodgy training providers is to bring in control of entry to the profession.

THE AEU is asking WorkSafe to investigate the rising workloads

of principal class members amid concerns that increased workload, stress and job complexity pose a health risk to school leaders.

Workload topped the list of prin-cipals’ concerns in the AEU’s State of Our Schools survey, cited as an issue by 75%. Seven out of 10 said their workload had increased “a lot” over the past three years.

Principals work an average 58.5 hours per week, the survey found.

The AEU has raised the issue with WorkSafe's work intensification program as a safety concern. Some 45% of principals reported greatly increased stress, with another 36% saying levels have increased “a

little” and fewer than 1% noting a decrease.

AEU principal class organiser Jeff Walters blamed “too many state and federal initiatives all arriving at the same time” — including Building the Education Revolution, the E5 teaching model and new student engagement guidelines.

“Now, with league tables, testing of kids and (Julia) Gillard talking of sacking principals, it’s just one thing after another.”

Many principals in the state are managing building projects, which means dealing with the day-to-day logistics of having workers on site, heath and safety issues, shifting classrooms and general disruption to students' education. ◆

TAFE students Joshua Gallagher and Eloise Tuai speak at the AEU TAFE Conference

principals’ stress: WorkSafe notified

www.aeuvic.asn.au 5

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Justin Mullaly deputy vice president, secondary

DESPITE media reports of sleepy, newspaper-reading delegates at the ALP National Conference, there were actually some important policy debates of

relevance to AEU members — not least in terms of the education platform.Much of the broader debate centred on the impact of the global financial

crisis on the Australian economy, and the measures the Government has taken, including the $14.7 billion spent on school buildings across the country.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment was the need for the AEU to lobby to ensure that Labor’s education platform retains a commitment to adequately fund public education — a feature of ALP platforms since the 1940s!

The draft version of the platform’s chapter on education had dropped this commitment — the result, it was understood, of pressure from Education Minister Julia Gillard’s office. Reinstating it took some persuading of delegates. (The AEU is not affiliated to the ALP and so attended only as observers.)

It’s a sad day when we have to argue the merits of a well funded public education system. It provides an insight into the views of Minister Gillard and perhaps sheds some light on the attempt by the Victorian Government to undermine our public TAFE system through fee hikes and limits on subsidised places (see www.tafe4all.org.au for more details).

But as one experienced union leader concluded: “The ALP platform is

important but not as important as the policies that they develop — that is where the action is.”

And for AEU members the policy actions and challenges will be about league tables and transparency, school funding, access to early childhood education, performance pay, a voucher system in TAFE and ill-conceived schemes such as Teach for Australia.

Side events at conference included the launch of the Labor Environment Action Network, which aims to ensure that the ALP takes real action on climate change through effective legislation and carbon pollution targets, providing significant financial support to the renewable energy sector and by Australia taking the lead in the critical talks to be held in Copenhagen later this year.

Construction unions such as the CFMEU and ETU focused their attention on overturning the Federal Government’s support for the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the watchdog with the power to interrogate workers, with penalties of up to six months’ jail for those who refuse (check out www.rightsonsite.org.au for more details).

One delegate nailed the issue of unfair, unjust laws applicable only to some workers by virtue of their job, by saying: “Surely it is the role of Labor in government to improve the laws that govern our working lives, not continue to deliver on the ideological agenda of the former Howard Government.” ◆

TACTICAL alliances will be the key to overturning league tables and winning greater funding for

public education, authors and campaigners Jane Caro and Chris Bonner have told AEU members.

Caro and Bonner, authors of The Stupid Country: How Australia is dismantling public education, addressed AEU branch council, and told councillors that despite the clouds hanging over the system, there were glimmers of light.

“Public education badly needs some wins because it seems we’ve been losing for a long time,” Caro, star of ABC TV’s The Gruen Transfer, said. “And sometimes to win requires getting into bed with people you’d really rather not.”

But she said: “I’m perhaps more optimistic about public education than people on the inside, because of some of the things I’m hearing as I work with individual school communities.

“The fact we’ve got a Labor government encourages people to feel more confidence in public education. The fact there is (stimulus) money going in helps parents to feel there is vigour, there is life, … they’re not just crumbling into the ground which they were under the last government.”

And she advised principals: “When you get that money, it doesn’t matter what they’re building, hire scaffolding, get ladders going up and down, and do whatever you can to make it look like there are major renovations going in at your school, because parents driving past will see it and think it’s a school with a future, not one closing down.”

Inquiries from parents were also up at many schools she visited. With the financial crisis, some parents were delaying sending their children to private schools. And since more than 80% of parents are happy with their kid’s school, the

likelihood was that once at their local public school, they would stay there.

Making a point echoed by federal AEU president Angelo Gavrielatos in his conference speech the following day, she said members would need to target marginal seats and start talking up the public system.

“There is no leadership in government any more. They won’t change their policies until they start to get pressure from people in focus groups.” ◆ — Nic Barnard

Cloud over ALP support for public educationaeu observers found themselves fighting an unexpected rearguard action in defence of public education funding at the aLp national conference.

Alliances “key to better funding”

Chris Bonner and Jane Caro at the AEU


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TEACHER and AEU member Jeff Daniels found himself at the centre of an international furore

when the Chinese Government went all out to have his film withdrawn from the Melbourne International Film Festival last month.

Daniels, a northern suburbs media and history teacher, was the director behind 10 Conditions of Love, the much anticipated documentary about exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer. Its screening and Kadeer’s appearance led to Chinese protestors blocking MIFF phone lines and hacking the event’s website.

Overnight, the film that Daniels and his producer John Lewis struggled to fund became a sell-out, with extra sessions run to meet demand and the premiere shifted to the Melbourne Town Hall.

Daniels says he knew that the Chinese Government, who refused to take part in the film, would not approve of its screening, but did not expect such a public outcry.

Originally from New York, the filmmaker was deeply affected by September 11 — a time when “emotions were running high and we weren’t asking why, we were just looking for someone to blame”.

He says when he heard of a “similar terrorist threat” in China, again he swallowed it whole. “When I’d calmed down a bit and started to research what was going on in China, and realise there were Muslim people living there, I saw that there was a military crackdown on the Uighur people. I felt duped.”

He and a friend visited the Xinjiang region in western China, where he spent time filming the culture and the people, but didn’t have the finance to create a full-length feature.

His producer Denis Smith suggested teaching — a profession Daniels, 31, always thought he would take up in later life. “I fell in love with it,” he says. “It’s extremely gratifying — the sparkle in the students’ eyes when they start editing and see their film on screen.”

Over a number of years Daniels used school

breaks to travel to the US to follow Kadeer, who spent six years in a Chinese prison before being exiled to Washington DC.

“It was then that I had a story,” says Daniels. “I saw that Kadeer embodied the history of her people; she’s the real human face of leadership.”

Rising from obscurity and poverty to become the seventh richest person in China and two-time Nobel Prize-nominee, Kadeer has been a tireless advocate for the independence of her oil-rich Uighur homeland, known as East Turkestan.

Kadeer says the film, which reveals the terrible price she has paid for becoming an international symbol of her nation’s struggle, is a human rather than political story.

“I’m a mother, I’m a woman of peace, I have always been peacefully struggling for the freedom and human rights of the Uighur people, I will continue to do so peacefully, until the day when my people become free.” ◆

10 Conditions of Love is screening at Cinema Nova, Carlton.

International incidentat the centre of the diplomatic row over a film about the Muslim uighur people at the Melbourne Film Festival was an aeu member. Jeff Daniels with Rebiya Kadeer

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Double takeSOMETIMES you hear what you want to hear. Take Ken Boston’s speech a couple of weeks ago (see p10). Boston spent seven years at the heart of the UK education system and doesn’t have much good to say about league tables — as the Sydney Morning Herald reported. The Australian was much more interested in his comments that underperforming prins should be sacked.

The Oz has been campaigning for parents’ right to the kind of detailed contextualised schools data that Julia Gillard proposes — even as its own actions tell another story. Twice now, The Oz has run mini-tables of schools in the electorates of NSW’s warring party leaders. And what data does it choose? Socio-economic indicators? Nope. Raw test results? Check.

Wishful thinking?MEANWHILE The Age wades in with wide-eyed optimism. League tables will help parents demand more from schools, an op-ed piece suggests (rather than simply sending their kids elsewhere) while struggling schools will have the ammo to demand more cash from pollies. We can see them now, demanding away, right up to the moment they close down. ◆


“HAVE you got 100 years?” quips teacher Jo Harwood when asked to give AEU News

a rundown of Eltham North Primary School’s environmental programs.

It is an apt question — and one this school is going all out to address. Most recently through its involvement in the Carbon Sink schools program, which was offered to 20 of Victoria’s 5-star schools.

“Eltham North students are doing some fantastic things for the environment,” says Glenn Davidson of the Carbon Sink Schools Initiative. “They are 5-star accredited and in the top 10 sustainable schools in Australia.”

The program builds on sustainable practices already established in the school, with the aim of reducing carbon emissions further. Eltham North PS is well on the way to making the school carbon neutral through various school-based and community initiatives.

The school’s latest plan is to install 30-watt solar panels on the roof, as they await the outcome of their National Solar Schools grant application.

Eltham North was a finalist in last year’s Resource Smart School Awards, in recognition of the scope of its initiatives — everything from “classroom shutdown” practices to waste manage-ment and re-establishing biodiversity.

Students audit all energy use and carbon emissions for the Carbon Sink program. Despite the installation of air-conditioning, the fast-growing school has managed not to increase its per capita energy use.

The school has a bin-free schoolyard. Staff and

students are expected to bring all food in containers and all else is recycled. Waste data is then recorded, analysed and reported at assembly.

They also have an Environmental Zone, with greenhouse, propagation table, tank, vegetable boxes and worm farm. A verandah was built as shelter for environmental activities, and tank water

is used on the garden and for flushing toilets.

Students have taken part in the ReTree project and are talking to the local council about planting their propagated seedlings on council land.

Inside, teachers use interactive whiteboards while students use laminated activity boards instead of paper. Several skylights have been fitted as part of the National Schools Pride program, and quad-phosphorescent ECOlights installed in classrooms.

All of these contribute to the Carbon Sink program and are helping the school to achieve its target of being carbon neutral.

The school recently signed up to the Greenhouse Games pilot, an eight-week competition between selected Victorian schools where families pledge to reduce their home’s yearly greenhouse gases by at least one tonne.

“We try to make our sustainability programs as holistic as possible,” says Jo. “It’s a multi-pronged approach, and we have built all these initiatives into our four-year plan and our

related action plan.“We present climate change issues in a practical

and not a scary way to the kids, and there’s a step up of knowledge as they go through. Our basic philosophy is that small changes can make a big difference.” ◆

the carbon neutral school

Giving largeVICTORIAN schools donated more than $130,000 to help

bushfire affected families through the State Schools Relief Committee — giving almost four out of every $10 received by the charity.

The SSRC’s bushfire relief fund received $343,000 from schools and indi-viduals across Australia, including $131,068 from 68 schools in Victoria. Total Victorian donations were $197,000.

The charity provides shoes and clothes for disadvantage students and was set up by teacher unions in the 1930s’ depression. ◆

mecu electionsTHE AEU has endorsed life member Peter Crocker as a candidate in the forth-

coming elections for the mecu credit union board.Mr Crocker, a former TTUV president, is the current chair of the mecu board.

He urged mecu members to vote for stability. “The current board has steered mecu very well through the tough times of the global financial crisis and will continue to do so in the work that lies ahead if supported by the members.”

Mecu recently merged with credit unions Regional One and Maroonday, giving customers access to an extra 14 branches and 1,700 ATMs across Australia. ◆


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Does your school or workplace AEU rep deserve special recognition? Email [email protected] telling us who you’re nominating and why. The rep of the Month receives a limited edition AEU leather briefcase.

nominate your rep!

STUDENTS at Kurunjang Secondary College, Melton, can expect to see

a sea of red later this year as staff turn up to work in AEU tee-shirts courtesy of sub-branch secretary Merrill Farmer and president Jo Zerafa.

They plan to use AEU funds to buy a tee-shirt for every member in the fast-growing sub-branch and stage regular Wear Red days.

Merrill and Jo are this month’s

AEU reps of the month, nominated by organiser Meaghan Flack for nego-tiating a tricky local agreement and recruiting 14 new members.

The two wins went hand-in-hand, Merrill says. Staff could see the union fighting for their conditions, as well as supporting members who were under threat of being declared excess.

The local agreement took six months and involved walking a new acting principal through the art of

consultation. Among its gains, it limits extras to one a week — against a proposed two — and compulsory meetings to two hours instead of four.

Flack calls Merrill “the busiest woman I know” and adds: “Jo is a music teacher and teaches a full load with a child under 1, and runs a BBQ at Bunnings several times a year to raise funds for the music program!” ◆ jo Zerafa &merill Farmer

Kurunjang SC

“FROM the top of our heads/To the tip of our toes/Oh what would we

do/Without our ESOs?”Julie Wolf, Business Manager at

Mill Park Secondary College, read out this poem, penned by Eumemmerring College teacher Jan Joyce, as part of the annual Education Support Recognition Week celebrations in August.

Schools across the state took time out to reward their ES colleagues with morning teas, lunches and special treats. The AEU was out too, handing out special red ES lollies and cups on school visits and lending a hand.

At Frankston Special Developmental School, teachers reserved the best car parks for the school’s ES staff. A whole week of activities included a morning tea, head and shoulder massages and small gifts from

teachers to the ES staff in their rooms.On Wednesday, Frankston teachers

even undertook all the toileting and nappy duties, “which was very much appreciated,” said ES staff member Wendy Bice. “We certainly have felt appreciated this week.”

Five-star crowns and certificates of recognition were bestowed at Yarrambat PS, while posters around the school reminded the community of the ES staff’s valuable contribution.

Yarrambat PS’s AEU rep Shirley O’Shannessy said the day gave “all staff the opportunity to reflect and thank a group of people who are integral to the smooth and efficient running of our school”.

AEU organisers visited the union’s largest ES sub branch, Rosebud SC, to celebrate the invaluable work ES staff contribute to both the school and

the AEU.While at Point Cook SC,

principal Greg Sperling bravely took the phones while ES staff enjoyed a special lunch out.

AEU ES organiser Kathryn Lewis, who spent the week surfing from one chocolate laden morning tea to another, said the most memorable sight came at Lara SC.

“The prin was holding the office while the ES staff went out to lunch, and the AEU reps went to relieve the canteen staff so they wouldn’t miss out,” she said.

“Boy, was that an eye opener — the queues grew as the maths teachers struggled with the quick

calculations and service. Everyone now has a greater appreciation of the canteen ladies — the students were certainly keen to see them back.” ◆ — Rachel Power

Support staff basked in the spotlight — and indulged their sweet tooth — as schools celebrated eS Recognition Week.

& Chocolates

Yarrambat Primary School

Point Cook Secondary ES staff eat out while principal Greg Sperling mans the phonesGlenroy West Primary School

lollypops

Lakeside Secondary College

Rosebud Secondary College

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THE Rudd Government’s fondness for education policies from Britain and the United States has

taken a battering with interventions by three senior UK and US educators over key federal initiatives.

First Diane Ravitch, a former official in the Bush Administration, stuck the boot into the privatisation of US education and warned that high-stakes testing had led to “test-obsessed” schools.

Then Ken Boston, the former head of Britain’s peak curriculum body, waded into the debate to warn on the misuse of school data for league tables.

Finally, respected US academic David Berliner dismantled Teach for Australia — the program to put graduates in front of disadvantaged students with just six weeks’ training — saying the American program it is modelled on had been a disaster for poor students and sent results backwards.

Ravitch, in an interview with Learning Matters website, said: “Many schools and districts and states have learned how to game the system … The amount of test-preparation now going on in the schools has a tendency to inflate test scores and even to invalidate the tests.”

It had also created a diminished view of education and helped dumb down children and society, she said. “Certainly high test scores are better than low test scores, but that is not all that matters in education. What about science, the arts, history, literature, foreign languages?”

As for the spread of “charter” schools in the US — private schools in the public system — a study by Stanford University had found results in those schools to be no better or worse than in the rest of the public system.

Boston, the Australian retired head of the UK’s Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald as warning league tables had damaged the curriculum and distorted primary school education in England.

“The high stakes attached to league tables in England had ‘seriously damaged the breadth and quality’ of the primary school curriculum, making it ‘narrower and poorer’,” the SMH reported.

The result was that primary students spent hours each week preparing for literacy and numeracy tests at the expense of other subjects.

And while official publication of a wide range of contextual data had put detailed information about schools in the public domain, it was league tables that had captured the headlines and played to the fears of parents.

If Boston’s critique of high-stakes testing was damaging, Professor Berliner’s demolition of Teach for America was devastating.

The Regent’s Professor of Education at Arizona State University was part of a research team that has just completed an academic study of the program, including an analysis of the records of 132,000 students and 4,400 teachers.

On all indicators, students of Teach For America (TFA) teachers performed worse. And 88% of TFA alumni left within three years.

“My point is simple: data exists to support the assertion that compared with fully certified teachers, TFA teachers are more likely to hurt the children they teach when they first enter classrooms,” Professor Berliner wrote in the SMH.

“I don’t know of a single middle class or wealthy school district in the US that would employ a TFA teacher. These inadequately trained, poorly performing, bright and socially committed novices are considered good enough for poor children, but they are not good enough for the children of the middle class or the privileged.” ◆

To read Diane Ravitch on Learning Matters go to tinyurl.com/kwyvz7; Sydney Morning Herald on Ken Boston:tinyurl.com/n57o7r; David Berliner on Teach for Australia: tinyurl.com/nx5ngg

Ruddoverseas experience of high-stakes testing, league tables and Teach for australia mean Rudd can’t say he wasn’t warned.

WINTER may be over but it’s not too late to buy an AEU scarf and

support fair trade in Laos.The handwoven silk scarves

were a big hit at branch conference (above). They are produced by village cooperatives who are involved in every stage of production from cultivating the mulberry trees that feed the silk worms to dyeing and weaving the threads.

To see more images or order the fair trade-produced scarves for $26 each, go to the AEU online shop at tinyurl.com/nwdjxs, with other products available from www.laosilkandcraft.com. Profits go towards health, sanitation and education facilities ◆

Scarves support Laos


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Western AustraliaTHE State School Teachers’ Union of WA and Federal AEU have denounced the Barnett Government’s plans for so-called independent public schools — a carbon copy of Kennett's self-governing schools — saying they are an attempt to avoid its obligations to properly resource public schools.

“We have a government trying to hand-pass its responsibilities to local school communities,” said AEU federal president Angelo Gavrielatos.

“If these schools do not have enough resources in the future it is the school leadership that will get the blame and not the Barnett Government.”

new south WalesA STALEMATE continues between the NSW Teachers’ Federation and the State Government, following the department’s application against August stopwork action endorsed by 99.9% of TAFE members.

Since negotiating a TAFE Award settlement, the federation has been working with the department on initiatives to fund pay rises but accuses the department of trying to “grab cost savings worth far more than is needed to fund the relatively small gap of 1.5% per annum”.

The department is now seeking, through arbitration, an additional 71 hours teaching per year. The NSWTF says no other NSW public sector employee has been asked to increase working hours to fund a pay rise.

QueenslandTHE Queensland Teachers’ Union’s pay dispute has been referred to the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission for arbi-tration. The QTU has described the government’s offer of a 4% interim increase as “a slap in the face”, after independent school teachers were awarded 5.4%. ◆

Cmmaaarn yoo GreeeensTHE athletics carnival is a day on the school calendar

to encourage athleticism, the wearing of team colours and coloured hair spray. It is a day guaranteed to exhibit extremes of temperature and record highs of student absenteeism amongst Years 9 and 10.

Overseeing the loading of the buses to transport the students to the athletics grounds, I obsessively check and re-check 9B’s roll. Less than half are in attendance and those who have shown up are so covered in their house colours, it is almost impossible to recognise them.

Some teachers have also entered into the spirit of the day. Veronica from the art department has adorned herself top to toe in green and has been blowing a green party whistle ever since morning briefing. I turned to tell her off for blowing it until I realised it was a teacher and not a student who was responsible for the deafening screech.

Arriving at the track, teachers in the know unpack comfortable spectator chairs and set themselves up for a day of time-keeping, recording or measuring. Other members of staff evade any organised roster and manage to complete almost a full semester’s worth of marking whilst sipping coffee from a thermos and reaching into a seemingly bottomless bag of snacks. Strategically, these “carnival evaders” appear and perform some semblance of duties when Greg the principal makes his official visit to the track towards the end of the day, pushing staff who have held their posts all day to one side.

Greg’s arrival at the track triggers a big welcome from Terry, the aggressively cheerful operator of the PA

system who reminds the student bearers of tea, coffee and muffins of his constant need for refuelling over the airwaves.

“Just a reminder that Mr Jones could really do with another coffee over here in the middle of the track. White with two. And some food would be nice … Here comes Mr Simons! Give him a big round of applause.”

Looking spectacularly awkward in a suit and nervously laughing off sugges-tions of joining the staff relay team, Greg politely claps as students burst across the finishing line.

Towards the end of the afternoon, there is a sudden change in the weather. The cool but sunny day turns into torrential rain and gale force winds as the novelty events are abandoned and students

urged to quickly clean up the venue.“Every single piece of paper and rubbish needs to

be put in the bin. We will be deducting house points for teams who do not leave their areas absolutely spotless,” trumpets Terry.

Form teachers frantically gather their drenched students and load them onto buses, dreading the early return to school and the two hours before the students will be dismissed. The weather has even dampened the spirits of Veronica — her green hair spray has run down her face and the whistle is now being used in a desperate bid to get silence from the over-hyped kids. Bring on the swimming carnival. ◆

Melbourne comedian and teacher Christina Adams wears green ear plugs.

TEACHERS who mentor student teacher interns will receive a $900

allowance under a new deal between the AEU and La Trobe University.

Students on La Trobe’s Masters of Teaching course undertake a 10-week internship, teaching in a “near-independent” capacity for 0.5 of a beginning teacher’s full-time load. They are not directly supervised by

a teacher sitting in the back of their classroom, but each has a mentor who provides support and guidance and gives feedback to the university.

The agreement means La Trobe will now pay those mentors $900 to carry out this role. Mentors are also released from face-to-face teaching and should not be given replacement classes or extras during this time.

The AEU is also finalising an agreement with Melbourne University over its Masters of Teaching, Bachelor of Teaching and Bachelor of Education courses.

Anyone asked to take interns for any other program should contact the AEU. Without an agreement with the university, teachers must be paid the teaching supervision award rate. ◆

Pay agreement for intern mentors

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JACINTA Allan may have been expecting an easy ride when she appeared on Joseph Thomsen’s talk

show on ABC Goulburn Murray to spruik her skills reforms. Instead, she found a well briefed journo who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Allan squirmed as Thomsen pinned her with questions about the fee changes. Was it or wasn’t it true that fees for diplomas and advanced diplomas were rising from $877 to $2,500 by 2012 — and concession fees were rising from $55 to $2,500?

First the Skills Minister blustered that the changes were “very complex”. Then she tried to say it was “incorrect” that the concession rate for diplomas was rising from $55 to $2,500 — because charges for basic literacy courses were falling.

Thomsen insisted. How much would someone on a concession rate now pay for a diploma course? “Zero!” the Minister squeaked. “The charge is zero!” Her reasoning? That they could take out a loan to cover it.

In other words, if you can pay for something with a loan, it’s basically free — which is good news for first time homebuyers if nothing else. Have a new car while you’re at it.

What the Minister failed to add was that the loans come with a 20% “loan fee” — plus interest. So a $2000 course will actually cost $2,400. And anyone unlucky to be paying full course fees could be slugged an extra $2000 (full details at tinyurl.com/l4o6gc).

The exchange summed up the Minister’s woeful

performance as she has toured the state trying to sell the reforms without telling anyone what is actually in them, and underlined why the AEU has felt obliged to go round campuses explaining them to the public.

Minister Allan tried to paint debt as giving TAFE students the same great opportunity that university students have. The sorry reality was laid out by Marilyn Webster, of the Victorian Council of Social Service, at the AEU’s TAFE 4 All conference.

It takes a single man eight years to pay off a HECS debt, she said. Women with children and a partner take 16 years. And most sole parents never pay it off — they pass the debt on to their children.

Ms Webster called the changes “a great loss for women, migrant and refugee groups and homeless

Truths and half-truthsWhen is a debt not a debt? When it’s a loan — according to Jacinta allan. (Just don’t mention the 20% loan fee.) Nic Barnard hears an embarrassing performance on abC radio to open four pages of reports and reactions from TaFe campuses and secondary colleges to fee hikes and privatisation threats.

HOW pleasing was it to read two of our Victorian TAFE CEOs write

publicly in The Age about the threat to the international student market from shonky private providers and the tepid defence of that market by state and federal governments?

With over 4000 private colleges nationally and more than 1,200 in Victoria alone, these dodgy providers undermine the lucrative flow of students to all skills providers, not least our properly regulated, publicly accountable and audited TAFE institutes.

In three years, private colleges have increased enrolments by 400%, some of them by hooking vulnerable international students at huge cost into schemes that have more to do with immigration than skills training and education.

If anything highlights the perils of opening up the system to the market, this has been it. But the response of government to the recent scandals has been less than overwhelming.

Following the ABC’s Four Corners exposé last month, a delegation was sent to India to try to calm concerns about these private colleges and the racist attacks on students. But as TAFE CEOs Bruce McKenzie and Virginia Simmons wrote in The Age, “trade missions, talkfests and public utter-ances will not solve the problem.”

That said, rather than calling for soft loans, better accommodation and transport concessions for international students, our CEOs would do better to strengthen the advantage they have by insisting on fully registering teachers and properly policed qualifications for all who want to teach in the VET sector.

This would put the costs between private and public providers on a much more even basis and stop the cherry-picking of vulnerable courses.

What is really missing is the loud and proud support of the system our politicians and officials are charged with promoting.

In a belated response, Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard announced on August 19 that all private providers will have to re-register and be subjected to tighter guidelines by the end of next year. There is no indication that they will address the fundamental problems of untraceable owners, lies and distortions from touts and agents, under- or even unqualified teachers, excessive teaching hours, under-delivery of contracted hours and the mandatory passing of anyone who has bought a place.

Even these measures may not come to pass. According to The Australian, Victorian Skills Minister Jacinta Allan does not want her “rapid audits” of these places complicated. Whatever they are!

Where are Jacinta Allan and John Brumby? They should be out extolling our government-funded, well resourced, properly audited institutes with their market-relevant courses and qualified teachers with regulated workloads.

Instead they are silently working away to undermine our public TAFE system by throwing its funding open to the kind of providers who have brought the system into disrepute.

It is time our leaders stood up for good quality education provision, espe-cially when it is under their noses. ◆

Opportunity goes knockingThe scandal over international colleges was the perfect chance for ministers to speak up for our high-quality public TaFe system. So where were they, asks Andrew Ferguson.


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Wrong side of the tracksThe Government’s own on Track data shows why the VeT changes are off the rails.

youth attempting a transition into a more stable life.”Another speaker, Dale Pearce, principal of

Bendigo Senior Secondary College, confirmed how secondary teachers had been kept in the dark about the reforms. “This discussion has been characterised by a lack of information,” he told the conference.

“Careers advisors have received nothing, until late yesterday when principals received a fat brochure outlining Government’s position. Most of the info has come from the AEU.”

On the basis of Minister Allan’s performance on the Joseph Thomsen show, perhaps that’s for the best. ◆

Justin Mullaly deputy vice president,secondary

THE AEU’s TAFE 4 All campaign has struck a chord with secondary teachers by doing what

the Government has failed to do — inform them of the implications for their students of the huge fee hikes and other changes to the TAFE system.

Secondary teachers are the ones who have to advise these students on their options after Year 12. Yet despite $16 million being spent by the Government advertising the changes it was late August before an email belatedly informed secondary principals of the fee increases.

With around 36% of Year 12 completers enrolling in TAFE/VET after they leave school, many of this year’s cohort face fees of $2000, up from $877 since the start of this year.

Worse, a large percentage would in the past have enrolled on a concession basis, paying $55 per course. The Brumby Government has abolished concessions for students who enrol in diploma and advanced diploma courses — these students too will pay $2000 from January 1, rising to $2,500 in 2012.

As one teacher commented: “We work bloody hard to get our students to complete Year 12, often with the promise that it will give them more options once they leave school.

“But if a student can’t reasonably afford to go to TAFE then many of them simply won’t see the point in finishing a school qualification. There goes the hope of raising Year 12 retention rates and getting kids who are often at risk of becoming disengaged in school to stick around.”

The Government’s own On Track data, which details the destinations of school-leavers, shows that Year 12 completers who enrol in a diploma or advanced diploma at TAFE are most likely to be low-income earners, in the bottom 25% for socio-economic status.

In Gippsland, over 50% of students who completed Year 12 went on to enrol in VET, with similar figures for students from the Shepparton and Bendigo areas. In outer northern and western Melbourne over 70% of students from some schools go on to VET.

The changes to the system go beyond basic fee

increases. While Skills Minister Jacinta Allan’s policy guarantees a subsidised place in VET/TAFE to students under the age of 20, once over the age of 20 the picture changes dramatically.

Students will be ineligible for any government subsidy from 2011 unless they take a qualification at a higher level than they’ve already achieved. (The sole exeption is for basic literacy and numeracy foundation courses.) They’ll have to pay full fees which for diplomas can exceed $10,000.

This has huge implications for students who undertake courses through the VET in Schools program. By completing a certificate at school, they may find themselves forced to pay exorbitant fees to access TAFE once they turn 20.

We have sent a campaign pack to every school sub-branch with a flyer summarising the changes and a petition which we ask all members to sign and pass on to your school community. Email me at [email protected] for more information or to arrange a visit to your school to explain the changes in more detail. ◆

Track records According to the latest On Track data:

• 13,500 Year 12 (or equivalent) students are expected to enter the VET system in 2010

• More than 9000 of them are likely to face higher fees for government-supported places

• Around 7,500 will be at Certificate IV level or above, and so face considerable fee increases for government-supported places

• Of those, more than two-thirds are likely to enrol at the diploma level or higher where fees are up 128% (from $877 to $2000) compared to 2009

• Those students going straight into a diploma are most likely to be in the bottom quartile of the socio-economic status index

• According to census data, 18% of VET students in 2006 already held a diploma or above. From now on they’ll pay the full cost of their course, often $10,000 or more. ◆

Marilyn Webster

Dale Pearce

Gillian Roberston


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THE TAFE 4 All campaign took its message on the road last month, running sausage sizzles on

campuses across Victoria to inform students about the changes that are hitting the system.

At Bendigo, it found students already fired up about Brumby’s reforms.

Many of them told the AEU they chose TAFE to avoid the debt that university would saddle them with.

Cheryl is retraining following an injury that means she can no longer do her old job, but she is loath to take on a loan that she might not pay off in her lifetime. “Any time you want to take on something new, you’ll risk passing a debt on to your children. I just won’t do it,” she said.

Young single mother and profes-sional writing student Amanda Mann is now facing the struggle to cover her own fees on top of the costs of her children’s education. She sees the government reforms as a cost-shifting exercise.

“We’re now paying doubly — through our taxes and then through our fees. The material costs alone are scary enough.”

With VCAL a central provision at Bendigo secondary colleges, around 68% of post-school enrol-ments in the region are for TAFE diplomas, which will soon attract fees of $2,500, rising from $877.

“And they get one chance,” said AEU TAFE vice president Gillian Robertson. “After that it’ll be full fees. That’s going to be a real barrier, especially for those who are financially disadvantaged.”

Also being abolished are concession rates of $55 for those with a health care card. “Those people will go from paying $55 to $2,500. Where the hell are they going to get that sort of money?”

Standing in front of the TAFE 4 All campaign’s

giant mobile billboard, Robertson’s main message to students and staff was that there should be no barrier between any Victorian and access to TAFE. “For a region like Bendigo, mums and dads have had the certainty that they’ll be able to get their kids into

a TAFE — and they’ll be able to afford it.“Now they’re increasing fees, abolishing the

concession and also putting in a new rule that you can only get government assistance to enrol if you are upskilling,” she told BRIT students.

“The line is that from now on all Victorians will get a training place. But what they don’t say is:

that’s if you can afford it.”Ian Irvine, professional writing tutor, said cutbacks

in country areas like Bendigo, meant losing services for an entire region.

“Culture destruction, that’s what it comes down to with the impact on arts courses,” he said. “RMIT, for example, one of the leaders in this country, is under real threat. So, ‘City of Literature’ — but only when it’s privatised.”

Irvine is concerned about the “incredible inequalities” built into the new system. “A lot of mothers who have qualifications that are out of date are still being classified by the system as having current qualifications, so they will be facing full fees.

“From a Labor government, it’s quite profound, how much they’ve shifted away from access and equality. On the one hand, Kevin Rudd is … talking about the way neo-liberalism has destroyed whole nations and how it’s led to the global economic collapse; and yet at the same time we have a state Labor government in Victoria introducing basic neo-liberal economic policy.”

Mining student Justine believes the Government’s reforms risk barring people from accessing their dream jobs, or entering the workforce at the level to which they aspire.

“I think it’s very important to have the job that you’re born to have,” she said. “But if you’re trying to live as a student and you’ve paid your fees and you’re not working, because it’s a full-time course, how do you live? It’s so expensive being a student at the

moment already.”To specialise in chemistry and become a metal-

lurgist, as Justine had planned, would require further study at the same level. “That would be a very expensive option now. There are lots of things I want to study in the future, and to make it less affordable — that’s a big problem for me.” ◆

as sausages sizzleStudents were in the dark about the TaFe fee hikes until the aeu hit the road to tell them. Rachel Power reports on an angry response on campus in bendigo.

Gillian Robertson speaks to students and staff

Tempers flare


OPEN Day at our college was really tough this year.

I met several mature-aged potential students who were upset and angry to hear that they would be hit with over $10,000 in fees to retrain for work.

One woman had done an IT course 20 years ago and worked in the field until she had children. For the past 10 years she has been parenting and found her qualifications and experience are out of date now she’s back in the job market.

She was thinking about doing a diploma in community welfare and was dumbfounded when I broke the news to her. She expects to earn $18 an hour working in community services.

With $12,000 in fees, it doesn’t make financial sense to get skilled up for work. She said she felt betrayed by the Brumby Government.

These changes to the TAFE system will have a devastating impact on mature unemployed people (the over-40s), people who have been parenting, carers, injured and many others.

I know this because I work with them everyday.

I meet people who have worked in industries which have gone offshore, or have changed drastically due to technology. Some of them have qualifi-cations from the 1970s and 80s which may be useful in generic terms, but are

not helping them to return to work.These people are often living

in challenging circumstances, on Centrelink payments, and are expected to take on a debt of $12,000 to skill up because they have a prior qualification.

My experience of this student group is that they often have low self-efficacy beliefs; they start studying expecting not to succeed and that their life will not improve.

I had a student (a sole parent who had finally left a domestic violence situation) who started doing a Diploma of Alcohol and Other Drugs Work after volunteering, and was strongly encour-aged to qualify.

After a lot of soul-searching and really struggling to believe she could do it — and was worthy — she enrolled.

It was then she was told that it was going to cost $12,000. More than 20 years ago, her parents had paid for her to do a secretarial “diploma” at a

private college. It cost them $5000, which was a lot then. She didn’t want to do it, but did it to make them happy.

I remembered those dodgy “colleges” in the 80s, and asked the student to bring in any paperwork she had. It turned out that although the staff at her former college had constantly referred to their diploma, her qualification said that she had only done “a course in...”.

We managed to get her a $750 place. But it is unbelievable that even full-fee diplomas disqualify you from a subsidised place under these new rules.

I love my job because I see the amazing life-changing experience of education and the opportunities it brings. This blanket discrimination against anyone with a prior qualifica-tion is devastating for people who are trying to participate in the workforce.

Shame on the Brumby Government. ◆

no way back to workFull fees as high as $10,000 will stop mature people returning to work and leave many facing decades on welfare, writes TaFe teacher Margie Fry.

www.tafe4all.org.autwitter.com/TAFE4Allwww.facebook.com — search for TAFE4All

Join us Online!

Bendigo voices“Whatever happened to Labor for the people?”

— Julia Baird, professional writing student“What you learn is going to be defined by what you can afford.”

— Amanda Mann, professional writing student“The thing that bothers me most is that if they’ve done previous training and they decide they’d like a career change, then they’re ineligible for any funding.”

— Stacy, mining tutor“It’s going to be international students who’ll be able to afford it and they’ll be the ones with all the jobs. Where does that leave us?”

— Justine, mining student

BRIT professional writing students speaking out against reforms.


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AUSTRALIA has evolved politically into a business-managed democracy. Major political parties

are dependent on business funding for election, governments rely on business-funded think tanks to develop policies, and public opinion is routinely shaped by business-funded public relations campaigns.

Schools are no exception.Business coalitions around the world have

pushed for a more business-like approach in schools that focuses on competition to drive innovation, and efficiency in attaining measurable outcomes for less cost. Chris Whittle, who founded Edison charter schools in the US, said the “biggest contribution business can make to education is to make education a business”.

However, business people have no deep under-standing of educational processes — how they are fundamentally different from production processes and cannot be judged by the same criteria.

Writing in the business magazine Fortune, financial journalist Peter Brimelow cheerfully put aside issues of quality to compare learning to factory production: “Leaving quality questions aside, public school productivity, measured by the number of employees required to process a given number of students, seems to have declined by 46% between 1957 and 1979.”

The “reforms” that have been sweeping the English-speaking world for the past three decades reflect a business agenda; one that goes beyond regional education bureaucracies and beyond national governments. It is an agenda pushed by transnational corporations around the world and embraced by governments including the current Australian Federal Government, evidenced by Julia Gillard’s desire to import elements of Joel Klein’s New York City schools’ business model.

Business-driven school reforms have been helped along by a series of media-manufactured education “crises” in North America, the UK and Australasia, beginning in the 1970s. Perceptions of declining international competitiveness have been blamed on schools, in particular the claimed failure of public schools to produce literate and numerate employees for the workforce.

In fact, public schools have been doing a remarkable job given their declining funding base, which has been eroded since the 1980s, when

neo-liberals targeted government spending, and educational funding shifted from being an invest-ment in the nation’s future to an expense that needed to be justified, rationalised and reduced.

In Australia, payments from the Federal Government to the states fell and state tax revenues declined in the early 1990s. State governments cut educational expenditure, hundreds of public schools were closed and over 8000 teaching positions were designated in excess of need.

Public spending on school education declined from 5.9% of GDP in the mid-1970s to 2.7% of GDP at the turn of the century, despite the desire of a vast majority of voters that more be spent on schools. As a result, class sizes increased, school facilities deteriorated, teachers and students were demoralised.

Governments that cut school funding were vulnerable to criticism that they were harming the quality of education. So, as a defensive measure, government and corporate-funded think tanks propagated the view that what really matters is outcomes, and that outcomes do not depend on the resources available. Instead of increasing school resources and interpreting accountability in terms of how funds were spent and what practices were adopted, the emphasis shifted to evaluating student performance without reference to funding inputs.

The need to shift responsibility for performance outcomes from government funding to school management and teaching staff led to the restruc-turing of the school system in English-speaking nations, so that budgetary and administrative management devolved to schools.

Following lobbying by the Business Council of Australia, schools in most Australian states were given responsibility for their own budgets. Principals were refashioned as corporate managers and school councils took on management responsibilities.

Individual public schools are now responsible for turning out highly skilled students despite declining resources. More budgetary control does not mean more resources. Yet failure to meet centrally deter-mined quality objectives is blamed on poor school management and poor-quality teaching rather than a lack of resources and funding.

The goal is to educate as many children as possible for the least investment and, to do this,

schools have been encouraged to view themselves as businesses. School principals are now entrepre-neurs, teachers are workers, parents are clients or customers, and students are the product.

Because businesses depend on quantitative measures, they insist public schools rely on them also. The shifting emphasis from inputs to measur-able outcomes means that test results have become the main way of making schools accountable. This form of accountability has meant that education department bureaucrats around the world do not have to judge teaching methods, which would require educational professionals in senior positions.

However, test results more often reflect the resources a school receives and the socio-economic background of its students than the educational qualities of that school.

To ensure that standardised tests are taken seriously by teachers, despite having little

a dirtyLeague tables and national tests are only the latest stage in the capture of educational policy by business interests.


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educational value, educational authorities in the US have attached various rewards and punish-ments to related perfor-mance, including merit pay for teachers and bonuses for schools

where students

perform well. The publication

of school league tables in the UK is

another way to ensure that high stakes are

attached to test results.But high-stakes testing

encourages poor teaching practices. A UK parliamentary select committee

found it “has led schools and teachers to deploy inappropriate methods to maximise achievement” by students in tests. A national survey of teachers in the US found that two thirds of teachers claimed that standardised testing encouraged them to “use rote drill in my teaching” and “to emphasise the teaching of factual recall knowledge”.

High-stakes testing shifts the focus from learning to achievement.

Performance-based assessments that involve projects, essays, science experiments and reports become undervalued. Instead of aiding their students to develop their potential, teachers help them to remember the authorised knowledge modules for long enough to pass the test.

The emphasis on this shopping list of knowledge leads to the teaching of grammar and spelling as technical skills to be mastered, rather than a means of self-expression and understanding of others.

Because many business leaders do not

understand education, they think that the way to improve it is for students and teachers to spend more time and expend more effort. High-stakes standardised testing is supposed to provide the rewards and punishments to ensure that students work long and hard on a core curriculum and teachers stick to that curriculum.

The consequent narrowing of the curriculum is no accidental by-product of standardised testing. Business leaders have campaigned for standardised testing in the belief that it will force schools to focus on the basic skills they need their employees to have, such as reading, writing and mathematics — the subjects that are tested.

What they don’t want is a curriculum packed with electives irrelevant to the workplace or, worse still, subjects that expose children to differing views and values and that promote critical thinking.

It is not enough for schools to be managed like businesses and to treat students like products.

Business reformers also want schools to compete in an educational marketplace for students.

Various Australian states have restructured schools to introduce competition. In Victoria, where “reforms” have been the most radical, schools were de-zoned during the 1990s and their funding became dependent on enrolments. The right of every child to a high-quality education is being replaced by the superficial right of every parent to choose the school their child attends.

The political agenda behind the promotion of these consumer-oriented rights is the reconstitu-tion of education in the business model. Education, once a public good and a human right, is becoming a commodity, and parental participation in school education has been reduced to consumer choice.

The main reason why the Australian Government wants school test results available to parents is to encourage the exercise of that choice.

As part of the push for schools to become more like competing businesses, there has been a major push for the private provision of educational services in many countries.

The introduction of business management structures into education, along with the elimina-tion of many of the functions and professional services provided to schools for free by govern-ment education departments, was an early step in this process. It opened the way for a host of private agencies, consultants and professional firms to fill the gap on a commercial basis.

Private provision has occurred at three levels: supplementary services such as catering and cleaning; private educational services provided outside of school hours such as tutoring, educa-tional software and after-school care; and core

education services such as managing or operating schools.

At the extreme end of the privatisa-tion spectrum are schools that are run as businesses for profit, as are many US publicly funded charter schools.

In many countries, a public abhor-rence of for-profit education, combined with a scepticism on the part of the business community that profits can actually be made from running schools, has ruled out for-profit schools.

However, in the UK, public schools are increasingly being run by private entities, including businesses, with public money. In Australia, “independent” schools receive an increasing share of public funding, ensuring that private schools are an increasingly attractive option for parents encouraged to view education as a consumer choice.

In each case, the ideals of public education are being eroded in order to encourage a private market in education. ◆

Sharon Beder is a visiting professor in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication at the University of Wollongong and author of This Little Kiddy Went to Market: The Corporate Capture of Childhood (UNSW Press, 2009).

❛ school principals have become entrepreneurs,

teachers are workers, parents are customers, and students

are the product. ❜

bUsinessauthor Sharon Beder charts how the

corporate world has infiltrated our schools.


feature

CONTRADICTORY signals are coming from the State and Federal

Governments about access to post-school education.

On the one hand, we see a concerted drive to increase participation, particularly for under-represented groups.

On the other, the mechanisms to implement these policies are flawed and set up new obstacles to access.

The Victorian Government’s new skills and training policy, and the Federal Government’s higher education reforms, are redistributive policies which help to pay for themselves by creating winners and losers.

At the same time as it announced an increase in the number of training places and guaranteed a subsidised place in TAFE for those under 20, the Victorian Government introduced across-the-board fee rises. The places are there, but the users themselves are paying for them and students face significant debts to access them.

A similar picture exists for the Rudd Government’s policies to increase participation in higher education — most notably in its changes to eligibility to the system of student support and the Youth Allowance.

Education Minister Julia Gillard indicated the changes — contained in the 2009 federal budget — are a response to the findings of the Bradley Review of Higher Education which she argued found the system to be poorly targeted and failing to support those students who needed it most.

Bradley in particular criticised the workforce participation criteria

for gaining the Commonwealth Youth Allowance. Students are presently able to qualify as financially inde-pendent, and therefore eligible to receive support, while working part time and living at home.

The Bradley Review estimated that 36% of independent students living at home were from families with incomes above $100,000, 18% of that group came from families with incomes above $150,000, 10% from families earning over $200,000 and, according to Minister Gillard, some came from families with incomes over $300,000.

The federal budget reduced the

criteria for financial independence through workforce participation from three to one. Students could no longer qualify by doing part-time work or by earning $19,532 in an 18-month period.

From 2010, the single criterion to establish independence will become full-time work (at least 30 hours per week) for at least 18 months. The Federal Education Department estimates that 30,700 claimants will no longer qualify for Youth Allowance next year, and 3,600 existing recipients will not qualify for a higher payment as independent recipients because of these changes.

The cost savings are to be redistributed to a range of reforms to student income support — an increase in the parental income test threshold (from $32,800 to $44,165), higher cut-off points for

parental income before the allowance tapers out, and a reduction in the age of independence for full-time students from 25 in 2009 to 22 in 2012.

The personal income threshold for students on Youth Allowance in part-time jobs will rise from $236 to $400 per fortnight from July 2012. Two existing scholarships for Youth Allowance recipients will broaden to cover more students.

The Government’s changes, however, do not raise the actual benefit a student receives. A student living away from home and getting rent assistance will still get $241.60

per week — $150.55 or 38% below the Henderson Poverty Line.

The outcome of all of these changes is described by the Federal Department of Education as “roughly cost-neutral over the forward estimates”. This means that the changes will not require additional Commonwealth funding; they will be paid for by those no longer qualifying for the Youth Allowance.

The Federal Government line is that the changes remove rorts and will still cover those in genuine need who may have previously qualified for the Youth Allowance through workforce participation by the raised parental income test threshold.

The Victorian Parliament’s inquiry into participation in higher education strongly rejected this argument. In its July 2009 final report it stated that the tightening of the workforce

participation criteria “will have a disastrous effect on young people in rural and regional areas”.

The surprise of this recom-mendation is that it was made by a parliamentary committee chaired by a member of the Victorian Labor Government.

It determined that while the Federal Government changes may remove grants from some wealthy families, they will compound the disadvantage already evident in low rural participation rates.

The Youth Allowance changes will begin in June 2010. Only a last minute

concession by Minister Gillard prevented students who deferred their studies in 2009 under the old criteria from being left in the lurch. In the longer term, the nature of

the employment market in regional Victoria will mean that qualifying as independent through full-time employ-ment will be very difficult.

The longer qualification period (a deferral of study for at least two years) also has implications for the availability of tertiary places, access to scholarships and a loss of motivation to take up a place.

The Victorian inquiry recom-mended both a rise in Commonwealth student support payments in line with cost of living increases, and the extension of Youth Allowance eligibility to any young person required to relocate to undertake tertiary studies.

These recommendations will require substantial additional funding, rather than a redistribution of existing funds or user-pays arrangements, so their chances of being implemented look just above zero. ◆

❛ The changes will have a disastrous effect on young people in rural and regional areas ❜

the soundof one hand giving

The Rudd Government wants more young people in higher

education, but its Youth allowance reforms have left students in the lurch and hit regional families particularly

hard. Research officer John Graham reports.


study

WHEN Jenny Costello found herself teaching the boy who was bullying her daughter, it put to the

test her ideas of what it was to be good teacher.The boy was one of a group who would tease

younger girls as they walked past. Jenny was aware other teachers had taken the boy to task, and the bullying did stop after a few months. Still, she says: “I had to put all that emotional stuff aside.

“It was a huge challenge. I had to build a relationship with this child.”

It’s this ability to set aside personal feelings that Jenny brings to her role as a mentor to graduate teachers at Carranballac P-9 College.

Carranballac is in Point Cook, on the road to Geelong, where urbanisation is taking place at astonishing speed. The school opened in 2002 with just 49 students, and now has nearly 1,700.

With these demographics the school has always had a high percentage of graduate teachers (those who’ve been teaching less than four years), hovering around 70%. It also has 18 pre-service teachers this year.

Which is why the school appointed Jenny full time to oversee the mentoring program.

The principal was concerned about teacher stress levels. “He said to me that a lot of young people quit in the first year of teaching because they can’t cope with the stress. He didn’t want that to happen here,” Jenny says. “He wanted them to feel happy and successful.”

Jenny jumped on board in 2007, with carte blanche to create the new role of professional growth facilitator. It’s an unusual position because it has nothing to do with PD. Jenny is more a teacher whisperer.

“A lot of our graduate teachers come out with not much experience of the real world — (they) come from school straight into college, and bang, ‘What’s this all about?’ They have to deal with parents and the community, they have to work in teams, collegially.”

Costello sees her role as helping them evolve into professionals, and to see themselves that way: “What it is to be professional, what a professional teacher looks like, sounds like.”

Then there are the people skills. “It’s so important that when children come in the door that you’re welcoming and warm,” Jenny says. “When they have broken a rule, OK, that was today. Discuss it with them, but you start afresh every day”.

She illustrates with the example of a teacher who finds spelling difficult.

“I might tell them they need to be honest with the children. They might say, ‘This is a bit of a tricky word, let’s get the dictionary out. Can anybody help us with this word?’ They’re teaching children using strategies they would expect the children themselves to use.”

She doesn’t work with every teacher. Teachers and managers are free to approach her, and she treats concerns with strict confidentiality. Everyone needs a sounding board, she says.

Jenny’s principal, Peter Kearney praises her ability to listen. “People who wouldn’t normally approach their team leader because they’re seen as people who are going to look at their perform-ance (in a formal sense) are happy to discuss with Jenny their self-development and progress.”

A veteran of 26 years in the classroom and long-time AEU member, Jenny says the pressures on graduate teachers have intensified over the years, particularly with the renewed focus on testing and results.

And she is dismayed at the Federal Government’s plans to get “elite” university graduates to teach in disadvantaged schools with just six weeks of teacher training, under the Teach for Australia program.

“Teaching is a skill and I don’t believe you can take people out of their areas of expertise and just put them into teaching,” she says.

“When I look at student teachers and the work they’re doing, and then what happens in the classroom, there can be a massive difference. The academic side is important, but have they got the personal skills or grounding to become good teachers?” ◆

The most important thing i take into the classroom every day is …A passion for teaching, a warm and caring attitude and a sense of humour.

My best trick for coping with staff meetings is …For all the teachers to take a turn at leading the meeting. It is one of the ways that young teachers can develop leadership skills in a non-threatening environment.

The best piece of advice i ever received was …“If you can’t be an early years coordinator [my dream job at the time], have the best early years classroom in the school.” I try to apply that to all parts of my life.

My advice to a beginning teacher is …Always ask questions and seek advice. Never stop learning.

The most inspirational figure in my life was …My mum. She was gracious, a good listener, hard working, non-judgmental, gentle and kind. She inspired me to be my best.

My favourite teacher at school was …Mr Cameron at Badger Creek Primary School (near Healesville). I went to a country school with only 30 students. It was like a big family. I watched the moon landing in 1969 in Mr Cameron’s office on a portable black and white TV.

if i had a private meeting with Education Minister Bronwyn Pike i’d tell her …Let’s do a lot more doing instead of telling.

& tellshow

pro

file

The teacher whispererWith seven out of 10 teachers new to the profession, Carranballac College had particular need of a strong support program. That’s why it turned to Jenny Costello. Elisabeth Lopez meets her.

PHOT

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IT’S a mark of the challenges posed by the Rudd Government that conten-

tious policies that would normally send tempers soaring rated barely a mention at this year’s AEU branch conference.

Julia Gillard’s plan to send fresh-faced but severely under-trained graduates into our most disadvantaged schools? The national curriculum?

Both were overshadowed by what federal president Angelo Gavrielatos called the two biggest challenges facing education in Victoria and Australia — league tables and the funding system.

These now stand as critical issues. League tables could be with us within months — Queensland and Tasmanian newspapers have already jumped the gun.

And next year will see the launch of a federal review of school funding, a once-in-a-decade opportunity to redress the balance in favour of public education and get rid of the

discredited regime put in place by the Howard Government and sustained under Kevin Rudd.

Both will require winning the battle of public opinion.

“We can’t rely on our elected officials,” Gavrielatos said of the funding review in his keynote address. “They’ve proven that time and time again. It’s therefore incumbent on us to build that groundswell.”

All politicians should be judged on their actions, not their rhetoric, but Rudd is proving a particularly good example. Many in the union movement find it hard to argue with his analysis of the global financial crisis and his ringing repudiation of neo-liberalism and free-market fundamentalism.

But as Gavrielatos told delegates: “The contradiction between the analysis … and his policies is no more stark than in the education policies of this government.”

In all sectors, neo-liberalism and a belief in education as a commodity seemed to be driving force.

“We’ve never had to confront a more serious educational onslaught than the one represented by the trans-parency agenda,” Gavrielatos said.

“This is a touchstone issue.”It’s also an issue where putting

the union’s case will not be easy. The growing bank of voices and global body of evidence against league tables are matched by a single “cute media grab” — parents’ right to know.

“In this era of soundgrabs we are at a disadvantage,” Gavrielatos said.

“This is not a campaign opposing assessment, or parents’ right to know, or data or accountability. It’s a campaign about the best possible outcome for our kids.”

Teachers and educators are

already being portrayed as attempting to keep parents in the dark and suppress information. But Gavrielatos said: “We support effective assess-ment. … It’s what we do as teachers.”

He went on: “Parents have an absolute right to know about the progress of their child and that schools are delivering effective teaching and learning programs.

“This is an argument about the construction and publication of simplistic league tables, given the consequences for the provision of education.”

Tables were “an invalid use of data” that turned education into a spectator sport, Gavrielatos said. Even the Australian Council for Educational Research, which

developed the NAPLAN tests that will form the basis for

reporting data, say they were never intended for the creation of league tables.

“Look overseas and we see practices that distress us.

baCk to thegrassroots

This year’s aeu branch conference heard a call to return to the grassroots to win support for the fight against

league tables and for fair funding. Nic Barnard reports.

❛ The two biggest challenges

facing education in Victoria and Australia are league tables and

the funding system ❜

Angelo Gavrielatos speaks at the AEU branch conference


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Conference decisionsPay model under scrutiny

THE most heated debate at conference was over the AEU’s support for a “professional

pay” structure that would reward high-performing teachers for meeting a defined and independently assessed set of standards.

Long-standing AEU policy — federally and in Victoria — is that outstanding teachers should be rewarded without having to leave the classroom for

management roles. The profes-

sional pay model contains no link to student results

— unlike the expected federal

and Victorian govern-ment proposals. But Geoff

Breen of Pascoe Vale Girls’ College said: “No matter how we dress it up, it boils

down to the same poison. “They all divide teachers into winners and losers

and increase pressure on all teachers to work harder and longer for little or no reward.

“They will pit one teacher against another.”Teachers would find themselves keeping more

records, attending more interviews and jumping through hoops. “It can only increase teacher stress and burnout.

“What we want for teachers is fair pay for all, not performance pay, not merit pay and not this

professional pay.”But branch secretary Brian Henderson said:

“What we are looking at is an aspirational model, where people meet defined standards, assessed externally, not in the school.

“Already our early childhood members have a system of validation, externally assessed, and we’ve used that experience in developing this national proposal.

“It’s not about competing with each other. It’s about meeting standards.”

A resolution in support of professional pay was overwhelmingly carried.

ViT: abolition callTHE issue of the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) reared its ugly head again, with renewed calls for it to be replaced by a government-funded registration board.

Peter Curtis, of Hurstbridge PS, said the VIT’s own submission to last year’s review had admitted it was not a professional body. “We need for it to be formally acknowledged as a registration body and nothing else, and query the cost of registration, which we think is unacceptable,” he said.

But Jean Cooke, of Aurora School and an AEU-endorsed member of the VIT council, said Victoria had already had a government-funded registration board in the 1990s — and

then-premier Jeff Kennett had stuffed it with stooges most of whom had no background in education. Today, the VIT council was composed almost entirely of teachers, with a strong AEU slate.

“Since 2002 it’s been practicing teachers who have been making all the decisions about our profes-sion,” she said. The motion was heavily defeated.

Other votesSkills Victoria: Conference condemned the Victorian Government’s skills reforms and called on Skills Minister Jacinta Allan to establish a review to examine their impact on students. The resolution

warned the changes will hit hardest the “the very people who are often most vulnerable in

our community”, while TAFE institutes were at risk from low-cost, low-quality private providers.Councillors: Moves to call elections to replace AEU councillors who resign with

more than a third of their term remaining were defeated. At present, council can

appoint a replacement if a councillor retires with less than half their term remaining. An Epping SC resolu-tion unsuccessfully attempted to reduce this period.Disability: Delegates unanimously condemned the State Government’s failure to set a framework for negotiations for a new sector agreement and force employers to the table. A quarter of employers have still not signed up to the last agreement. ◆

Practices such as where you ignore the kids you know will make the benchmark, ignore the kids you know have no hope of reaching the benchmark and focus on the ‘bubble kids’ — those just below the benchmark.”

The transparency agenda is supposedly about giving parents the information to choose the best school for their child. But with the stakes so high over NAPLAN tests, schools would soon start choosing their students — not vice versa.

The result, Gavrielatos warned, would be “a deepening inequality and segregation within and across the system”.

“When you reduce education to a mere commodity and encourage parents to shop around, what will be the result? The success of some schools is dependant on the failure of others.

“As a profession, we must not, cannot, will not stand by and

watch this happen.”The question of schools funding,

too, has far-reaching implications. The stimulus package has seen education spending tilt back towards the public sector for the first time in a decade. Gavrielatos told delegates that was “a tribute to your campaigning”.

But once those billions were gone, schools would be left with a funding system which gives disproportionate amounts to private schools, even by its own rules.

The review will not report back until after the Federal Election. “We must

become active in electorates right across the country,” he said.

Gavrielatos’ appeal was accompanied by a warning from lobbyist Tony Douglas of Essential Media

Communications that it would be harder to fight for oxygen in next

year’s election campaigns — which is why laying the groundwork was so important.

“Education is traditionally a big election issue, but there are now other things on the agenda, especially water and environmental issues.”

A third challenge in the lead-up to next year’s state and federal elections was outlined by branch president Mary Bluett — overturning the Brumby Government’s skills reforms.

The reforms would see TAFE funding opened up to private providers. “Given the media coverage over the last few months about the number of shonky private providers, (that) should ring alarm bells,” Bluett said.

“The Brumby Government is on notice — we will campaign for as long as it takes in defence of TAFE and the hundreds of thousands of students, especially those from the most disad-vantaged backgrounds, who depend on TAFE as their lifeline to employment.”

Conference was meeting after a successful year of agreements, with big pay rises won for education support, TAFE, early childhood and AMES staff on the back of the 2008 Teachers’ Agreement.

“Our next challenge is to achieve a fair outcome for our members in the disability sector,” Bluett said. “The claim is for a 17% increase over three years — a modest claim for a very under-funded and underpaid sector of our workforce.”

“They also have 86 separate employers, with 86 separate agree-ments. We aim to achieve salary justice and to have a single agreement covering all members — and we don’t underestimate the difficulty.” ◆

❛ This is not a campaign

opposing assessment, or parents’ right to know. it’s about

the best possible outcome for our kids. ❜

Brian Henderson

Peter Curtis

Mary Bluett


SchoolsJustin Mullaly deputy vice president, secondary

Moving from contract to ongoing

Early ChildhoodShayne Quinn vice president, early childhood

Councils adopt a new approach

Education SupportKathryn Lewis ES organiser

Decision time

WE ARE only just over half way through the school year but it is time to start the planning for next year.

The end of Term 3 is the time when schools have determined their projected enrolments and await their indicative budgets for 2010. Several options will be considered and decisions made — many of which will have an effect on ES staff.

So ES members should ensure they are involved in all consultations taking place. This is best done by taking an active role in AEU sub-branch meetings and the consultation process at the school.

Es Week 2009August 10-14 is a good week for ES staff and it was pretty good for the ES organiser too. I started my week with a chocolate morning tea provided by the AEU sub-branch of Glenallen School followed by a tasty lunch at Elwood SC, and the rest of the week was just as full.

Throughout the week I and other organisers took the opportunity to do “drop bys” — calling into schools to introduce ourselves, and drop off lollipop cups and good wishes to ES staff, along with advice and information. Many schools have invited us back to learn more about the ES Agreement.

We kicked off ES Week with our annual SSO metropolitan conference. Its popularity grows by the year. This year Colin Pidd was our guest speaker, with a very entertaining presentation on “cutting through the crap” — how to make the most of your conversations. Colin believes that we learn better with laughter — in which case we learned plenty from his talk.

Our workshops — on subjects ranging from working with difficult people to legal liability, ES classifications and the power of positive thinking — were well received. However our new workshop, Living with Autism presented by Wendy Lawson, was praised in all evaluations, so we may have to get Wendy back for next year.

Local agreementsEarlier this year, the AEU encouraged schools to put together local agree-ments for ES staff, and many schools have been able to put some good arrangements in place. The main areas covered have been time in lieu, recall and supervision.

We have collected samples of these agreements, so if you are interested in putting together a local agreement at your school, please contact the Membership Services Unit on (03) 9417 2822.

AEU Active reminderI encourage all new members to attend our AEU Active training to learn more about the new ES Agreement. There are two courses left this year — September 8-9 and October 13-14, both at the AEU in Abbotsford. Please call Rhonda Webley on (03) 9417 2822 for more details. ◆

WITH schools making staffing plans for next year, now is the time to ensure that those staff who are eligible for an ongoing position are offered a

suitable ongoing job if it is available.Any teacher who has been on contract(s) for longer than 12 months and

gained their position through Recruitment Online will be eligible to be offered ongoing employment. If the school has an ongoing vacancy then the principal should offer that position to an eligible member of staff; there is no require-ment to advertise statewide. If more than one teacher is eligible, there must be a local merit-based selection process.

If you feel that this process has not been or is unlikely to be followed at your school then contact the AEU — there are only a few instances when an eligible teacher or ES member cannot be offered ongoing employment if it is available. The AEU actively monitors Recruitment Online and asks sub-branch reps to check if there are eligible staff who should be first offered the position.

If you are offered an ongoing position then, in most cases, it is advanta-geous to wait until your contract ends before being translated. This ensures that your entire period of service is counted when starting as an ongoing staff member. Each individual’s circumstances differ, so call the AEU on 1800 013 379 for advice. ◆

ON JULY 31, the AEU, miscellaneous workers union the LHMU and the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) reached in-principle agreement on

a multi-employer agreement (MEA). It represents a significant change to the nature of enterprise bargaining

in local government for early childhood teachers, assistants, preschool field officers and activity group leaders.

Over many years, the AEU has negotiated agreements with a range of local authorities, as a party to agreements covering all employees of those councils.

Within these, we built links to the MECA agreement which covers community preschools and stands as a benchmark for early childhood teachers across the state. For assistants and coordinators (now referred to as activity group leaders), we used the Educational Services (Early Childhood Assistants) Victoria Award 1999 as the baseline for improving terms and conditions.

The cyclical nature of local government bargaining meant that all our council agreements were out of synchronisation with negotiations for the new MECA. At the same time, the individual nature of the bargaining meant varying council agendas, structures and resources had an impact on outcomes, as did the industrial relations law of the time.

Given the funded and regulated nature of the sector, MAV decided to take a different approach and seek a multi-employer agreement for its early childhood education employees.

After establishing a set of principles, bargaining began, in the context of the heads of agreement recently agreed between these parties and Kindergarten Parents Victoria (and signed off by Government). The heads of agreement also underpins the updated MECA.

Early childhood education staff in those councils which agree to be party to the MEA will receive information on the proposed agreement and vote in the next couple of months. Once approved by Fair Work Australia, it will apply in councils where a valid majority of staff have supported the agreement. ◆

siGn Up to the aeU e-news

Keep up to date with the latest news about AEU campaigns and events, plus news from the union and

social justice movement — and special giveaways — in the AEU’s fortnightly e-newsletter.

To sign up, go to www.aeuvic.asn.au — the subscribe box is in the top left corner.


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AEU

Women’sFOCUSBarb Jennings women’s officer

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EU

Make my pay!Despite equal pay laws, women effectively work two months a year for free.

EQUAL Pay Day in Australia took place on September 1 this year. The date signifies the 62 days into the financial year that women on average have to

work before they earn the same as men — because women on average earn 17.2% less than men.

Depressingly, the gap has widened over the past 10 years.Using average weekly ordinary time earnings:• Men earn $1,263• Women earn $1,046.The pay gap is $217 per week!Women are two-and-a-half times

more likely to live in poverty in their old age than men, and it will be 2019 before women have half the amount of superan-nuation that men have.

The federal Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) has produced a marvellous set of postcards (pictured) to mark the day. These cards were available in cafés and shops across Australia in the lead up to September 1. Some of them came with a temporary tattoo and some had a magnet. Hopefully, some of you saw them or were given one.

As many of you will know, Victorian government school teachers were among the first women in Australia to gain equal pay. The teacher unions won this right in 1967. It was obviously very hard to argue that women and men teachers did different work!

However, we still argue that teaching is undervalued and underpaid compared with other professions. The AEU’s highly effective television adver-tisements during the last schools agreement campaign showed clearly the difference in pay between a teacher, plumber, accountant and lawyer. Teachers were the lowest paid of the four.

This undervaluing is even more pronounced when you look at our members who work with smaller children or with children or adults with disabilities.

The AEU has argued through the Victorian Trades Hall Council and the Victorian Government that the skills, responsibilities and conditions of work in these areas have not been valued as highly as the work done in many tradition-ally male areas of work.

As an example: the complex emotional skills that most educators use in their important work remain under-recognised, along with the high levels of respon-sibility that educators have. These skills, conditions and responsibilities need to be re-valued with the (historic and unintentional) gender bias removed.

This is exactly what the ACTU and the AEU argued before the current Federal House of Representatives Parliamentary Inquiry into Pay Equity. Unions have argued for a Fair Pay Commissioner within Fair Work Australia and an adoption of the approach which has been used in Queensland and NSW to successfully grant increases to women in low paid traditional areas of women’s work.

The inquiry will report to the Deputy Prime Minister in late 2009 and many of us hope that these historic injustices will finally be addressed. Stay tuned! ◆

DisabilityKerry Maher disability services organiser

staff placed at risk over supervision

MEMBERS have been raising concerns at our recent committee meetings about staff in some disability services being left to supervise clients on

their own without being trained or qualified to do so. The issue was particularly raised at our recent meeting at Ararat and is

one we find extremely worrying. Band 1 employees should not be placed in the position of supervising

clients without qualified Band 2 staff being present. The Disability Services Award 1999 and every agreement the AEU has made are extremely clear on this point. The current agreement with employers’ group VHIA states:

• A Band 1 instructor is an instructor who undertakes duties which require very limited skills. They will not have the responsibility for a group of clients and will work under close supervision.

• A Band 1 instructor will assist in the delivery of programs but will not have responsibility for the development of such programs.

• They will provide support to clients under the supervision of a Band 2 or Band 3 instructor.

The AEU is greatly concerned that untrained and unqualified staff are being put at risk if there is no close supervision. The AEU has provided advice about how these staff may obtain qualifications that allow them to work as Band 2 staff — and be paid at the appropriate Band 2 rate.

If this is an issue in your workplace, contact me or my fellow disability services organiser Meaghan Flack immediately on (03) 9417 2822. ◆

Education SupportKathryn Lewis ES organiser

Decision time

AMES Gillian Robertson vice president, TAFE and adult provision

Agreement comes into effect

THE new AMES collective agreement became enforceable on July 7. This completes the process of enterprise bargaining undertaken by the union

for teachers in the adult multicultural education service.The salary increases we have achieved are impressive given the state

of the economy. The vast majority of AMES teachers were at the top of the salary scale; they now have three new increments to access, giving a 29% pay rise over three years. The starting salary has risen by more than $13,000.

This is the highest amount won by any sector of the AEU and achieves the three goals we set when we began bargaining:

1. A salary that would attract new entrants to the AMES workforce.2. To reward long-serving members trapped at the top of the scale with a

large increase, front-loaded so they gain the most.3. Additional salary points for all teachers on the incremental scale.AEU members can feel satisfied that all three have been reached with very

little change to the balance of the agreement despite government policy for exact dollar for dollar productivity offsets. Such productivity gains were an impossible task in a system already stretched in terms of workload.

A number of members have expressed concern about “hard barriers” in accessing the senior teacher level. This classification mirrors the expert teacher classification in schools. It is an expression of current demonstrated capacities of the teacher. It is not a new, higher, restricted set of capacities.

As the agreement settles in, the AEU will arrange PD sessions to brief members; we will also produce an implementation guide in due course.

Thank you to all members who supported the campaign and the activi-ties organised to press home our case to both government and the AMES management. ◆


aeU tRAInInG Rowena Matcott and Kim Daly training officers

WE HAVE now trained over 140 AEU members at Abbotsford and many more out in individual schools

on the specifics of consultation and the recent improve-ment to consultation arrangements.

It is now time to put those lessons to the test as we start to plan for 2010.

Planning for 2010 revolves around an understanding of the indicative budget or school resource package (SRP) and implementing our two school agreements (for teachers and ES staff) at your school. The specifics of how you translate the two agreements to your local school level is through what is often called a local agreement.

We can provide help and support in creating teacher and ES local agreements. We have examples and a pro forma so that you do not have to reinvent the wheel.

We’re also happy to read over your draft local agreement to ensure that it does not breach any of the working conditions in the Teacher and ES Agreements — just contact us or your local organiser on 1800 013 379.

We will be running a one-day training course, How to Create a Local Agreement, in Term 4 — keep an eye on the AEU website for details.

Understanding school budgetsWe also have a member forum on October 15 to explain the SRP. It is vital for all consultative committee reps to be

aware of what the SRP is and how it determines many of the decisions made at your school.

Attending these twilight sessions always offers the added bonus of hearing about the experiences of other schools. It is good to hear how they keep to two hours of meetings, how they organise parent/teacher/student reporting, that all classes are 25 or under, that all staff are in ongoing positions. It is important to hear that there are well run schools, what they look like and how they get to that point.

Help with job seekingThere are also a number of country and metro twilight sessions coming up, on gaining employment. Meet the Principals and Applying For Jobs are both popular sessions and you will need to RSVP as soon as possible. You need to be a member to attend our individual training sessions but you do not need to hold a specific sub-branch position. Call 1800 013 379 for details. ◆

We also offer a number of specific sessions for education support members, and whole school PD sessions, with our most popular being our Legal Liability presentation. We are taking bookings now for the 2010 PD days — for further details please call 1800 013 379.◆

TERM 3

Meet the Principals (Secondary) 8 September 4.30–6pm AEU Building

AEU Active: Education Support 8 –9 September AEU Building

Meet the Principals 10 September 4.30–6pm Bendigo: National Hotel

Member Forum: Applying for jobs 14 September 4.30–6pm AEU Building

Meet the Principals 15 September 4.30–6pm Geelong: Carrington Hotel (wine bar)

Meet the Principals 16 September 4.30–6pm Warrnambool: Flying Horse Bar & Brewery

TERM 4

AEU Principals Conference 8 October AEU Building

AEU Active: Education Support 13–14 October AEU Building

Member Forum: SRP (school budgets) 15 October 4.30–6pm AEU Building

AEU Active 20 October Wodonga: Blazing Stump Hotel

Education Support Conference 28 October Traralgon: venue tba

TAFE 4 All for secondary members(with CRT replacement)

12 November 1–4pm AEU Building

theory into practiceWith schools busy planning for 2010, it’s time for sub-branches to put into practice the lessons from your aeu training.

Join us at the Teachers Games

THINKING about the next term break? Why not join your

colleagues at the Teachers Games in Bairnsdale on September 20–23.

The AEU is a major sponsor of the games, which have become a highlight in the education calendar. We will provide all participants with an AEU drink bottle and sports towel.

Plus we’ll be hosting a range of social events for AEU members so you can meet your union, its staff and leadership and your fellow members, and have a sausage and a beer on us.

There is a full program of events, from running, cycling and swimming to the leisurely pursuits of fishing and lawn bowls, plus team sports including basketball and netball.

AEU members at the games will be eligible for a range of prizes and drink vouchers to assist with the fun. Register now at www.victeachersgames.com. ◆

nEPAL ExPEDiTiOnOZQUEST Adventures is seeking a group of teachers to work with schools in Nepal as volunteers on an expedition from December 28 to January 24.

Working in Kathmandu and in a remote rural community, volunteers will work alongside Nepalese teachers and school community members to share classroom practice, teaching styles, planning models and curriculum planning.

The project is one of a range which will see Australian profes-sionals from a wide range of backgrounds working in Nepal. Applications from teams and indi-vidual teachers are welcome. More at www.ozquest.org, or email [email protected] or call (03) 8412 9333. ◆


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on the phonesMembership Services Unit — 1800 013 379

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David Bunn membership services unit

CHANGES to an employee’s time fraction are — as a rule — made by agreement between the

employee and the employer. No AEU agreement or award gives you the right to change time fraction, and an employer cannot require you to work more or fewer hours than you were employed to do.

In some cases however the employer may confront the employee with a choice between reducing their hours or becoming excess or losing the job. This general rule is modified in early childhood where hours are often expressed as being conditional on funding and enrolment numbers.

school-based employeesThe Education Department will not allow a temporary time fraction reduction, although it will allow a temporary increase. Any reduction is “permanent” in the sense that the employee cannot resume their former (greater) hours unless the employer agrees to either a temporary or permanent change.

Many departmental staff are not aware of this firm policy. For example, the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development webpage on family leave appears to suggest that temporary reductions in hours are possible.

There is a solution to this problem for members who want to preserve the option of returning to their former time fractions. Two agreements can be made simultaneously — one to reduce the time fraction, the other to increase it from a specified date.

While any employee may request a change in their time fraction for personal or compassionate reasons, there is a special onus on the employer to consider a request by a member returning from family leave whose child has not yet started school.

In all cases though, the individual request for a change must be considered on its own merits. The application of a blanket rule — eg, no one will be approved for part time of less than three days a week — breaches the requirement that an individual application be properly considered.

The Victorian Government Schools Agreement 2008 provides that a teacher working from 0.4 to 0.6

cannot be required to work that time fraction across more than three days, and a teacher working 0.7 or 0.8 cannot be required to attend for more than four days. However a teacher may agree to vary this rule. The agreement does not, contrary to rumour, prescribe a minimum time fraction for teachers.

TAFE teachersThe TAFE Agreement prevents teachers who are employed ongoing or on a fixed-term contract from also teaching sessional or contract hours. It is not uncommon though for TAFE teachers to be employed as an ongoing part-time teacher with a temporary or fixed-term extension of their time fraction.

I work part-time — can I change my hours?

ESS Super upcoming seminars ESS Super is committed to helping you make the most of your super, which is why we would like to invite you to attend a member education seminar specifi cally designed for you.

All seminars (except regional seminars) are being held at ESS Super , Level 16, 140 William Street Melbourne.

If it is not convenient for you to attend our Melbourne offi ce or a regional seminar you can arrange for a Member Education Consultant to run a seminar or personal appointment at your workplace.

Beware of other organisations claiming to be experts on the Scheme’s we manage. Talk to the people who run your fund and make your future brighter.

Date Time Scheme Seminar Type

15/9 6pm SERB SERB Scheme Seminar

22/9 10am Revised 54/11 – members approaching or considering the 54/11 resignation option

23/9 6pm New Boosting Your Super Savings – for members aged up to 59


28/9 10am New Boosting Your Super Savings – for members aged up to 59

29/9 10am Revised Retire Your Way – for members aged 64 and over

1/10 6pm Revised 54/11 – members approaching or considering the 54/11 resignation option

2/10 10am New Retire Your Way – for members aged 64 and over


14/10 10am All Regional Seminar – Warrnambool: Lady Bay Resort, 16 Stanley Street

21/10 6pm All Regional Seminar – Swan Hill: Commercial Hotel, Heritage Room, 91 Campbell Street

23/10 10am New Boosting Your Super Savings – for members aged up to 59

6/11 10am New Retire Your Way – for members aged 64 and over


12/11 10am All Regional Seminar – Bendigo: All Seasons, 171-183 McIvor Road

18/11 6pm Revised 54/11 – members approaching or considering the 54/11 resignation option

23/11 6pm New Boosting Your Super Savings – for members aged up to 59

26/11 10am All Regional Seminar – Echuca: Echuca Hotel, 569-571 High Street Growing. Together.

Bookings are essential as places are limited. To book call our Member Contact Centre on 1300 732 977

schools: annual leave loadingThe date on which annual leave loading becomes due for teachers changed last year from July to December 1 (in line with the date for ES staff). To qualify, you must be employed on November 30; you will be paid pro rata if you have worked less than a full year at that date. If you resign before November 30 you are not entitled to leave loading. ◆


v new Educators nEtWORkJames Rankin graduate teacher organiser

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What is a graduate?

I HAVE had a lot of emails and facebook messages recently from students and new teachers asking about the definition of a graduate teacher.

Many of them want to know if they are allowed to apply for jobs tagged as Graduate on Recruitment Online. The essential confusion comes from the fact that there are two quite different things that separately claim the title Graduate.

The first is the graduate classification in the salary scale. In this sense a graduate is anyone on the first two levels of the salary scale.

Beyond that teachers are classified as Accomplished and then Expert. (For more on the salary scale go to www.aeuvic.asn.au/industrial/teachers.html.)

The second meaning relates to the Education Department program called the Teacher Graduate Recruitment Program.

This is a program designed to attract new teachers to work in government schools. Applicants are considered a graduate if they have qualified as a teacher, graduated in the past four years and are not employed as a teacher by the department at the time they take up the position.

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Two years, three years, four years — how long do new teachers count as graduates?

Schools are allowed to advertise up to two positions per year under this scheme; primary, P-12 or special schools whose budget or SRP exceeds $2 million and secondary schools whose the SRP exceeds $5m can advertise up to four.

For more about the program, go to tinyurl.com/oohany.Just to make things even more complicated, don’t forget that teachers in their

first three years of employment qualify for a Graduate Teacher Discount on their AEU membership rates.

Feel free to ask questions by emailing me at [email protected] or message me on facebook and I’ll report back in the next AEU News. ◆

In at the deep endTeachers who start their first job halfway through the year face a tough challenge. How can you help?

SPARE a thought for teachers who start their professional life on the first day of Term 3.Will they have the same level of induction as teachers joining your school

at the beginning of a new year? Processes for these teachers are often


Safety MAttERSChristine Stewart deputy branch secretary

Positive signs The aeu’s first oHS conference highlighted the action being taken on bullying — and the crucial role of the health and safety rep.

THE AEU held its inaugural Health and Safety Conference on August

14. While the focus was on stress, occupational violence and bullying, a broad range of issues was consid-ered by over 100 participants.

Branch president Mary Bluett opened the conference by recog-nising the very important role played by health and safety representatives in their workplaces. Her comments were underlined by Susan Allen from WorkSafe when she told us that 43% of young workers are unlikely to raise issues or ask questions about safety at work — a fact that prompted WorkSafe’s recent campaign.

More appallingly, every single workplace fatality in recent years has been preventable.

Oonagh Barron, also from WorkSafe, was the keynote speaker. Oonagh was a leader in the area of occupational violence and bullying long before they were seen as workplace issues — in fact much of the credit for this must go to her.

Initially she presented some depressing statistics regarding the incidence of workplace assaults, then informed us that bullying was worse. She noted that the reporting of bullying is more common in the public sector than the private. Of course, this does not mean that bullying itself is more common. The number of reports is only the tip of the iceberg.

After that her talk gave me hope that we can start to make a difference and protect workers from bullying. It will not be easy and it will not be fixed tomorrow, but our workplaces will now have to address the issues. WorkSafe is taking this incredibly seriously.

It now has a dedicated inspectorate to deal with bullying — one of the union movement’s concerns had been that the inspectorate dealing with physical injuries was not equipped to deal with the much more complex and less tangible psychological environment.

Then there is a new edition of the Guidance Note On Preventing Bullying at Work which marks a welcome shift by adopting the accepted health and safety approach and focusing on the need to manage underlying risk factors.

For the first time leadership style is recognised as a risk factor. Interestingly it is the styles at either end of the continuum that create the most problems — the autocratic and the laissez-fair. WorkSafe views good management practices as so important that it has designed workshops in this area.

One of the most popular workshops of the conference dealt with challenging behaviour in students, while the dominant area of questions for the panel related to buildings. Both are clear indicators of the issues facing schools today.

The panel session also underlined that consultation is key to managing risk — David Rich from WorkSafe raised it as his first point and stressed that it was a legal requirement.

Two things are obvious from the day. Firstly, there are many and varied OH&S issues in our workplaces; secondly, we have a great group of health and safety reps to deal with them — and they do not have to deal with them on their own. We are here to help.◆

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inadvertently overlooked or scaled back to the point where they miss out on much essential information and support.

For example, do they know about the clauses in the certified agreement which give them a 5% reduction in workload in their first 12 months (Clauses 21(6)(a) and (b))? If in doubt direct them to your AEU sub-branch rep, the member of the school leadership team with responsibility for this, or your representative on the consultative committee.

Teachers new to the profession are provisionally registered by the Victorian Institute of Teaching. It’s expected that schools will support them with induction and mentoring, so they should by now have been assigned a mentor and timetabled support for collegial discussion and shared teaching.

Schools also need to be aware that mentors should be trained to ensure that they understand the mentoring process and the requirements for teachers to become fully registered.

Research conducted by the institute highlights the importance of giving beginning teachers the opportunity to work with more experienced colleagues and view their practice. Think about inviting a beginning teacher into your classroom. It doesn’t matter whether you teach in the same subject or grade area — many ideas and practices that are instinctive to experienced teachers will be a revelation to newly employed teachers.

Be aware also of the tendency to assume that mature-age and career-changing entrants to the profession don’t need the same support as other beginning teachers. Feedback from the VIT’s Supporting Provisionally Registered Teachers program indicates that these teachers perceive they get less school support and this can be exacerbated when they begin teaching mid-year.

In the flurry of the third term, remember those who are newly employed at your school, particularly those who are new to teaching. Make sure your school honours its obligation to support and induct these teachers, so that this becomes the first semester of a long and fulfilling career. ◆

— Rhonda McPhee Victorian Institute of Teaching


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FRANCE — PROVENCERestored 17th-century house in mediaeval fortified village of Entrevaux. Spectacular location, close to Côte d’Azur and Italy. Contact owners (03) 5258 2798 or (02) 9948 2980. www.provencehousestay.com.

FRANCE — SOUTH WESTRenov 17thC 2 bdrm apart in elegant Figeac,“centre ville”, or cottage in Lauzerte, 12thC hilltop village. Low cost. www.flickr.com/photos/clermont-figeac/ www.flickr.com/photos/les-chouettes/ Ph teacher owner (03) 9877 7513 or email [email protected] for brochure.

ITALY — FLORENCEBeautiful fully furnished apartment in historic centre. Sleeps 2-6, $1,700 pw, telephone 0419 025 996 or www.convivioapartment.com.

PROVENCE — LANGUEDOCLarge village house. Luxury plus location. Suitable for up to eight adults. (03) 5444 1023 www.houserentalfrance.com.au.

ROMEStudio apartment, Piazza Bologna, beautifully appointed, sleeps 2, opens onto garden courtyard, $1100 pw, telephone 0419 488 865 or www.ninoapartmentrome.com.

SOUTH OF FRANCE — LANGUEDOCTwo charming newly renovated traditional stone houses with outside terraces. Sleeps 4 or 6. Market town, Capital of Minervois, wine growing region, close to lake, Canal Midi, Mediterranean beaches, historic towns. From $460 per week. Visit, Web: www.languedocgites.com Email: [email protected].

VILLAS ITALY September ‘09 4-star tour with stay villa near Siena [email protected]

VILLA TUSCANYThree bdm classic tuscan country house, stone construction, external shutters, terracotta floors, fully equipped kitchen, lge outdoor terrace, panoramic views, complete privacy, 5 mins to shops/services, direct bus service to Florence $1500AUD/week www.italyallover.com [email protected]

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ARE YOU A MECU MEMBER ?Shortly, you’ll receive, by mail, the ballot packs for this year’s director election. I ask you to consider voting for me, Andrew Boatman.I’m a current teacher and education union member with a long history of involvement in the credit union movement. My vision for our credit union: has teachers at its core, encompasses support for financial literacy initiatives, member-oriented financial planner relationships and renewed emphasis on a varied suite of home loan products. For further details, email me at: [email protected]

HYPNOTHERAPY/COUNSELLINGJane Burns, Clinical Hypnotherapist and Counseller offers a friendly and confi-dential approach to stress, stop smoking, phobias, panic/anxiety, pre-wedding, life/work balance, weight, nailbiting and more. Private Health Fund Provider. Preston and City. Holiday bookings [email protected] 0424 079 711

NEW BOOK BY ExPERIENCED TEACHERA Practical Guide for Casual Relief Teachers in Victorian Primary Schools $24.95 www.vjsales.com.au.

PLAY SCRIPTSPlay scripts adolescents like. Their humour, their perspectives, no waffle. Great for performance, writing stimulation or pure entertainment as a period filler. Check out the website: robscripts.com.au

RETIREMENT VICTORIAVisit us at www.retirevic.com.au.

RETIRING SOON?Volunteers for Isolated Students’ Education recruits retired teachers to assist families with their Distance Education Program. Travel and accommodation provided in return for six weeks teaching. Register at www.vise.org.au or George Murdoch (03) 9017 5439 Ken Weeks (03) 9876 2680.

TAxATIONTAx RETURNS FROM $75Teachers Special Offer

Most refunds in 14 days. With over 20 years experience we ensure all maximum refunds by claiming all allowable deductions and tax offsets. Business tax returns for sole traders, partnership, company and trust also available. After hours and Saturday appointments available.Contact M Georgy (03) 9467 7842.

VISAS IMMIGRATIONFor the professional advice you need — contact Ray Brown. Phone (03) 5792 4056 or 0409 169 147. Email [email protected] Agents Registration No. 0213358.

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AIREY’S INLETSATIS BEACH HOUSE

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APOLLO BAYThree bdrm holiday house, sleeps 8. Short walk to beach, shops. Available weekends, weekly, all year.Phone (03) 5826 9445.

HOLIDAY HOUSE PHILLIP ISLAND, VENTNOR

Two bdrm sleeps 6, available weekends and holidays. Jane (03) 9387 9397 or 0431 471 611 or Louise (03) 9343 6030 or 0413 040 237.

LAKE HOUSE HEALESVILLEIs the perfect place to relax and revi-talise. Boutique-styled home, suitable for one or two couples. Nestled in a very quiet location and is blessed with picturesque rural views and overlooks a beautiful lake with abundant birdlife. Contact Joan 0427 960 738www.lakehousehealesville.com

LORNE COTTAGESleeps 4, panoramic views, 5 mins beach and shops. Available December and January. Phone (03) 9387 4329.

PORTARLINGTONHouse overlooking You Yangs and Melbourne across bay. Two large bedrooms sleeping up to eight. For overnight, weekly or weekend bookings please contact Jennifer on 0428 866 433 / Alan 0425 736 369 for bookings.

RYE Four bedroom holiday house. 100 metres stroll to Tyrone Beach. Central to all the attractions of the Mornington Peninsula. Two queen-size beds and 5 singles. Available all year round, weekends, weekly. Contact Marie 0437 129 036 or Ian 0409 861 496.

WYE RIVER“Wye Eyrie”: 3 bdrm house, all facilities, woodfire, balcony. Superb panorama: ocean, rockpools, surf, river, path to beach. (03) 9714 8425; [email protected]

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grows and prospers

The last month has seen mecu grow by strategic mergers with Regional

One and Maroondah credit unions. This has provided more access to services for teacher members and their families though an increased number of branches.

As well as the existing branches in Melbourne and Gippsland, new branches are located in Mildura, Bendigo, Castlemaine, Colac, Ballarat, Kerang, Kyneton, Maryborough, echuca, Sunbury, Ringwood, Croydon, Lilydale, and Clayton. Members should look for the existing logos until the branches are rebadged to mecu. Mecu is now the fourth largest credit union in Australia with 140,000 members and over $2.4B in assets.

Members can access branches in Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane, and Canberra, and northern Queensland. In all, there are 34 branches nationally. In addition, access to ATMs will improve dramatically when a further 1700 RediATMs become part of the national credit union network. This will happen progressively from now on and members should look for the red RediATM badge in order to save money on transaction costs.

Mecu’s performance in the tough financial environment of the past year has been outstanding in terms of growth, profit, member dividend and member service.

Mecu has an experienced board and management team and a well defined relationship with the AeU and its members who support it. Member surveys have rated member satisfaction at 93%.

As a testament to mecu’s strength and standing in the finance industry mecu has recently been awarded the Australian Financial Review’s Smart Investor Award for Credit Union of the Year. In addition, mecu won the best Variable Rate Loan award and best Low Rate Credit Card award. This caps off a great year as earlier mecu won the Premier’s Sustainability Award for best products and services and the Australasian Reporting Association’s best sustainability reporting award.

These awards establish that mecu can provide socially responsible banking by offering competitive rates across loans, savings and investments. Now with added access for members and greater capacity to service member’s needs the future is bright.

— Peter Crocker, Chair, mecu Board

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YHy2414 copy.indd 1 29/7/09 9:15:37 AM

Susan Hopgood AEU federal secretary

SOFIA is from Tanzania. She is 13 years old and has never attended school. She spends her

day selling fruits at market to help buy food for the family.

Twelve-year-old Sakina lives in the far northwest of Nigeria. She spends her day fetching water and pounding millet to make grain. Her family are preparing her to get married soon.

Raheem is 8 and lives in Hyderabad in India. When he was six he had to drop out of school and work in a clothes shop. Through a local project that helps child labourers get back to school he is now at school in the mornings but still working all afternoon for about 20 cents a day.

Globally, nearly 250 million children have to work to help their families. Over 70 million primary school-aged children, and a much larger number for secondary, are not enrolled in school; 60% are girls.

In Australia where we claim to have all our children in school to compulsory age, only 29% of people in remote communities have a school that goes up to year 10.

These stories tell something of the world children grow up in. And they remind us that education is the best tool we have for tackling poverty.

In April 2000, the world’s governments agreed six Education For All goals by 2015. Midway through that period we are a long way from achieving these goals and all six are in doubt. International aid for education — $US3.8 billion in 2006 — has to triple to reach the $11bn required annually to meet the EFA goals.

The AEU is affiliated to Education International, the global union federation representing 30 million education personnel in over 171 countries. The AEU and EI are committed to working towards education for all, to the removal of poverty and discrimination in all its forms and to social justice for all.

EI is undertaking a project to ensure

unqualified teachers receive training, driven by teacher unions and local stakeholders.

Its EFAIDS program focuses on the role of teachers in promoting education for all — the most effective vaccine against HIV/AIDS — and in raising awareness of HIV/AIDs issues.

Another focus for EI is to assist developing countries in building teacher unions’ capacity to work for quality public education for all and secure decent working conditions for all education personnel.

The AEU has a strong commitment to all these goals. Our work is supported and funded by the AEU’s International Trust Fund — 0.7% of membership dues, or over $500,000 per year.

We are involved in projects in India, Zimbabwe, Burma, the south Pacific and central Asia, but I want to finish with EI’s work in Aceh following the devastation of the Tsunami in December 2004.

EI, in cooperation with Oxfam Netherlands, successfully built 35 fully equipped elementary schools; trained 39 principals in school leadership and 1,966 teachers in teaching skills, basic health education, leadership and specialised subjects; trained 482 teachers in trauma counselling, 316 leaders in union building and 83 in the role and responsibility of the parent teachers’ committees.

It has established a children’s centre, provided 3,655 scholarships to students affected by tsunami, and run symposiums, conferences and exchange programmes.

The global financial crisis has thrown us a new opportunity to change the thinking of govern-ments — to reinvest in people and to recognise that education is central to our societies. Education unions have a responsibility to defend and achieve quality public education. This underlines the work of the AEU and Education International. ◆

Susan Hopgood is federal secretary of the AEU and vice president of Education International. This article is adapted from her speech to AEU branch conference.

the world children grow up inSusan Hopgood at the official opening of an EI funded school in Banda Aceh.


intern

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AGE OF sTUPiDDir: Franny Armstrong91 mins, Rating M

PETE Postlethwaite, last seen over

here in the Aboriginal doco Liyarn Ngarn, leads this examination of how our generation can face potential extinction from climate change and do nothing about it.

Told from the perspective of a climate ravaged 2055, it weaves contemporary stories from around the globe from Nigeria to Iraq to New Orleans to make an argument more political than scientific — perhaps telling the inconvenient truths that Al Gore couldn’t.

The social justice take on the causes and implications of climate change and Big Oil’s part in it will have heads nodding, but the film could do more to set out an alternative action. But mixing doc, drama, interviews, cartoons, CGI and more to make its case, this is pacey, watchable and imaginative. ◆ — NB

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DECLArATiOn On THE riGHTs OF inDiGEnOUs PEOPLEsMichel StreichAllen and UnwinRRP $24.95

AUSTRALIA finally signed up to the UN Declaration on the Rights of

Indigenous Peoples this year. Only Australia, the US, Canada and New Zealand voted against it when it was passed by the UN General Assembly in September 2007.

Two decades in the making, it set an important benchmark for the world’s 350 million Indigenous peoples.

This handsome, pocket-sized edition, published in association with Amnesty International, is illustrated by German-born Australian artist Michel Streich with a simplicity that cuts to the heart of the arguments and reminds us that such documents exist to be read and acted upon.

It matches his illustrated edition of the Declaration of Human Rights published last year. ◆ — NB

sTrAnGE DAys inDEEDFrancis Wheen4th Estate344pp, RRP $32.99

It's 1974: A young Francis Wheen sneaks out of the

house, catches a train to a hippy information centre in London and announces: “I’ve dropped out,” only to be told “Drop back in, man … you’re too late.”

Wheen’s entertaining book charts the 1970s — the crash that followed the high of 60s idealism and a decade characterised by strikes, paranoia and “absolute chaos”. Nixon was in the White House, seeing conspiracies everywhere, Wilson was in Downing Street, convinced that spies were trying to overthrow him, and home-grown terrorists were blowing up half of Europe.

As Wheen, a journalist and satirist, notes, it all seems very familiar today. It’s not just music and fashion that go through revivals — sometimes it’s politics too. ◆ — NB

Mercies and curses

THis is HOWMJ HylandText PublishingRRP $32.95

UNIVERSITY drop-out Patrick

Oxtoby arrives at a seaside boarding house after his fiancée abruptly breaks off their engagement.

Though a talented car mechanic, Patrick is a misfit. Confused by the nuanced communication that goes on between grown-ups, he lurches from one simplistic, often delusional, observation to the next without the power to connect events or read between the lines.

All this comes to a head one night when fellow boarding-house guest Ian Welkin, a Cambridge-educated womaniser, pushes Patrick’s buttons one too many times.

Hyland’s spare, taut and convincing prose drives this compelling insight into a man dissociated from the world and his own actions. ◆

— RP

ana Kokkinos’s new film is a powerful study of parents and children under stress in and around the streets of Melbourne.Rachel Power AEU News

MELBOURNE director Ana Kokkinos has transformed

award-winning stage play Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? into an equally gritty but more

nuanced portrayal of struggling families in her new film, Blessed.

Subtly touching on class issues, the story is told in two parts: first tracking seven children over the course of a day and a night as they roam the suburbs and backstreets of Melbourne; then revisiting the same 24 hours from the mothers’ perspective.

Four celebrated Australian actors lead a large ensemble cast in a film where multiple narratives intersect tenuously but to powerful effect.

Miranda Otto is a lonely single mother fright-ened by her responsibilities and addicted to the pokies. Deborra-Lee Furness plays a hard-working mother with an unemployed, emotionally dehydrated husband (William McInnes). Victoria Haralabidou is

a Greek widow who sews private school uniforms to make ends meet, while Frances O’Connor’s neglected kids have taken to the streets.

Melbourne Workers’ Theatre commissioned the play in 1997, to address the political and socioeco-nomic issues of the time. Kokkinos was struck by the boldness and veracity of the production.

“The characters were so compelling and engaging,” she recalls. “Ordinary people dealing with everyday life and adversity with great courage, humour and energy. I was deeply affected and saw the potential for a very moving and beautiful film.”

She engaged the play's four writers — Andrew Bovell, Melissa Reeves, Patricia Cornelius and Christos Tsiolkas — to adapt it for the big screen. But the screenplay refused to hang together until she went back to the core of what attracted her in the first place: a powerful monologue in which single mother Rhonda (O’Connor in the film) describes her missing and neglected kids as her “blessings”.

“Of all the words in the play, they resonated with me most the first time I saw it,” says Kokkinos. “What I find quite beautiful about Rhonda is that

she’s full of love … but she’s incapable of putting the needs of her children before her own needs because she is so under-fed emotionally.”

From there, she and lead writer Bovell began developing a study of the bond between mothers and children.

“With any adaptation … there comes a point where you have to dispense with the source material and reinvent the work as a film without losing the richness, texture and essence of what initially attracted.”

While each character is dealing with his or her own issues, she says the film is ultimately about “kids who are pushing their own boundaries and therefore pushing the relationship with their mothers”.

“Events bring those mothers and children together at the end because that connection between them is primal, so powerful, and no matter what shit’s going down, at the end of the day there’s that incredible capacity to return to the mother’s embrace.”

Blessed screens nationally from September 10. ◆

Ana Ko

kkinos

Eva Lazzaro as Stacey in Blessed


culture

WIn teaching resourcesSIGN UP TO THE AEU E-NEWSLETTER AT www.aeuvic.asn.au FOR THE CHANCE TO

WIN MORE GIVEAWAYS!AEU nEWs is giving members the opportunity to win a variety of Australian resources for their school libraries from our good friends at ABC Books, Text Publishing and Ford street Publishing.To enter, simply email us at [email protected] by 10am Wednesday 23 September. Include your name and school or workplace. Write “Win Teaching Resources” in the subject line.Prizes will be sent directly to the winner’s school or workplace with a special inscription recognising the winner. Good luck!

Congratulations to our winners from AEU News issue 5: How Big Is Big — Alanna Bell, Benalla West Primary School; Why Can’t I Look The Way I Want? — Saari Frochot-Ryan, Bendigo South East College; The Good Daughter and They Told Me I had To Write This — Myra Kirkley, Wallan Secondary College; The Fairies-Numbers and The Greatest Sheep in History — Jane MacCubbin, Stockdale Road Primary School.

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Finding Home by Gary Crew, illustrated by Susy BoyerThis picture book for older children is an ode and an obituary to the Indigenous landscape. Ignorance and selfishness can destroy the things we love and value most — the child whose parents don't value his differences, the beauty of wild nature. This story offers the reader a metaphor for the destruction of the environment through thoughtless acts. Ford Street Publishing, RRP $26.95.

Bone By Bone by Tony JohnstonDavid Church is growing up in a town in America's deep south in the 1950s, where the Klan is alive and well. He can't be sure that his doctor father, isn't part of the organisation. And David's best friend, Malcolm, is black. Text Publishing, RRP $22.95.My Private Pectus by Shane Thamm A serious yet comical portrayal of teenager Jack McDermott's struggle to discover who he is, what he's meant to look like, and how much he should care about what other people think.Ford Street Publishing, RRP $19.95.

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The Surfing Scientist — 40 Super Human Body Tricks by Ruben MeermanThis book is full of wonderful tricks that you can do with one of the most finely tuned machines in the universe — your own body. ABC Books, RRP $12.95.

Malcolm & Juliet by Bernard BeckettMalcolm is sixteen. With the mind of a science nerd, the body of a teenager, and an ambition to reconcile the two, he embarks upon his latest research project — sex. Text Publishing, RRP $19.95.


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