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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-06-17 Daily Xml
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TEACHERS, INDUSTRIAL ACTION

Mr BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:43): This morning I had the opportunity to stand out the front of this place with several hundred school teachers as they called for better conditions and pay from the state government. Listening to the speeches, I think we are not a long way apart, in terms of the government's view and the teachers' view on this issue. The one objective of both parties is the betterment of school education here in South Australia.

The resounding message that I heard out there was that they do not want the system dumbed down. That is something that this government does not want to see, either. That is why we have seen the investment in our schools during the term of the Rann government. We have increased spending on each child who is at a public school by more than 53 per cent since coming to government in 2002. The money being spent on capital budgets in rebuilding schools and building new schools is spending the like of which we have never seen before in this state. It is in stark contrast to what we saw under the Liberal government, where they went around the state closing schools.

In the electorate of Mawson this year, we opened the newly refurbished Willunga Primary School at a cost of more than $5 million. McLaren Flat Primary School has also undergone a multimillion dollar facelift and, in this budget, $7.7 million was set aside for a complete overhaul of Willunga High School, something that is very welcomed by the southern community.

Coming from the same sort of background, where the government is looking to improve education service and provide better education for our students, and the teachers and the principals are also after the same thing, I wonder whether we need to look at some sort of overall structural reform of the teaching profession and perhaps bring it more into line with other professions. We could perhaps buy back the weeks off that teachers receive, so over a seven or eight year period, we could buy back a week at a time. Therefore, instead of teachers having eleven or twelve weeks annual leave, they would have four weeks annual leave, like most other professions. Then the professional development, which is crucially important for our teachers and principals, is undertaken while students are away on holidays, instead of students having pupil-free days and parents having to make other arrangements.

I know it is something that has not really been tried, as far as I know, in the rest of Australia, but it could be a good opportunity. If teachers are willing to look at it and the government is willing to look at it, and, if it is palatable to the teachers and affordable to the government, it could be worthwhile. Then it could be copied in other states of Australia and perhaps elsewhere.

Obviously, teachers would be paid a lot more because we would be paying them for those weeks that normally they would not be at the school. Then it is likely that we would attract an even higher calibre of teacher to the profession, a profession that is vitally important for our society, not just now but, of course, into the future.

As the parent of a child who is in the public primary school system, I really want to pay tribute to our great teachers. What I see from my son coming home from school is that the things that he learns and the attitudes that he brings home are fantastic. Each time he has a pupil-free day and his teacher goes off for some more professional development, almost instantly my son comes home and says, 'My teacher learnt this and this is what we were doing in class today.' I know that it is very important that teachers have professional development days. Perhaps if it were something that the teachers and the government could at least agree to look at, that might work a little better.

I notice in the teachers' log of claims that they want an additional six pupil-free plus a reduction in the number of duty days, that is, the days they are required to attend school. They want that reduced from 207 to 202 days, which would mean an additional 11 days a year, or more than two school weeks, where they do not have to front up to the children in the classroom. They also want to limit their contact or classroom time to 18 hours per week.

As a parent and someone who travels around to 17 schools in and around the electorate of Mawson, I would like to see our teachers having as much contact time with pupils as possible. If they could then be paid during their school holiday period to mark work or set out the next term's agenda and curriculum and also undertake their professional development, that could be a big win for everyone. I think we would see a reduction in the amount of annual leave that teachers would have, and a very significant increase in their pay scales which, as I said, could hopefully attract even more people to a wonderful profession.

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