Local teachers walk off job as support grows for school funding fight

Inner-city area teachers and school support staff threw their weight behind a strike for better pay and school funding on Tuesday, March 24, and many families seemed to support them.

Staff from the schools told Inner City News that at Carlton Primary 14 of 16 teachers and support staff joined the 24-hour stop-work and at Carlton North 27 out of 32 did.

At University High an estimated 80 per cent went on strike while at Princess Hill High 72 of around 85 went out.

University High School principal Nick Scott said he understood entirely why the staff had chosen to take action and looked forward to them getting a new deal “as soon as possible.”

The Australian Education Union said the workers had stopped work because of “the inability of the Allan Labor Government to put a fair and decent pay and conditions offer on the table”.

According to AEU Victorian Branch president Justin Mullaly, public schools across the state were affected by significant, ongoing staffing shortages as a result of staff having the lowest pay rates in the country and being increasingly overworked.

The secretary of the Victorian Education Department has said the pay disparity was due to Enterprise Bargaining Agreements having been introduced more recently in other states.

The strike was the first by teachers in 13 years and, according to some reports, the rally which accompanied it was the biggest in the union’s history.

Victoria Police estimated 35,000 people marched from Trades Hall to the Victorian Parliament.

Being part of such a huge “sea of red” had been an “amazing” experience, Trish Harrington, business manager of Carlton North Primary School said.

“Everyone that I’ve spoken to was really inspired by it,” she said.

“There is a big groundswell of people in public schools just wanting to see action; they want to see more funding.”

In addition to staff being lower paid than their counterparts interstate, the issue was one of resourcing.

Victorian Government schools were “underfunded,” Ms Harrington said, referring to the state government’s failure so far to increase funding to the level of the nationally agreed, Gonski review-based Schooling Resourcing Standard.

“And until the state government puts their share in, the federal government won’t put theirs in, so we miss out in both ways,” she said.

Particularly since COVID, the environment had got “tough”, she said.

“We find that there are increasing numbers of kids with additional needs that require support and we don’t get funding for that.”

“It makes it hard, and people are working extra hard in their own time to make it work for the kids.”

There was “appetite” for continued industrial action if necessary, Ms Harrington said.

And the school community was very supportive, with parents from the school joining teachers at the rally.

Several Carlton North Primary parents who spoke to Inner City News said they were in total support of the strike regardless of any inconvenience involved in having to keep their kids at home for the day.

“Our teachers work so hard it’s crazy how little they get paid, so I’m very much in support. Fingers crossed,” said one mother, Megan.

She pointed also to the hard work being done by members of the school community on fundraising to cover basic school costs like pay for relief teachers.

“I also think it’s good that our kids know the conditions that their teachers have, and that there’s something that can be done – that when people get together, hopefully change can happen,” she said.

Another mother, Sarah, who worked from home on the day of the strike and “tag-teamed” supervision of a play date, described it as “totally worth it for the cause”.

“I don’t know a parent at the school who’s not supportive of the strike,” she said. •