By Dave Riley
BRISBANE — State education in Queensland has traditionally been one of the lowest funded in Australia. With the election of the Goss Labor government in 1989, some of this disparity was addressed. But Labor veered away from its reform agenda for education in its 1993 budget, which increased class sizes in an attempt to reduce teacher numbers.
Now, the Borbidge government seems determined to continue where Goss left off.
Initially, Education Department razor gangs tried to privatise school cleaning to reduce staff costs. But a campaign by the Miscellaneous Workers Union and opposition from independent MP Liz Cunningham stymied the government's plans, and the school cleaners kept their jobs.
The state government now wants to introduce school-based management under its Leading Schools Program.
Similar schemes exist in Great Britain, New Zealand and Victoria. Despite all the rhetoric about empowering parents and school staff with a greater say in the running of each school, school-based management has been used as a Trojan horse to pass on budget cuts.
Leading Schools was suddenly introduced by the government in enterprise bargaining negotiations with the Queensland Teachers' Union. An impasse soon followed when the government tied acceptance of Leading Schools to a wage deal.
The union, which seeks a 6% wage increase annually over the next three years to bring Queensland teachers' salaries in line with those in other states, rejected both the government's offer of 4% and its insistence that the Leading Schools scheme be brought in without any changes.
The union called a statewide strike on March 25, which was followed by a series of rolling strikes in late May and into June. After these work stoppages, a campaign of radio ads and leaflet drops in 10 marginal electorates, negotiations between the QTU and the government have again broken down.
Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly spoke to Therese Rourke, Geebung branch council representative for the QTU, about the issues in dispute.
"In the last enterprise bargaining agreement", says Rourke, "the teachers agreed to the phased introduction of school-based management because in our policy it says that we agree with school-based management as long as it doesn't mean that the government can abrogate its responsibilities.
"What we fear with Leading Schools is that the government will back out of proper funding. If we agree to it, maybe they'll give schools enough funding for a few years and then, because we accepted the scheme without guarantees, the funding will gradually peter off."
Under the guise of school-based management, the local councils could be forced to reduce standards. "They haven't quarantined salaries from the rest of the resources. What we think will happen is that if a school needs, say, five new computers and the government has already decided on its allocation of funds, then two teachers will be used to teach what used to be three teachers' workload.
"The other group that we are really concerned about is specialist teachers like music teachers, physical education teachers, language and special education teachers, advisory teachers who help us with kids with intellectual or physical impairments. What we feel will happen with school councils is that they'll say, 'Do we really need those specialist teachers?', and if money is tight they'll be the first ones to go."
Rourke calls this problem one of "nipping and tucking". Once the budget has been determined and the funds allocated, under school-based management there won't be much local councils can do. "The government will tell us, 'You prioritised the money; we can't give you any more. It's your priorities that are up the creek, so you are the ones who need to fix it up.'"
Already, 104 schools have been incorporated in a Leading Schools pilot program. The QTU has directed its members not to take part in this initial scheme. The department has said that teachers refusing to participate will be deemed to be taking industrial action, and the union and its members can be prosecuted under Queensland's new industrial relations act.
While few school principals seem committed to Leading Schools, the government has tried to win their support by offering them salary bonuses and initial pay-outs of up to $50,000 to their schools if they take on the program.
But the carrots cannot hide the likely outcome. As the husband of one primary school teacher asked: if his wife's job is traded in for a lawnmower, can he get to use it on the weekend?