A career in education is a rewarding one. For my own part I find that spending my days with young people, helping them to learn about the world, explore and develop, grow ideas and perspectives is, perhaps, the noblest way to spend one’s life. One cannot express the feelings that a child’s “Aha!” moment (that moment when the cylinders all fall into place in their mind and new concept is understood) gives one. It makes all of the planning, teaching, frustration and care worthwhile. As a teacher you inevitably become an important part of a child’s life. After all you spend more time with them in term time than they do with their parents. The model of humanity, behaviour and scholarship that you present them with is inestimably important. It may contradict negative experiences in home or society or it may reinforce the desirable values of our society. We also have a responsibility towards the care of our students that physically, morally and psychologically and naturally we developed a feeling of protection. In short teaching (should) positively set the direction for children’s growth into civic minded, responsible, caring, reasoning members of society. We build tomorrow.
Why is it then that teaching is so poorly respected by society, which place so much emphasis on the importance of education, and so poorly valued by governments, which apportion so much of their hollow rhetoric to improving educational standards?Education in Australia has been increasingly devalued in the past three-decades. Perhaps this decline started with the radical changes to education implemented in the 1970s. Controversy surrounding new teaching methods must have shook public confidence in education. While education had followed predictable patterns since the formalisation of schooling the changes wrought through a more thorough investigation into the methods would have seemed lacking in discipline and full of “hippy” speak to those brought up with the cane, rote learning and teachers born in the 19th century. These changes were necessary but the liberalism of a more constructivist approach and the move away from discipline backed up with physical punishment to those educated under the “old system”.
As education became increasingly politicised in the 1980s, 1990s and the present decade successive governments both federally and at state levels sought to gain re-election by producing wildly populist policies. The notion that something was wrong with education in this country became public “fact” and strategies such as unit curriculum, middle schooling, the misunderstood outcomes based education and a myriad others were the result. Governments wished to be perceived as “doing something” and spending more resources on education. Their efforts often saw the redirection of funding from successful projects, the redeployment of staff and wholesale changes to education systems. These changes sometimes involved such a complete turn around in policy that millions of dollars were wasted when one strategy was replaced by another. Sometimes, as with OBE, the baby was thrown out with the bath water. Realistically politicians who are seeking re-election are the worst people to make decisions for education as they pander to knee-jerk public reactions egged on my a media devoid of any real news and trying desperately to hold the public’s waning attention.
It is obvious that in real terms spending on education in areas where it is most needed has decreased. Not only this but the volume of red tape that schools must process in order to function has steadily increased so as to make real gains meaningless. Instead of being allowed to get on with the core business of educating the next generation teachers, principals and support staff must cross every “t” and dot every “i” in a time consuming and frustrating web of policy. Much of that policy is generated by the government bureaucracy staff by public servants keen to leave their mark before climbing up the ladder only to generate more red tape. Nobody ever got promoted for doing nothing.At the present I believe that the public view of education is at its lowest ebb. The standing of a teacher in society, whilst once seen as a respected, key member of a community has been eroded by reduced government spending, reduced pay and conditions, the media and, dare I say it, by the unprofessional conduct some teachers.
That government spending has been reduced is a given. One need only look at the poor resources schools have, the old furniture, computers, carpets, fittings and paucity of texts. Teacher’s pay was once equal with that of a back bencher. Now plumbers earn more. A teacher in Western Australia cannot afford to purchase a house, let alone raise a family. Conditions have also been reduced. In Western Australia a teacher may be told by the Department of Education and Training where to work and if they are unable to do so will be pushed to the back of the queue or may not be employed at all. Teachers transferring to metro schools are given only limited tenure despite being permanent employees. Work loads have increased as the corporate buzzword of “accountability” is twisted into an educational context. Increased amounts of time must be spent on planning and interpreting documents that even “experts” struggle to make sense of. If a pay rise is being negotiated teachers are expected to trade away something. Eventually nothing will be left to trade. The pay rises on offer are so insignificant as to be almost considered a joke, generally not keeping pace with national inflation, let alone Western Australia’s over inflated prices.
The media have attacked teachers’ professionalism, questioned their qualified decisions and made the public suspicious of teachers’ skill and efficacy. The government has done little to rebut this attack and gags teachers from expressing their opinions. Sadly some of the accusations and attacks by the media are accurate. Reduced entry of people into the profession has, in turn, reduced the requirements for university entrance to education courses. Where we need intelligent, well educated teachers we often get people with poor spelling and grammar, poor personal and professional standards and little understanding of the educative process. No wonder public opinion of teachers is so poor.
What can be done? Certainly not the creation of a body like WACOT. The Western Australian College of Teachers is a body imposed on teachers by a government desperate to appease the public. Whilst sold to teachers as a means of raising the standing of teaching all this body has done in its three years of existence is replicate the function of aspects of the Department of Education and Training, take teachers’ money and hold meaningless elections about which the majority of teachers could care little. Where they might have been taking out media campaigns, pushing the media for positive spin and attacking government policy they have done nothing.
As I see it the only solution is to increase teachers’ pay. Dramatically and immediately. By making it appealing to school leavers as a profession, even if it is, initially, for monetary reasons, demand for university places will increase forcing the less desirable candidates out. With better qualified teachers public confidence will be inspired and education standards will rise as more people value education. Simultaneously control of education should be ceded to a body of people actually qualified and interested in education, not careers. Spending should be increased and continue to be increased. Education should be made completely free right up to tertiary study.In the short term teachers in this state will seek a significant increase in pay. We will not accept a pay deal where the majority of teachers gain nothing. We will not accept being paid equally with teachers in New South Wales. We live in Western Australia. The “Boom” state. Let’s see the government share that money around.
After many years on the right side of politics I have now moved to the left. I am not saying that Karl Marx had it right but I will say this “Solidarity Comrades. Keep the Red Flag Flying!”
