longweekend58,

Male average weekly ordinary time earnings were $132.50 in December, 1974. As best as I can work out from annual CPI increases, inflation since then has been approximately 551 per cent, meaning that the real value of the December 1974 MAWOTE is now $862.58. MAWOTE was $1343.90 in August last year, giving a real increase of $481.32, or 55.8 per cent.

The top unpromoted teacher salary in January, 1975, was $11,400, $72,414 in today’s dollars. The top unpromoted teacher salary is now $81,806, giving a real increase of $9,392 or 13 per cent.

In the case of promoted teachers the difference is even starker. A senior teacher was paid $13,025 in January, 1975, $84,793 in today’s dollars. Today’s equivalent, a leading teacher, starts on $84,536, $257 less in real terms. That’s right – a leading teacher starts today with less purchasing power than the equivalent senior teacher had 36 years ago – despite a huge increase in overall prosperity in the country.

A leading teacher, subject to successful performance reviews (which the critics tell us don’t exist), can reach $89,423, giving a real increase of $4,630 or 5.4 per cent.

In other words, in a period in which the average employee received a 55.8 per cent increase in real ordinary time pay, the majority of teachers received a 13 per cent increase in real pay, the starting leading teachers went backwards in real terms, and the top level leading teachers received a 5.4 per cent increase in real terms. These differences are not trivial. Teachers helped create the prosperous Australia we have today, but their share of the increased wealth varies from nothing to one quarter of the average.

The consequence is, as has been pointed out already, in most detail by Andrew Leigh, a fall in the entry scores of those training to be teachers via direct entry. The consequence of that fall is not immediate because there are still teachers in the system who trained 30 and 35 years ago, but the consequence is real and relevant to both public and private schools.

You really can be ludicrous Chris, not to say thoroughly repetitive. All that your last post has done as restated, using different figures, the same pointless argument you made in 27 earlier posts. RELATIVE salary positioning is irrelevant in a market that has completely transformed. And it HAS transformed. Even the teaching profession bears little in common with the way it was in the highly regulated, union controlled, promoted-by-seniority predominantly public school era.

It is a common problem that people seek to make comparisons from decades back and leap to some extraordinary conclusions while ignoring the fact that the world is totally different now than back then. It doesnt matter if we are comparing salaries, life expectancy or sporting results. If you dont factor in the changes in the environment you will get results that are increasingly invalid while being statistically correct. You will, with great confidence and enthusiasm, come to the totally wrong answer.

Now I am sure you dont understand much of what I just said,m but let me throw caution to the wind and throw another spanner in the works. REAL salary increases have to be funded by productivity or subsidy increases. Thats the only way it happens. Many industries have had massive increases in productivity (banking, mining etc) and as a result earned increased REAL salaries. Teachers have not. That is not a criticism but rather a commentary that it now takes more teachers to teach fewer students to a lower level than acheived 30 years ago. That is hardly worthy of the 30% pay rise you think they deserve because some other profession now out-earns them.

Bottom line is this: our employment situation has totally changed in the last 35 years. Some industries and professions have done far better than others. Now let's see you restate your position yet again while totally misunderstanding anyone else's.

And compounded inflation rates make the figure you are looking for at 741% not 551%.

Maybe he can name drop a few more pseudo economists like Andrew Leigh. Your act is getting tired Chris.

Chris C,

If someone is paid $100 a week, and receives a pay rise of 5% each year, their pay after 5 years is about $127 a week.

Unfortunately for teachers, most organisations now pay employees according to performance and productivity, and they would only give the employees a 5% pay increase if there was a measureable improvement in productivity or improvement in performance of 5%.

If teachers pay has fallen compared to the rest of the country, that is only to be expected, as national benchmark tests indicate that student marks have not improved in 20 years, and boys marks have actually decreased in that time period.

Paying someone according to years of service or according to what the rest of society is getting went out with the Ark.

The best option for a parent is to avoid the public school system now filled with excuse makers, feminists and various hangers-on, and try and get their children into a school where the teachers are paid according to actual performance.

Teachers dont get paid according to results in the private sector either. You need to recognise that better performance in the private sector is a function of many things of which teachers are simply the most important.