Riddler,

You say (4.32:37pm, 15/2) that I “falsely” assert that [teachers] were paid over $100K in real terms”. The practice of making things up continues. Nowhere did I say this. I said, in my initial post, “In 1975, after seven years, a teacher reached the top of the unpromoted scale and was paid 166.6 per cent of MAWOTE - $116,825 now.” That is not “in real terms”. If I had meant “in real terms”, I would have said “in real terms”.

You say that “[w]hen sewing machines were invented, loom makers made less money” and that “[w]hen less people want a service from the government, the government should spend less on it”. The number of teachers needed has not fallen. The ability level of those entering teaching has. Nor is it relevant that more people choose private schools. The biggest private employer is the Catholic system, which pays its teachers the same as the government system pays its.

It is in the interest of society as a whole that all children have good teachers. It is in the interest of society as a whole that it therefore provide the pay and conditions that will attract able people to teaching and keep them there. They do not have to be geniuses, and they do not have to be paid a fortune.

I will again explain the point about productivity that I made to Vanna. Productivity isn’t everything for the obvious reason that the value of money falls year by year, so, if there were someone whose productivity had remained the same, the real value of their income would fall, making them worse off even though they were doing the same job as before. That is why we have national wage cases, to ensure that award wages keep up to some extent with the growing wealth of the community. If productivity grows greatly in one area and pay in that area explodes, it will attract more employees to it. The problem is that the productivity of the areas they leave may decline as only the less able are left in them.

"You say that “[w]hen sewing machines were invented, loom makers made less money”"

Please can someone explain what is the connection between the loom and a sewing machine.

The loom makes the cloth. The sewing machine makes the garment from the cloth.

Now if the person said that when the loom became mecahanical, the worker earned less money, I think they might be correct.

I never expect much from you Chris, and somehow you still disappoint. The beginning of your lame reply is to claim I misrepresented you in a post I wrote a week ago, in what I assume is a desperate attempt to change the subject. And even then, this attempt hopelessly misfires, because you don't understand what "real terms" means. I'll help you out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_versus_nominal_value ."In economics, nominal values are values expressed in terms of units of a currency which may itself change in purchasing power over time, whereas real values have been corrected for inflation." Your whole argument has been that if we factored in changing monetary value, look at purchasing power, etc (albeit in an unscientific way) that the actual salaries of the 70's (well under 20K) should be worth over 100K in today's money. And people like myself and longweekend have called you out on erroneously applying the numbers to conclude that a teacher earning $X in the 70's would be earning over $100K in REAL terms today. God you're slow.

Flo, I was making a pretty obvious reference to Milton Friedman, you can read all about looms here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1668000/posts I confess not knowing the name of the machine that has replaced the loom, but you follow the gist obviously.

Back to Chris. Before I get to the rest of the points you've made, I notice that you seem to have abandoned completely the facts you attempted to bolster your earlier claims. Should I assume you are conceding that they were wrong and irrelevant? I would like to see the study that supposedly supports the view that the average entry score for a HS teaching degree is now 61 and falling, despite that being clearly wrong. Maybe if you didn't base all your arguments off documents produced by the AEU you wouldn't lose credibility in this fashion...

" The number of teachers needed has not fallen. The ability level of those entering teaching has."
Yet the evidence for this claim, of standards radically dropping, has been abandoned by you. If teacher quality is falling, I assume you would support a massive overhaul of conditions, such as cutting salary for bad teachers, less job security, greater flexibility, etc. I've asked numerous times if you support measures like this, or a voucher model, and you've remained oddly quiet throughout.

"Nor is it relevant that more people choose private schools. The biggest private employer is the Catholic system, which pays its teachers the same as the government system pays its."
It seems very relevant. Less consumers will buy your product, even though you're giving it away, and others are charging for it. This is a very damning indictment on your product. The fact that you concede the catholic system is paying teachers no better actually deals a critical blow to your argument. It suggests:
a) catholic schools are putting out a better product with the same money,
b) the catholic system, with less job security and union protection (a system where teachers can be sacked easily, and principals all over Australia choose their own staff) can produce superior teachers to the public system.
This actually enforces my earlier point, that it's not a lack of funding that is causing the crash of public school scores and falling numbers, it's structural problems, mostly caused by the AEU.

"It is in the interest of society as a whole that all children have good teachers."
It is in the interests of society as a whole to have good plumbers/builders/sewage-workers/whatever. Strangely the principles of competition seem to ensure we can get that in the rest of the market (something as essential as our food is provided by the private sector, with market forces acting as the only protect for years, and that's worked just fine). This claim that education is special, and deserves special consideration, has never had legs.

If a builder does a bad job, people don't hire him, and he loses his job. That's true of most jobs, high and low, and it works. Our education system however refuses to apply these basic principles. If a teacher or school is doing badly they continue to get the same amount of money, and the school continues to get students sent to it, because the choice of where to send students is made by the Dept of Education, not by parents. In fact, efforts are made to hide problems in the first place (token data from myschools is opposed, league tables are opposed, performance pay is opposed, meaningful data is opposed, and almost nothing useful is published by the Dept to inform parents of a school performance). Thank goodness the wheels are finally in motion to turn this around!

You say productivity isn't everything, but according to the actions and policies of the AEU (and indeed, the Department until recent trends) it's completely meaningless, since they oppose any measurement at all. The best way to determine if teacher's are doing well is to give parents control over where children go, to vote with their feet, a policy I've advocated dozens of times on here, and which has been met with utter silence from the AEU lobby on here.

Riddler,

You say, “That the funding isn't the problem, it's the way the funding is allocated, and the obstructionist policies of the union. No response to any of those points in my initial posts were forthcoming.” (4.35:56pm, 15/2) I am not arguing for or against any particular funding model or funding amount, so don’t see any need to respond to that point. I don’t know what obstructionist policies of the union” you are referring to. If you mean the AEU’s opposition to the funding of private schools, I have already pointed out that I do not share that view. If you mean the federal AEU’s opposition to local selection, I have already pointed out that the Victorian unions have supported local selection for more than 20 years and that we have had it in Victoria for a longtime, beginning for the principal class in the 1980s.

You ask why anyone should take me seriously? (3.44:55 pm, 19/2) The answer is that I give facts and figures and the sources from which they come, that I do not resort to name-calling of those who disagree with me, that I do not make up things about people who disagree with me, that I understand that there is a difference between disagreeing and not understanding. If you don’t the answer I give, that does not mean that I have not given an answer.

Vanna,

You make a number of assertions, that teachers “are not even part of this country”, that they use the “public as a cash cow, that “they import nearly everything they use”, that “they attempt to do as little as possible”, that “they use the public as a scapegoat as often as possible” and that “they are indirectly responsible for many of the social problems now besetting this country.” (6.30:04pm, 15/2) None of these things is true, and you do not produce any evidence that they are.

Johnj,

My experience matches yours (10.19:25pm, 15/2). It is fascinating and sad that so many Australians are ready to get stuck into teachers.