“I didn’t say what my real position was”. Maybe you should, since I made mine clear from the first post, and it makes you look like you’re dodging the arguments.

Why is the exact revenue of catholic schools unimportant? Well, I originally raised it by noting “catholic schools are putting out a better product with the same money” and then followed that up by saying; “And if catholic schools, who have more revenue to pay teachers with, are choosing to pay the same as public school teachers, doesn't that suggest that the payment they are offering is a fair reflection of their value?” Of course, whether Catholic schools have more revenue doesn’t necessarily matter one way or another to my argument, that ‘they seem able to get teachers good enough to beat public schools with the same money’, it’s merely a fragmented observation in that broader argument. We don’t know that they’d need or want to pay them more if they had a higher revenue (and given they can steal the best teachers from publics now without their union protection, there’s no indication they would). It’s extra irrelevant because you have not produced any figures for public school revenue, just guessed them. Try to keep up.

I made it clear we weren’t discussing primary schoolers on the 20th, by now even you should have read it. Common sense would have helped (as if people are suggesting classics for kindergarten).

Existing teachers were indeed backdated into this system, even if from 2005 onwards they required periodic updates, nobody just “de-accredited” all private schools teachers. And as I noted, this is a distraction, since most of the data you cite (and teachers!) pre-dates this, and since there is little uniformity to the required “training”/registration.

“I did not say that any teachers are “being overpaid”.
You certainly are arguing that the competence of teachers has fallen from [whatever arbitrary date we’re now using], in which case surely these less skilled teachers should not expect the same wage that previous, more competent teachers obtained. Feel free to respond with a vague, irrelevant answer.

Riddler,

“Sure, let's play big boy.” (9.44:33am, 2/3)

This is a pathetic debating style.

Is this how you are in real life?

I have not “consistently provided bad dat[a]” (1.50:45pm, 3/3). I have not “misinterpreted data”. I have sourced my facts and figures. What you call “misinterpreted” is just that I dare to not interpret according to your views.

You now say “The AEU does not control where children go, I did not say they did” (1.52:19pm, 3/3). Yet you earlier said “The AEU opposes league tables, opposes myschools, etc. They clearly oppose more information for the public, and want to restrict it as much as possible, which is why they don’t even allow parents to choose where their kids go.” (4.54:04pm, 26/2) So, on the one hand, you claim that you did not say that the AEU controls where children go and, on the other hand, you claim that the AEU “don’t even allow parents to choose where their kids go”.

Victoria does not have “a small number” of teachers who aren’t judged by tenure. Victorian teachers must undergo a performance review every year to move up the pay scale. Whether or not this is a good practice is another matter, but it applies to all teachers, not just those promoted to leading teacher.

You say, “your continual references to outliers is unhelpful at best, and dishonest at worst” (1.52:45pm, 3/3). The “unhelpful” is matter of opinion. The accusation of dishonesty is unfounded, though typical of how you argue. It seems that you cannot bear to have anyone disagree with you and that you therefore endeavour, behind your anonymous screen name, to denigrate one who does. It’s much easier, isn’t it, to just throw out abuse? Though, anyone following the actual argument will see right though it.

You say, “I don’t care what you interpreted my words to mean, I know what I meant by them.” The Alice in Wonderland defence!

I have not “conceded” that grammar and classics have dropped generally. I disputed your extreme statement at the start. Had you at the start simply said that the teaching of grammar had declined, I would have agreed, but that is not what you said. If you wish to use extreme language, you may be taken at your word.

You say re private school funding, “Yet the dialogue of the AEU is quite different.” Indeed, it is, so take it up with the AEU. Do you think that a person who defends teachers or public education in some areas must therefore endorse everything the AEU says, even when the public record says the opposite, as it does in my case?

I have not “guessed” figures for public school revenue (1.53:06pm, 3/3). I have provided the official documentation on public school expenditure and pointed out that public schools cannot spend money they do not have. That the expenditure matches the revenue is not a guess. It is a logical inference. An ACARA table in The Australian today confirms that revenue per student is not more in Catholic schools ($10,000) than in than government schools ($11,100), perhaps via a different method than the MCEETYA figures I quoted earlier.

You say, “I made it clear we weren’t discussing primary schoolers on the 20th, by now even you should have read it. Common sense would have helped (as if people are suggesting classics for kindergarten).” (1.53:06pm, 3/3). I have re-read all your posts for the 20th. You do say, “I'm not sure if you're basing this on some kind of study that includes pre-school teachers, primary school teachers, etc (though why would you, that's not what is being discussed here)”, though why you assume that primary school is not being discussed is not clear, especially since you also say “the entry scores for even a primary Bachelor of Education are no lower than 57.55 and 59” (4.47:23pm, 20/2).

Primary and secondary teachers in Victoria are on the same pay scale. Public money pays for both primary and secondary education in both public and, to some extent, in private schools. Grammar is relevant to primary schools, even if the classics are not. You don’t actually get to decide what “we” are discussing. After all, you have expanded the topics you are discussing way beyond my original points, particularly in regard to private schools, on which I initially made only one point, and it was not about funding, the AEU, teacher pay in the private sector, the revenue of Catholic schools, etc.

You say, “Existing teachers were indeed backdated into this system, even if from 2005 onwards they required periodic updates, nobody just “de-accredited” all private schools teachers. And as I noted, this is a distraction, since most of the data you cite (and teachers!) pre-dates this, and since there is little uniformity to the required “training”/registration.”

You need to know more about the history of teacher registration. The system was established in Victoria in the 1970s, with separate boards for government and private school teachers. The 1992-99 Liberal government abolished the government school system, but not the private school teacher system. The following Labor government established the one system for both sectors. Teachers in this state have had to have registration since the 1970s, with a gap for government school teachers in the 1990s. I don’t have specific figures on how many unqualified teachers there have been in private schools over the past four decades, in this or any other state. I suspect the number is very low for the obvious reason that sensible educational authorities would employ qualified people. The courses at different institutions will vary, of course, but they do not vary according to where the person will teach when he or she graduates. There are not private school teacher training courses and separate public school teacher training courses. A teaching qualification from any tertiary institution in the state will allow you to teach in any public or private school in the state.

You have challenged me on a number of choices I have made with my comparisons on pay.

1975 is not the “correct” year. I could use 1974 or 1976. The precise numbers would change, but the pattern would not. In January, 1974, the top unpromoted teacher salary was $9,700 ($74,352 in today’s dollars). In January, 1975, the top unpromoted teacher salary was $11,400 ($75,136 in today’s dollars). In January, 1976, the top unpromoted teacher salary was $12,223 ($70,424 in today’s dollars).

I could go back even earlier for comparisons with average earnings: e.g., on 30/6/1963, the equivalent salary to subdivision 14 was 210.53 per cent of male average weekly earnings, while by 27/3/1988 the subdivision 14 salary had fallen to 121.4 per cent of male average weekly earnings (VSTA, Subdivision 14 Annual Gross Salaries for Teachers in Victorian Government Schools – Comparison with average weekly earnings). 1963 and 1988 do not correspond with any other period I have used. The document I quote from begins in 1963 and ends in 1988. I use average weekly earnings rather than average weekly ordinary time earnings because that is how the document is constructed.

The only reason I chose 1975 is that the VSTA chose 1975 in its 1980 salary case and produced lots of information about it. It has nothing to do with the Whitlam government and the inflationary pressures and large wage increases of that era. As MAOTE, average weekly earnings and the like have all risen in real terms since the Whitlam era, whatever the excesses of that period, they have well and truly washed out of the system.

The reason I have used male earnings is that the VSTA salary submission used male earnings. It did so because that was the data available for the time. If we choose a less old period for our comparisons, we could use all persons average ordinary time earnings.

I chose ordinary time earnings to remove the effects of overtime payments and penalty rates, as teachers get neither, though the original salary case did include MAWE comparisons as well as MAOTE comparisons.

Your dishonesty and poor grammar knows no bounds. You accuse me of claiming that the AEU controls where children go on the basis of a partial quote of mine, deliberately excluding the last 3 words, which make it clear I do not believe that at all:
“The AEU opposes league tables, opposes myschools, etc. They clearly oppose more information for the public, and want to restrict it as much as possible, which is why they don’t even allow parents to choose where their kids go. THE DEPARTMENT DOES.”
In hindsight I would obviously have written “support allowing” instead of allow, but any confusion it could have caused is clearly negated by the following 3 words you obscured from your quote, not to mention the context of the passage, and all my posts generally (including remarks like “because the choice of where to send students is made by the Dept of Education” on Feb 21… it’s not my fault you can’t read properly). AEU policy opposes most choice for parents. This is bad. You don’t seem to disagree, though you insist on being exceptionally vague about it.

I do not put any serious meaning in internal performance reviews in Victoria before a pat on the back and an orderly move to the next scale. I would be interested in knowing how many teachers in Victoria do not advance at the normal progression (I’m guessing not many). But again, the policies of Victoria are not the policies of the rest of Australia, and not the policies of the AEU generally. Just answer clearly; do you support flexibility for teacher salaries, so each school can decide on what each teacher is worth? If you really support flexible salaries, then there is no problem, but instead of getting to the heart of the matter, you insist on distractions, like your claim that Victoria is already very flexible. So you support flexibility then? After a while, it becomes clear it’s a waste of time asking you questions like these, it would be too much like taking you seriously.