Shadow Minister,

The claim that principals “will invoke the wrath of the unions” if they initiate disciplinary procedures is often made, but no one making it ever gives any evidence. It’s just one of those beliefs that gets repeated and repeated and repeated. Teachers are dismissed regularly, but rarely for the obvious reason that most teachers are not incompetent. Nor are principals necessarily competent and honest.

The union’s role is to ensure proper processes are followed. I had an experience with an acting principal who had been in the school one week and who decided to dismiss me as the school timetabler, despite the fact that I had saved the school $208,000 (four teachers’ salaries) by devising a curriculum structure to replace the unstaffable one the school administration had decided upon. The administration needed a scapegoat, you see. I took the acting principal to the Merit Protection Board as what was done to me was nothing but unprofessional bullying. I had an AEU representative. The acting principal also had an AEU representative. His AEU representative argued that I should have been dismissed as a teacher, not just as a timetabler, showing that the AEU in fact supports the bullying of teachers. The MPB ordered my re-instatement. Some details are in my submission to the parliamentary inquiry into workplace bullying. It can be found at
http://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/house_of_representatives_committees?url=ee/bullying/subs.htm
though the full submission of 158 pages with the supporting documentation was not put on the website. The role of the union is to ensure proper processes are followed.

The evidence (see http://www.saveourschools.com.au/) shows that school autonomy does not improve student results, and, as I keep saying, Victorian schools have had autonomy of one sort or another for over 40 years. They don’t need Christopher Pyne’s ideo-illogical slogans.

Chris,

To quote from PISA:

"PISA results show that in higher-performing systems, schools have more autonomy, with incentives and the capacity to improve. In the school systems of Hong Kong-China, Japan, the Netherlands and Korea, for example, schools have more responsibility for establishing student disciplinary policies, student assessment policies, approving students for admission to the school, and choosing which textbooks are used and which courses are offered."

As for your particular run in with the acting principal, I am not going to go through the 319 submissions to see your submission, my comments are:
I claimed that the unions make it impossible to fire incompetent teachers. This example does not contradict this.
Secondly, we have only your unverifiable version of an event in which you were involved,
Thirdly, unfair dismissal can be fought with or without a union,
and finally one example is not a trend.

In public schools there are many fine teachers, but also many incompetents, and principals are unable to get rid of them. Again, if I am wrong please give me an example where a teacher was fired for incompetence.

Shadow Minister,

Please pardon the delay in my response. Other duties took over.

There is a difference between curriculum autonomy, which is what your quote deals with, and management autonomy, which the evidence says does not work.

My submission was number 248. I am sorry I did not include the number in my earlier post.

My example shows a union trying to fire a competent teacher, so it is not evidence that it does not stop incompetent ones being fired. However, I know of no case where the AUE has stoped an incompetent teacher being fired. The AEU’s role is to ensure proper processes are followed. If principals cant be bothered going through proper processes, they have only themselves to blame.

I have looked for official figures on teacher dismissals but cannot find any. I know they occur because they are reported now and again in the press.

Most Victorian teachers nowadays start on short-term contracts, so if they are not satisfactory, their contracts are simply not renewed. A non-renewal of a contract will not show up as a dismissal.

I expect that very few teachers would be dismissed because there are very few incompetent ones. You can’t just walk in off the street. You have to pass an accredited teacher training course and then you have to convince a school to employ you. I worked at the University of Melbourne for six years and I saw many outstanding student teachers, whom I would have grabbed in an instant had I been a principal.

I will return another day to deal with more of your points.

Chris,

I beg to differ. While the report does emphasise that in order to achieve the benefits of school autonomy, accountability and collaboration need to facilitated, the recommendations from PISA clearly show that systems with a higher level of autonomy outperform those without.

Shadow Minister,

My point is about the nature of autonomy. Victorian schools had curriculum autonomy when I began teaching in 1974. They did not have staffing or budgetary autonomy, yet the critics of current education say standards have fallen since then while staffing and budgetary autonomy has increased. Surely, if staffing and budgetary automony were the answer, standards would have improved with the increase of such autonomy.

Those who claim that the union makes it impossible to fire incompetent teachers do not give any evidence. It seems to be one of those claims made and repeated and then believed because it is made and repeated so often. I don’t know of a single example of the union making it impossible to fire an incompetent teacher.

I know that the process is time-consuming, but so it should be, and I know at least one principal personally who has removed more than one teacher via the process and without any objection from the union. He took his job seriously. Other principals can do the same. They just have to follow the principals of natural justice.

My account of events was upheld by the Merit Protection Board, which ordered my reinstatement to the position of timetabler. All the documents, including the MPB’s order, were supplied to the parliamentary inquiry into workplace bullying. It chose not to put them on the website with the rest of my submission, so there is no way of showing them to you.

I am sure we will return to this topic on another occasion, perhaps when I am able to respond in a more timely fashion.

Chris,

I am glad that you concede that greater autonomy is linked with better results.

I have heard of cases of teachers being fired for hitting kids, being drunk on duty, etc, but never have I heard of a teacher losing their job at a public school because the quality of their teaching was sub standard. My wife being a high school teacher could recount more than a few "senior" teachers whose teaching and ability to control the class was terrible, and who were paid more than more competent junior teachers.

If you can give me a single example of such a teacher losing their job for an inability to teach in a public school I will be astounded. I have looked and cannot find one.