westernred and saintfletcher: Withdrawing funding from private schools misses two points.

The first is that people who send their kids to private school are just as entitled to public funding (if not more so, since many pay more taxes) as anyone else. Attending a private school (and many aren't that wealthy) has nothing to do with it.

The second is that if you withdrew that funding, and people then put their kids into the public system (quite possibly because they could no longer afford the private), the public system would at best be right where it is now, and at worst, probably spread even more thinly.

Private schools may be an easy target, but having a go at them doesn't necessarily achieve much.

That doesn't make sense. I am not suggesting you cut the funding to the local fee paying school which is within the price range of the average mum and dad, rather to the elite schools . Giving money to elite schools is welfare for millionaires.

Elite schools could increase their fees, cut their programmes, or drop their fees and programmes to a level which would attract public funding. Our State schools may also benefit from the additional funds which wealthy parents contribute if their kids had to slum it with the proles.

Sniggid,

From your evidence-free assumption about me, it appears that you either think personal attack is a substitute for argument or did not understand my post, so let me put it more simply for you.

An acting principal told the staff that they would have to teach only 20 periods a week. As the most-experienced administrator in the school (having been a school timetabler, a daily organiser, a senior school co-ordinator, a level co-ordinator, a subject co-ordinator and an acting vice principal, as well as having held the most senior promotion positions in teaching for 23 years), I showed that it was mathematically impossible to staff the school with such a low teaching load. My unarguable facts were ignored.

A second acting principal realised that I was right, and the school accepted my advice to increase - repeat, increase - teaching loads and change the curriculum structure. This saved - repeat, saved - the school $208,000 - repeat, $208,000. It did this in the last week of the school year, making it impossible to have a timetable ready before the end of the year. I worked over the holidays to implement the changed arrangements.

A third acting principal, in his first week in the school, decided to make me the scapegoat for what was a monumental error by the school administration and purported to dismiss me from my position as timetabler.

I took him to the Merit Protection Board. I won.

I have never had any trouble providing leadership in a school of all types of people. I guess that is why I was one of the youngest teachers ever promoted to senior teacher in Victoria and why I have been given so many leadership positions.

The principals of Victoria showed in the Kennett era that they were unworthy of being given power. They sold out their profession for more pay, more power, access to bonuses and a complicated rort of the state superannuation scheme that exempted them from superannuation cuts imposed on non-principals. There is no way such people should have the power to hire and fire.

Sniggid,

Your post actually supports my argument because it shows that you, a former principal, were willing to make and then post false denigrating assumptions about me, a highly experienced senior teacher with very solid HSC results who had in fact saved his school from disaster. Anyone reading your post would understand why teachers committed to their professional responsibilities do not want principals with power over their pay.

It is astounding that inflation is permitted to devalue real wages, but any employee who wants to regain the loss has to trade off something for productivity gains. Over the long term average wages have risen, but not in teaching.

Teachers in the public sector have suffered a dramatic drop in pay over the last thirty years while helping to create the prosperity that the whole nation enjoys. In 1975, a beginning Victorian teacher was paid 118.8 percent of male average ordinary time earnings. That equated to $65,379 as of January last year. A beginning teacher was in fact paid $44,783 then - a relative cut of $20,596!

After seven years a teacher reached the top of the scale and was paid 166.6 per cent of the average. That would have been $91,684 a year ago, compared with an actual rate of $56,072 - a relative cut of $35,612. The new top level, which takes eleven years to reach, was only $63,202 - a relative cut of $28,482. A Senior Teacher in 1975 was paid 189.8 per cent of the average. That would be $104,452 for the equivalent Leading Teacher, who actually got $76,383 - a relative cut of $28,069.

These pay cuts are huge. Over a similar span of time, working conditions have also deteriorated. Victoria has about 2,000 fewer secondary teachers than it would have had under either the 1992 or the 1981 staffing levels. The current secondary pupil-teacher ratio is 12.0:1, compared with 10.8:1 (1992) and 10.9:1 (1981).

The federal government's proposal is basically to give back some of this decline in pay to just some teachers in return for “flexibility”. Some are fooled by this. I'm not.

westernred: Are you saying that welfare is unacceptable for one group of people but not another? Actually, I reject the idea that it's welfare for the rich at all. If they pay 2X in tax and get X back from the government, that doesn't seem like they're getting welfare to me. Just who exactly is carrying these rich people?

Also, you're assuming that the so-called elite schools only service people on huge incomes. That's simply not true. A lot of people put themselves through real sacrifices (such as basically putting all their money into three things -- basic living costs, the mortgage and their kids' educations -- whilst denying themselves holidays, fancy cars, etc.). Yes, it may be expensive to send your kids to private school, but it's actually well within the reach of most people in this country (including a lot of immigrants), but it requires financial discipline and sacrifice. Most people want to drink, smoke or gamble their money away, eat out, and max out their credit cards for useless crap. That's why they can't afford private school.

The children of my family have traditionally received their secondary school education from private schools.
Our position is that there should be no state aid to non government schools.
Its not acceptable to fund private schools when the state system has inadequate facilities and insufficient staff.
Its obscene for the government to provide more funds per capita to students at non government schools especially elite schools like Geelong Grammar.

In Victoria 40% of teachers are on contract and many teachers are not paid during school holidays and rely on Centrelink payments to live. I don't know the figures I just used to see them putting in their centrelink forms every fortnight.