Search Western Teacher by topic

Normally we don’t make specific recommendations about voting to our members. The State School Teachers’ Union of Western Australia is a diverse organisation. Our members are intelligent and make their own decisions.

We are at the end of yet another year which brought far more turmoil than we could have ever expected. We thought that we’d seen the worst of COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021 and that we were pretty well prepared - vaccinations mostly done – for the beginning of the year. That bubble burst in Week 1 of Term 1. The turmoil hasn’t been confined to COVID-19 or to Australia. We look around and see democracy in a fragile state in many parts of the world. This week’s mid-term US elections saw several candidates saying openly, even before polling day that they would refuse to accept a result which didn’t go their way; statements based not on legitimate concerns about a faulty voting system but on a simple refusal to respect the outcome of a democratic process.

Western Australia is facing a deepening crisis around Government Regional Officer Housing (GROH), with teachers saying the appalling state of the system is driving many away from the regions and putting others off moving to work in the country

Teachers know best on what is happening in schools right now. Consider this quote, which comes from one of over 400 school leaders and union reps who completed our survey Managing Teacher Relief in WA Public Schools: “Teacher burnout is very real, resulting from the continuous system-wide demands that assume we are working under normal conditions.'' With rolling waves of staff members having to isolate the reality of the situation is that we are exhausted just managing to keep the core teaching and learning operating. Add to that NAPLAN, the running of events, reporting to parents, performance management, SEN reporting, NCCR reporting etc. and you have a perfect storm for mental and emotional burn-out.

As an affiliate of UnionsWA, the SSTUWA has long known that strength lies in unity; the multiplier that applies when unions work together towards common goals.

On Friday 17 June, member voting closed on the Agreement in Principle for the 2021 General Agreement (Schools). Just over 5,000 members voted with 70 per cent of those voting in favour.

With Labor forming government, public education has been handed a reprieve from what may well have been an existential threat to the entire system.

The management of COVID-19 with the ever-changing advice and the daily impact on schools and TAFEs threatens to overwhelm every other aspect of our working days.

The announcement from the government of a new public sector wages policy is a positive step: the $1,000 salary cap has been given the boot and replaced by 2.5 per cent across the board. This is a welcome return to a percentage-based increase for SSTUWA members.

Western Australia’s economy is handling the impacts of COVID-19 better than anyone anticipated, and we’re expecting a multi-billion dollar surplus in the next budget. But at the same time that our economy is booming, education funding per child is falling and teachers’ wages are stagnant.

In many ways 2021 has continued the pattern of uncertainty, anxiety and loss that we saw in 2020.

On 11 March this year the Federal Minister for Education Alan Tudge declared that he was “pleased the funding wars are now over”.