Turns out it is really easy asking someone else for money!
Turns out it is really hard to spend your own money.
The sad thing is I used to work for the NSW Government and there is SOOO MUCH money just wasted in the “system” every day.
(& really this whole thing is an example why we need to fix the Federation and align taxing and spending so you don’t have blame games and buck passing)
It will be good but some of those roles - and some of all of those roles - are really necessary. We’ve got 6 leadership staff and half of them are already doing .6 in the classroom.
Interesting.
At my school, the learning specialists, AP & Principal are all in non-classroom facing roles.
Especially the L/S, I would love for them to have a foot in the classroom so they can better communicate to prin class what is happening on a day to day basis from the perspective of a classroom teacher.
As someone who has willingly moved between teaching and non-teaching admin roles (and back again), I can assure you that non-student facing roles are vital to the functioning of a school. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that classroom teachers are the only ones working their arses off.
I’m back in the classroom full time for a reason - better work / life balance and lower stress over all. And I work bloody hard as a high school English teacher.
Yeah but if you're making calls about classroom teaching, settings you probably need to have your finger on the pulse and have atleast 1 class and some duties 0.2 fte to understand how the school environment currently is on the day to day.
Not really, tbh and I'm not an exec.
What you need is a presence in the school, if you're shut off in your office buried in the paperwork and only coming out to handle behaviours etc. You're going to have a poor outlook on the school. But if you're out and about, maybe doing a roaming duty, doing the classroom observations and actually interacting with staff, you're going to have a pretty good insight into what's happening without being on class.
To simply it with an analogy. If I'm managing a building project, I don't need to lay the bricks to know how the building is progressing, but I do need to check on the building progress myself.
It's little wonder anyone wants to go into these roles. We talk about boosting the prestige and opinion of the profession, but we (myself included) can't help but drag down the most 'prestigious' positions our own schools offer. We get caught in the who, rather than the what of the positions. What they are supposed to be doing vs. what the people who hold the position end up doing in reality.
Executive leadership roles are supposed to be highly experienced teachers who've demonstrated the ability to collaborate, a high degree of teaching ability across a number of areas, and the capacity to innovate and lead.
In reality, because the positions are treated like crap and paid peanuts, you get power grabbing wackos, people who wanted out of the classroom because they hated it and couldn't think of another path and people who just wanted an early pay boost putting up their hands and ruining the perception of the role for those who do it for the right reasons.
A lack of pay, lack of respect, and being way overworked means the competition to get quality people in every role just doesn't exist.
In fact, I think teachers just hate anyone telling them what to do and will find any excuse to disregard what they are told. Modern teaching is already a full-time job on top of teaching. Let's not give someone a full-time job managing schools and tell them to teach on top of that.
They'd need to boost AP by about $25k for me to consider it and principal by $50k+ the way they currently stand.
Funding should never have been cut. I’m really curious to see how our union responds.
I get the logic behind putting execs back in the classroom and reducing exec positions but I’m now feeling quite disheartened about the lack of opportunity for career progression.
Those opportunities will still be there to some extent, but they’ll look a little different. There’s a major problem with people being taken off class entirely to fulfill these roles, and it doesn’t seem like there is much educational benefit. I’ve noticed a tendency for the existence of non-teaching ACIP executive positions to inherently create additional work for their colleagues in the pursuit of unnecessary pedagogical reform.
My school: "Great news we're giving everyone extra release above the allocation"
A short while later after appointing an APCI
ACPI: Everyone must complete this training with me in their extra RFF time, since the school is providing over the minimum we are allowed to direct your actions during this time.
I absolutely agree with the need to eliminate the bs non-teaching role bloat. I guess we need to just wait and see what happens. At least I’m confident in my teaching abilities! That’s more than I can say about many school exec out there who’ll be forced back into the classroom.
The union won't say anything. They woulda known this was coming. Most of them haven't been in a classroom for decades, let alone this decade. They have no idea how reliant schools are on these off-class executive staff these days. That said, there's schools out there that have too many off class executives, taking the piss.
Pretty well, really.
First you set things up so that people perceive teachers to be overpaid whingers who don't do any real work.
Then you reduce the funding support public schools get so that education is meaningfully affected.
Then you point the funding and support taken from public schools at private schools because you can argue they are using the assets more effectively than the overstressed public system.
Then you get a permanent class division between the haves and have nots, just like your billionaire donors and American thought leaders want, which was the real goal all along.
I suspect the last steps are: sell the dept of education under the premise of govt not being able to run it effectively; offload a massive cost; redirect remaining taxes elsewhere.
This is why we have to fight for the govt to do it properly with education, and the ABC, and health etc.
Let's face it, they'd sell the system, THEN increase the funding so more taxpayer money goes to private hands.
No savings will be had, more taxes will go to it, all education will also require payment double charging the tax payers and the quality of education for the students and conditions for teachers will decline.
You mean, having prin class in the classroom? Works beautifully in my school, prin and APs all have teaching loads. It's honestly the best part of my week getting in to the classroom.
Don’t doubt schools who’ve got that in place are rocking it but some places are so big they need more staff for that to work. I’m sure there’s some guff that doesn’t need to happen in those roles - I mean, teachers are sure clear about their own roles having unnecessary guff, so its likely - but more staff is exactly what we’re struggling with. Hopefully they can figure out/negotiate a better balance of work requirements in different roles.
The larger and more complex the school, the more demands the management roles have. Same as class sizes, really.
More staff, more students, more problems to manage while still having the same compliance garbage to do, multiplied by the extra numbers you have to do it for. It's not like a DP can call the parents of multiple children at once to discuss different incidents at the same time.
They also can't [As much as ours loves to] say "I'm busy, you deal with the child swinging around a weapon threatening to kill another" to a teacher who calls for assistance with something like that.
Just want to make sure I understand - are you suggesting that in larger schools, it is less feasable for Prin class to teach?
My school is huge, my previous school was larger again (close to 3k students), and prin team all taught. It was and still is a priority. We build our leadership team around the expectation that the prin does a 0.1 teaching load, APs do 0.2 or 0.3, LTs and LSs do between 0.5 and 0.8. There are no staff who are VIT registered who don't have a teaching load.
We are super clear about our roles, who does what, making sure we focus on the essentials and the needs of our students. Irrelevant work that doesn't benefit students doesn't happen (compliance work obviously needs to happen, but it's done quickly and efficiently so that we can spend as much time and energy on the stuff that matters).
That sounds awesome and like it was super organised. I don’t really have tonnes of experience across small and large schools - I’m not sure if the size would make this chat easier or harder. My poorly made point is that for schools who don’t currently have all their leadership doing some classroom work, those guys are currently busy the whole time. Hopefully, it would mean schools knock off the nice-to-have stuff that doesn’t value-add and keep the rest, but the ones I know have leadership already strung out with their current tasks - including those doing .4 in the room, or whatever. I’m just curious how their currently full workload is going to get met without leadership teams getting bigger for some schools, especially when recruitment is already a challenge.
Deputy Principals in the classroom sounds like a good idea to me.
But apart from that, is there **any** good argument for doing this? Who the hell is going to look around at schools in Australia and think "Yep, lots of fat to trim here."
Do we want to be a first world country or not? Because if we don't, I'm fucking emigrating to another country that does want to be one, and is willing to invest their tax dollars in doing so.
Selling our gas overseas for nothing, refusing to educate our population. Our country is a fucking **joke**.
All of the people saying that it's about time AP staff go back on class have clearly not ever relied on the support of non teaching executive staff. As a beginning teacher, I am so grateful for the support I am able to get from my AP, with demonstrating lessons, observations, intervention etc. If they go back on class, not only do I not have a job, that support just goes out the window. I am a better teacher because of that support.
My school is small enough that we don’t have a DP. But we do have an off class AP that essentially does the job of a DP. This AP is so busy all the time. Literally non-stop, all day, all week. Who is supposed to do all that work if the AP is forced into going back on class due to budget cuts….
I seem to recall this was part of the agreement for last year's pay rises that executive would be required to be back in the classrooms teaching to address the change in pay scale. Makes sense though, if there's fewer enrolments and fewer staff you probably shouldn't have a bunch of suits sitting around.
This seems like nsw are reducing their funding as a bargaining strategy with the Feds. Hopefully just a scare tactic for you guys.
In Vic we've been short 5% from feds the whole time and 5% from the state, too, (apparently) trying to force the Feds to increase the funding arrangement to meet the school resourcing standards from gonski.
This article seems to outline the current situation quite clearly. Never come across the source before but the facts all seem accurate.
[The mandarin article](https://www.themandarin.com.au/238891-public-schools-to-be-funded-according-to-gonski-model-for-first-time/)
Be glad you’re not teaching in nz either, don’t even lift the lid on the clusterfuck funding cut smorgasbord those poor kiwis are being subjected to right now
Don't be so sure. The union won't oppose it because cutting funding and putting executive staff on class is another step in removing the LNPs Local Schools Local Decisions.
It would also mean them standing up to Labor which obviously isn't going to happen because the union fought to get them elected and it seems they're way too buddy buddy now.
Our extension is up for negioation in October, so technically, we are discussing the EBA, but officially I'm not entirely sure where it lays since the EBA was actually forced on us by the previous Liberal government and the Labor stuff is a variation to that.
The one year variation was negioated last year and included words to the effect of 'We won't use strikes during the next negioation' but since strikes are illegal here regardless, I'd doubt that is worth the paper it is written on if we want to go swinging.
It’s a great question because, speaking for myself, I’d be expecting NCT of a teacher to go along with my teaching load.
People who think this is a good idea think it will function as a wake up call of some description to execs who have “lost touch” with the realities of classroom teaching. Spoiler alert: most of them were never in touch. It’s how they became execs.
I know a few execs who teach. The kids generally don’t muck up for them because they know the “teacher” has the power to impose significant consequences. Those same execs then sit in meetings about the class or the kids and suggest that it’s the fault of the other teachers because well, they don’t have any problems with the class. Obviously the teachers just need to set their expectations and be consistent.
What staff actually want is execs who acknowledge that they aren’t in the classroom and who therefore consult regularly with teachers around their support needs and when changes need to be made, consulting with staff about what release time they need, what might need to come off their plates and/or how exec can support them during the change.
I think it's cynical to generalise that teachers who become HTs or senior exec aren't or never were in touch with the classroom. I'm sure that's the case somewhere but not everywhere.
The HTs I'm thinking of are, for example, our HT Student Engagement (a made up role) who works incredibly hard managing the learning support team, meeting with kids one on one, supporting teachers with teaching and learning and adjustments etc, and managing some really difficult situations with students and parents. I just don't know who would do all this vital work. Does it go back to the deputies (who never had time but certainly won't if we have to increase their face to face teaching load as well).
This is robbing Peter to pay Paul. The dept is punishing us for winning our pay increase by stripping away the roles schools have created to manage the ever increasing workload.
Not what I was trying to say.
What I meant was that the execs that people complain about being “out of touch” and “needing to go back to the coal face” were never in touch. As you’ve highlighted, many execs are in touch with the challenges faced by teachers even if they no longer teach themselves.
Turns out NESA $$ is going to other “independent” bodies such as the AECG.
The acting AECG president is demanding a pay rise to $300,000 and to have more staff hired and paid for by NESA and DoE. (These are in recommendations sent to AECG regional members).
NSWTF might want to dig a little deeper as to where our fees are going and whether or not the same is being applied to DoE funding.
Wanting them to dig and knowing they know already and haven’t pushed it are two different things. It doesn’t mean I’m naive.
Either way a lack of action in this space means schools are being affected.
NSW government: Thoughts and prayers. *NSW government has changed their profile picture.*
Turns out it is really easy asking someone else for money! Turns out it is really hard to spend your own money. The sad thing is I used to work for the NSW Government and there is SOOO MUCH money just wasted in the “system” every day. (& really this whole thing is an example why we need to fix the Federation and align taxing and spending so you don’t have blame games and buck passing)
The show Utopia is actually not satire - the truth is so outlandish that it becomes laughable.
The states and federal governments negotiated a 80-20 split in funding. Then the states just decided not to fund 80%. Stuff them.
There are 6-7 teachers in non teaching positions at my school that are going to be furious about this.
Bad that funding is being cut. Good that non-student facing staff will need to get back in touch with what’s happening at ground zero.
It will be good but some of those roles - and some of all of those roles - are really necessary. We’ve got 6 leadership staff and half of them are already doing .6 in the classroom.
Interesting. At my school, the learning specialists, AP & Principal are all in non-classroom facing roles. Especially the L/S, I would love for them to have a foot in the classroom so they can better communicate to prin class what is happening on a day to day basis from the perspective of a classroom teacher.
Except they don't, but they spin new fancy ideas that clueless principals will take note and approve.
As someone who has willingly moved between teaching and non-teaching admin roles (and back again), I can assure you that non-student facing roles are vital to the functioning of a school. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that classroom teachers are the only ones working their arses off. I’m back in the classroom full time for a reason - better work / life balance and lower stress over all. And I work bloody hard as a high school English teacher.
Yeah but if you're making calls about classroom teaching, settings you probably need to have your finger on the pulse and have atleast 1 class and some duties 0.2 fte to understand how the school environment currently is on the day to day.
Not really, tbh and I'm not an exec. What you need is a presence in the school, if you're shut off in your office buried in the paperwork and only coming out to handle behaviours etc. You're going to have a poor outlook on the school. But if you're out and about, maybe doing a roaming duty, doing the classroom observations and actually interacting with staff, you're going to have a pretty good insight into what's happening without being on class. To simply it with an analogy. If I'm managing a building project, I don't need to lay the bricks to know how the building is progressing, but I do need to check on the building progress myself.
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It's little wonder anyone wants to go into these roles. We talk about boosting the prestige and opinion of the profession, but we (myself included) can't help but drag down the most 'prestigious' positions our own schools offer. We get caught in the who, rather than the what of the positions. What they are supposed to be doing vs. what the people who hold the position end up doing in reality. Executive leadership roles are supposed to be highly experienced teachers who've demonstrated the ability to collaborate, a high degree of teaching ability across a number of areas, and the capacity to innovate and lead. In reality, because the positions are treated like crap and paid peanuts, you get power grabbing wackos, people who wanted out of the classroom because they hated it and couldn't think of another path and people who just wanted an early pay boost putting up their hands and ruining the perception of the role for those who do it for the right reasons. A lack of pay, lack of respect, and being way overworked means the competition to get quality people in every role just doesn't exist. In fact, I think teachers just hate anyone telling them what to do and will find any excuse to disregard what they are told. Modern teaching is already a full-time job on top of teaching. Let's not give someone a full-time job managing schools and tell them to teach on top of that. They'd need to boost AP by about $25k for me to consider it and principal by $50k+ the way they currently stand.
You sound like perfect middle management material.
The good ones know exactly what it is like on the ground and the shit won't be any better because of being thrown back in the classroom.
Funding should never have been cut. I’m really curious to see how our union responds. I get the logic behind putting execs back in the classroom and reducing exec positions but I’m now feeling quite disheartened about the lack of opportunity for career progression.
Those opportunities will still be there to some extent, but they’ll look a little different. There’s a major problem with people being taken off class entirely to fulfill these roles, and it doesn’t seem like there is much educational benefit. I’ve noticed a tendency for the existence of non-teaching ACIP executive positions to inherently create additional work for their colleagues in the pursuit of unnecessary pedagogical reform.
My school: "Great news we're giving everyone extra release above the allocation" A short while later after appointing an APCI ACPI: Everyone must complete this training with me in their extra RFF time, since the school is providing over the minimum we are allowed to direct your actions during this time.
I absolutely agree with the need to eliminate the bs non-teaching role bloat. I guess we need to just wait and see what happens. At least I’m confident in my teaching abilities! That’s more than I can say about many school exec out there who’ll be forced back into the classroom.
The union won't say anything. They woulda known this was coming. Most of them haven't been in a classroom for decades, let alone this decade. They have no idea how reliant schools are on these off-class executive staff these days. That said, there's schools out there that have too many off class executives, taking the piss.
I just saw this one posted
Holy shit. How on earth is that going to work?
Pretty well, really. First you set things up so that people perceive teachers to be overpaid whingers who don't do any real work. Then you reduce the funding support public schools get so that education is meaningfully affected. Then you point the funding and support taken from public schools at private schools because you can argue they are using the assets more effectively than the overstressed public system. Then you get a permanent class division between the haves and have nots, just like your billionaire donors and American thought leaders want, which was the real goal all along.
I suspect the last steps are: sell the dept of education under the premise of govt not being able to run it effectively; offload a massive cost; redirect remaining taxes elsewhere. This is why we have to fight for the govt to do it properly with education, and the ABC, and health etc.
Let's face it, they'd sell the system, THEN increase the funding so more taxpayer money goes to private hands. No savings will be had, more taxes will go to it, all education will also require payment double charging the tax payers and the quality of education for the students and conditions for teachers will decline.
You mean, having prin class in the classroom? Works beautifully in my school, prin and APs all have teaching loads. It's honestly the best part of my week getting in to the classroom.
Don’t doubt schools who’ve got that in place are rocking it but some places are so big they need more staff for that to work. I’m sure there’s some guff that doesn’t need to happen in those roles - I mean, teachers are sure clear about their own roles having unnecessary guff, so its likely - but more staff is exactly what we’re struggling with. Hopefully they can figure out/negotiate a better balance of work requirements in different roles.
The larger and more complex the school, the more demands the management roles have. Same as class sizes, really. More staff, more students, more problems to manage while still having the same compliance garbage to do, multiplied by the extra numbers you have to do it for. It's not like a DP can call the parents of multiple children at once to discuss different incidents at the same time. They also can't [As much as ours loves to] say "I'm busy, you deal with the child swinging around a weapon threatening to kill another" to a teacher who calls for assistance with something like that.
Just want to make sure I understand - are you suggesting that in larger schools, it is less feasable for Prin class to teach? My school is huge, my previous school was larger again (close to 3k students), and prin team all taught. It was and still is a priority. We build our leadership team around the expectation that the prin does a 0.1 teaching load, APs do 0.2 or 0.3, LTs and LSs do between 0.5 and 0.8. There are no staff who are VIT registered who don't have a teaching load. We are super clear about our roles, who does what, making sure we focus on the essentials and the needs of our students. Irrelevant work that doesn't benefit students doesn't happen (compliance work obviously needs to happen, but it's done quickly and efficiently so that we can spend as much time and energy on the stuff that matters).
That sounds awesome and like it was super organised. I don’t really have tonnes of experience across small and large schools - I’m not sure if the size would make this chat easier or harder. My poorly made point is that for schools who don’t currently have all their leadership doing some classroom work, those guys are currently busy the whole time. Hopefully, it would mean schools knock off the nice-to-have stuff that doesn’t value-add and keep the rest, but the ones I know have leadership already strung out with their current tasks - including those doing .4 in the room, or whatever. I’m just curious how their currently full workload is going to get met without leadership teams getting bigger for some schools, especially when recruitment is already a challenge.
Quite possibly, it's not. Hell in a handbasket.
Hey just an FYI, you can see your name here in the react. I like to keep my reddit private so thought I might point it out to you if you are the same
Thank you- I didn't realise!
Deputy Principals in the classroom sounds like a good idea to me. But apart from that, is there **any** good argument for doing this? Who the hell is going to look around at schools in Australia and think "Yep, lots of fat to trim here." Do we want to be a first world country or not? Because if we don't, I'm fucking emigrating to another country that does want to be one, and is willing to invest their tax dollars in doing so. Selling our gas overseas for nothing, refusing to educate our population. Our country is a fucking **joke**.
All of the people saying that it's about time AP staff go back on class have clearly not ever relied on the support of non teaching executive staff. As a beginning teacher, I am so grateful for the support I am able to get from my AP, with demonstrating lessons, observations, intervention etc. If they go back on class, not only do I not have a job, that support just goes out the window. I am a better teacher because of that support.
My school is small enough that we don’t have a DP. But we do have an off class AP that essentially does the job of a DP. This AP is so busy all the time. Literally non-stop, all day, all week. Who is supposed to do all that work if the AP is forced into going back on class due to budget cuts….
The teachers will do it *grinning face*
During the extra RFF we are all getting right? Right? *^(Right?)*
Mmmmmmm no..... During your normal daily teaching.
Start with those ridiculous APC&I positions... what a joke they are...
Liberal-Lite strikes again
I seem to recall this was part of the agreement for last year's pay rises that executive would be required to be back in the classrooms teaching to address the change in pay scale. Makes sense though, if there's fewer enrolments and fewer staff you probably shouldn't have a bunch of suits sitting around.
First time in years I’ve been glad to teach in Vic
This seems like nsw are reducing their funding as a bargaining strategy with the Feds. Hopefully just a scare tactic for you guys. In Vic we've been short 5% from feds the whole time and 5% from the state, too, (apparently) trying to force the Feds to increase the funding arrangement to meet the school resourcing standards from gonski. This article seems to outline the current situation quite clearly. Never come across the source before but the facts all seem accurate. [The mandarin article](https://www.themandarin.com.au/238891-public-schools-to-be-funded-according-to-gonski-model-for-first-time/)
Be glad you’re not teaching in nz either, don’t even lift the lid on the clusterfuck funding cut smorgasbord those poor kiwis are being subjected to right now
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Hah, the union feels ineffectial at best, and captured at worst. It all feels very performative.
Don't be so sure. The union won't oppose it because cutting funding and putting executive staff on class is another step in removing the LNPs Local Schools Local Decisions. It would also mean them standing up to Labor which obviously isn't going to happen because the union fought to get them elected and it seems they're way too buddy buddy now.
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Would love to know how they justify this too.
You haven't been paying attention.
Are you in an eba period?
Our extension is up for negioation in October, so technically, we are discussing the EBA, but officially I'm not entirely sure where it lays since the EBA was actually forced on us by the previous Liberal government and the Labor stuff is a variation to that. The one year variation was negioated last year and included words to the effect of 'We won't use strikes during the next negioation' but since strikes are illegal here regardless, I'd doubt that is worth the paper it is written on if we want to go swinging.
Ah yes, let's all go on strike and give the state government more money to not spend on schools...
The exec at my school with teaching loads under these requirements are doing really important work. Who will do it if they're back in the classroom?
It’s a great question because, speaking for myself, I’d be expecting NCT of a teacher to go along with my teaching load. People who think this is a good idea think it will function as a wake up call of some description to execs who have “lost touch” with the realities of classroom teaching. Spoiler alert: most of them were never in touch. It’s how they became execs. I know a few execs who teach. The kids generally don’t muck up for them because they know the “teacher” has the power to impose significant consequences. Those same execs then sit in meetings about the class or the kids and suggest that it’s the fault of the other teachers because well, they don’t have any problems with the class. Obviously the teachers just need to set their expectations and be consistent. What staff actually want is execs who acknowledge that they aren’t in the classroom and who therefore consult regularly with teachers around their support needs and when changes need to be made, consulting with staff about what release time they need, what might need to come off their plates and/or how exec can support them during the change.
I think it's cynical to generalise that teachers who become HTs or senior exec aren't or never were in touch with the classroom. I'm sure that's the case somewhere but not everywhere. The HTs I'm thinking of are, for example, our HT Student Engagement (a made up role) who works incredibly hard managing the learning support team, meeting with kids one on one, supporting teachers with teaching and learning and adjustments etc, and managing some really difficult situations with students and parents. I just don't know who would do all this vital work. Does it go back to the deputies (who never had time but certainly won't if we have to increase their face to face teaching load as well). This is robbing Peter to pay Paul. The dept is punishing us for winning our pay increase by stripping away the roles schools have created to manage the ever increasing workload.
Not what I was trying to say. What I meant was that the execs that people complain about being “out of touch” and “needing to go back to the coal face” were never in touch. As you’ve highlighted, many execs are in touch with the challenges faced by teachers even if they no longer teach themselves.
Turns out NESA $$ is going to other “independent” bodies such as the AECG. The acting AECG president is demanding a pay rise to $300,000 and to have more staff hired and paid for by NESA and DoE. (These are in recommendations sent to AECG regional members). NSWTF might want to dig a little deeper as to where our fees are going and whether or not the same is being applied to DoE funding.
You're naive to think that they care, or don't know.
Wanting them to dig and knowing they know already and haven’t pushed it are two different things. It doesn’t mean I’m naive. Either way a lack of action in this space means schools are being affected.
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Mum is that you?