AEU News issue 7 2009

v o l u m e 15 I i s s u e 7 I o c t o b e r 2 0 0 9

The stigma of league tables | Australia's privatised school system

Game on!

The AEU hits the Teachers Games

AEU

NEWS

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features

regulars

contactseditorial enquiries Nic Barnard tel (03) 9418 4841 fax (03) 9415 8975 email [email protected] enquiries Lyn Baird tel (03) 9418 4879 fax (03) 9415 8975 email [email protected]

AEU News is produced by the AEU Publications Unit: editor Nic Barnard | designers Lyn Baird, Peter Lambropoulos, Kim Flemingjournalist Rachel Power | editorial assistant Helen PrytherchPrintPost Approved: 349181/00616 ISSN: 1442—1321. Printed in Australia by GEON on Re Art Matt 100% Recycled Paper. Free to AEU members. Subscription rate: $60 per annum. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the AEU News are those of the authors/members and are not necessarily the official policy of the AEU (Victorian Branch). Contents © AEU Victorian Branch. Contributed articles, photographs and illustrations are © their respective authors. No reproduction without permission.

Contentscover story

AEU Victorian BranchBranch president: Mary BluettBranch secretary: Brian Henderson

AEU VIC head office address 112 Trenerry Crescent, Abbotsford, 3067 postal address PO Box 363, Abbotsford, 3067 tel (03) 9417 2822, 1800 013 379 fax 1300 658 078 web www.aeuvic.asn.au email [email protected]

country offices Ballarat (03) 5331 1155 | Benalla (03) 5762 2714 Bendigo (03) 5442 2666 | Gippsland (03) 5134 8844 Geelong (03) 5222 6633

COVER IMAGE: Peter Lambropoulos

AEU

NEWS

Across the distanceFrom its origins as the Correspondence School a century ago, the Distance Education Centre Victoria has come a long way.

Coping with stigmaWhile Victoria braces for league tables, schools at home and abroad already know the bitter taste of being named and shamed.

Young rights at workA new curriculum resource aims to teach students about their workplace rights and explore the meaning of a fair go at work.

Privates on paradeAustralia has become a world leader in privatising its education system.

3 president’s report 27 safety matters

4 letters 28 classifieds

11 christina adams 29 international

23 women’s focus 30 culture

25 on the phones 31 giveaways

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All in the gameThis year's Teachers’ Games proved a perfect way to unwind before a hectic Term 4 — and the AEU was on hand to help things along.

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Recognising and RewardingThe Arthur Hamilton Award for Outstanding Contribution to

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education

THE Arthur Hamilton Award for Outstanding Contribution to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education is named in honour of Arthur Hamilton, a proud Palawa man, educator and union activist. Arthur passed away in 2004 leaving behind a legacy of a strong consciousness for equity and social justice, cross-cultural awareness, recognition of Indigenous peoples and the elimination of racism within the Australian Education Union and in schools.

This Award is in recognition of AEU members who are committed to ensuring that all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students have the right to high quality education throughout their lives. The AEU is dedicated to ensuring that all Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples have local access to a free, publicly funded education system, which affirms cultural identity, and enables Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to contribute to, and participate in, their own, and broader society.

Nomination forms can be obtained from the AEU by phoning (03) 9693 1800, faxing (03) 9693 1805, or emailing [email protected] or can be downloaded from www.aeufederal.org.au/Atsi/2009AHnomform.pdf.

The 2009 closing date for nominations is Friday 27 November 2009. The winner will receive a $1000 prize and all nominees will receive a certificate from the AEU.

If you would like to know more, please contact Wayne Costelloe, Federal Aboriginal Education Officer at [email protected] or visit www.aeufederal.org.au

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AEU Vic branch president

Pupil-free days – it's time to honour the agreementThe Schools Agreement does not set in stone the dates for pupil-free days — whatever the Education Department says.

IN TERM 3, the AEU conducted a survey of schools on pupil-free days (PFD) and parent reporting time. It was prompted by the Education Department's

inflexible approach to these issues, which conflicts with our Schools Agreement.Several memorandums from the department and some regions have

misrepresented the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that accompanied the VGSA 2008.

It is time to set the record straight. Contrary to some department communications, the MOU does not fix three

pupil free days at the start of the year. Nor does it fix one date for assessment and reporting in June.

The MOU arose out of a need for “productivity gains” demanded by the Government to justify salary increases above the 3.25% base. There are signifi-cant salary increases contained in the VGSA.

Under the heading “Service Improvements”, the VGSA provides:The parties recognise that only the employer under the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 determines the timing of the existing four pupil free days provided not more than three days will occur prior to the day students commence each year. The employer may move one of these three days into the school year to meet the needs of schools within the context of the Blueprint. The parties agree that any realignment of pupil free days will not alter the number of student attendance days and will be consistent with the Blueprint objectives.

This provision was negotiated in the context that the Government was seeking to require teachers to return for up to five “recall days” during the school term break in exchange for improved salaries.

The MOU guarantees school holidays free of PD requirements. It also provides the capacity to shift one of the pupil-free days at the start of the year to another time. Nowhere does it mention any change to parent reporting arrangements nor a fixed date for the fourth PFD.

The AEU survey will be used to lobby the Education Minister and the department to honour our agreement.

The survey results (see page 6) are conclusive. Schools need the capacity to have a PFD during the year and greater flexibility for parent reporting to ensure quality reporting — as intended in the MOU.

TAFE4ALLThe TAFE4ALL campaign has stepped up with a TV, radio and print media campaign in the Bendigo area focusing on the Minister responsible, Jacinta Allan (see page 5).

The Brumby Government’s changes to funding for Vocational Education and Training are putting it out of reach of many Victorians, particularly those most in need.

Victoria is the only state shifting the cost of VET onto students and reducing government investment over time. These changes must be challenged. ◆

SEMINARS RV will hold retirement seminars at the AEU Building (112 Trenerry Cres, Abbotsford ) on the following dates: Saturday 24 October 2009 at 10am Thursday 7 January 2010 at 10am (Holidays) Tuesday 19 January 2010 at 10am (Holidays)Bookings: Call Rhonda Webley on (03) 9418 4844

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www.aeuvic.asn.au 3

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Letters from members are welcome. Send to: AEU News, PO Box 363, Abbotsford, 3067, fax (03) 9415 8975 or email [email protected]. Letters should be no more than 250 words and must supply name, workplace and contact details of the writer. Letters may be edited for space and clarity. Next deadline: November 11, 2009.

Let students take risksTHERE is a lot of talk at the moment in regards to the Victorian Government’s Skills Reforms that focuses on what “clients” or students are to expect from their further education and what managers and institutions expect from their department staff — but there seems to be little discussion about what teachers want from their practice as individuals or as guides in the process of learning.

We seem to be heading closer to becoming coaches of sporting teams, with a “Now get out there and win” mandate which is terribly lopsided for the psyche. Not encouraging a positive attitude towards the idea of “failing” defeats the whole purpose of trialling information and skills.

The old adage that failure is just as important to scientists as success in experimentation should be effectively upheld in an educational environ-ment. Learning time is a time for experimentation.

So I ask, who are we competing with and why? Learning should be a lifelong process with the primary goal being substance for the soul. The process is organic, not manufactured. I understand the importance of professional development, but what about personal development? Should this not also be included if a teacher as a person wishes to learn in an experiential way?

This all seems to be opening up revenue for a local Ricky Gervais to make a series called The School.

— Rupert OwenKangan Batman TAFE

Don’t dismiss Henson criticsI FEEL that enough time has passed since the story you did on the teacher from a St Kilda school who was approached regarding photographic possibilities of students (AEU News, Dec 2008). Hopefully sufficient heat has gone from this incident to pass comment on the article.

I have nothing to say publicly about the content of the article other than that the AEU obviously did the right thing in supporting its member through the situation.

The article itself, however, expressed a viewpoint from what should be seen as an illegitimate perspective, I believe. It portrayed anyone who thought the teacher erred in allowing access to the students or their parents/guardians as having an automatic position regarding the photographer in question’s work.

Such is not the case, and it is quite possible to perceive Bill Henson’s photography as a legitimate art form whilst nonetheless believing that going via the school ground is a totally inappropriate approach.

In the major print media the same “death by association” method of eliminating opposition is used to nullify the voice of persons who believe that climate change, although real, is not caused or greatly exacerbated by man-made CO2 emissions. Such persons are branded as “climate change sceptics” and their legitimate doubts are ignored. Your article also obscured a legitimate viewpoint in like manner.

— Marc HudsonInteract Learning Centre

Calling former teaching studentship holdersDID you receive a teaching student-ship to attend university or teachers’ college between 1950 and 1978?

Historians of the post-war period have noted the rapid expansion of government-funded education, particularly of university education, and the social changes that sprang from this. However, little analysis of the bases of these social changes has occurred. Nor has the role of teaching studentships within this process been examined.

My research for my Master of Arts in History will attempt to remedy this.

If you received a studentship, would you be prepared to be interviewed about your experiences? Whether you stayed in teaching or went on to a different career, if you are interested in assisting with my research, please contact me at [email protected]. ◆

— Marilyn BowlerLa Trobe University

FRENCH teachers' union Syndicat National des Enseignements du Second Degré (SNES) has contacted the AEU in search of members interested in

teacher exchanges.SNES says French secondary school teachers in metropolitan France,

West French Indies, French Guyana, Reunion Island and French Polynesia would like to contact Australian teachers for correspondence, exchange of flats or holidays.

If you are interested, email [email protected] or write to:SNES Echanges — Florian LASCROUXSyndicat National des Enseignements de Second degré46 avenue d'Ivre75647 PARIS CEDEX 13, France. ◆

French EXCHANGE

Assistance for Samoa and the PhilippinesAEU members can assist those

affected by the Samoa and Philippines emergencies by holding a staffroom collection or making personal donations to Union Aid Abroad–APHEDA.

On 30 September Samoa, Tonga and American Samoa were hit by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami, leaving an estimated 150 dead and 1000 homes destroyed. A week earlier, the Philippines was hit by Typhoon Ketsana, leaving 3000 people dead and 380,000 homeless.

Go to the Apheda website www.unionaidabroad.org.au to donate or call Jenny at APHEDA on 02 9264 9343. ◆


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Rachel Power AEU News

A NEW testing program for P–2 students caused a system

meltdown, prompting the Education Department to clear some emergency CRT funds for primary schools.

The English Online Interview test ran slow on October 12 and 13 — the first two days of the test — adding to concern among schools about the length of time the test takes to administer.

AEU primary sector vice president Peter Steele said: “Our members who rang in said it was in meltdown. It took longer to turn the pages in the test than to do the test itself.”

Members said some pages took over 20 minutes to turn.

The problems came amid concerns the compulsory program — which replaces the Assessment of Reading P–2 program — was introduced without fair warning or support, and risked disrupting normal teaching programs.

Following an AEU meeting with department secretary Peter Dawkins, the original two-week period for conducting the interviews was extended by a fortnight.

But the AEU’s call for CRT funding to release teachers to run the tests was only partially heeded.

“Our major concern has not

been addressed,” said AEU branch president Mary Bluett. “Schools should not be put under pressure to manipulate the school program, or to double up or split classes, to administer the tests.”

Members involved in pilots said each one-on-one assessment was taking over 40 minutes, against the 20–30 minutes claimed by the Education Department — even before the problems on October 12–13. The department said it would look favour-ably on requests for CRT funding for those days.

The timing of the new P–2 assess-ments could not have been worse for one primary school.

Yarra Primary School’s two-week camp fell smack in the middle of the four-week testing period, with junior swimming lessons starting up at the same time, and the whole school building up to the end-of-year production.

“If we’d had some warning, if it was funded, and there were CRTs available to take over the classes, then we could have planned for it,” said Grade 1 teacher Kevin Hunt. “And I’m not talking making it convenient, just simply do-able.”

Schools experiencing any difficulties should contact their Regional Office for assistance or email [email protected]. ◆

New test causes MELTDOWN

4 BENDIGOTHE AEU has taken the TAFE 4 All campaign to Skills

Minister Jacinta Allan’s doorstep, alerting voters in her Bendigo East electorate about the TAFE fee hikes.

As AEU News went to press, TAFE students were preparing a delegation to the minister’s electorate office, to urge her to repeal the reforms which have seen diploma fees more than double from $877 to $2000, and thousands of students lose their entitlement to concessions.

They took with them giant bank notes marked $2000 DEBT to symbolise the impact the new fees will have on students. The delegation was accom-panied by leafleting across the electorate and AEU visits to Bendigo schools.

AEU TAFE vice president Gillian Robertson said: “Bendigo East takes in some of the most

disadvantaged postcodes in Victoria. It has higher than average numbers of students eligible for concession rates, so they’ll be hardest hit by the changes their own MP is making.”

Thousands of people have signed the TAFE4All petition — now online at tiny.cc/FcfWR. The campaign website, tafe4all.org.au, has also been full of postings from students and teachers saying how the changes will affect them.

Minister Allan, on the back foot, went on ABC Central Victoria to claim the AEU was putting off students from applying for courses.

“Talk about shooting the messenger,” Robertson said. “What’s really putting students off is rocking up to TAFE and finding out their course is going to leave them thousands of dollars in debt.” ◆

www.aeuvic.asn.au 5

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John Graham AEU research officer

AN OVERWHELMING majority of Victorian government schools oppose having

three out of their four pupil-free days at the start of the year before students begin school.

An AEU survey of 533 schools (34% of all government schools) found that having the days all together in January did not meet school needs. Some 86% of schools said that the timing of pupil-free days should be up to the school.

Schools used the days this year mainly to carry out school-based professional development for teachers and for planning for the year ahead. Four out of five schools (81%) indicated that the value of the days was compromised by the fact that there were no other pupil-free days throughout the year for follow-up PD.

Another major concern was the lack of a pupil-free day for teachers to write end-of-year reports for parents. Over two-thirds of schools said they needed a day during Term 4 for this purpose.

The only pupil-free day scheduled after the beginning of the year was held on June 12. It was used by a majority of schools (68%) for writing mid-year reports for parents. Many schools commented that the inflexibility of its timing — a one-size-fits-all date — limited its usefulness.

Over half of all schools (53%) said they had changed their arrangements for reporting to parents this year and a clear majority of those said this was because of pressure from the Education Department.

Almost half of schools (46%) said they would prefer to keep students away for the day for parent reporting; 37% preferred starting parent teacher reporting at lunch time and going through into the evening; and only 7% preferred (what appeared to be the depart-mental option in some regions) having all reporting after school.The memorandum of understanding signed by the

department for the 2008 Schools Agreement gave schools the flex-ibility to move at least one of the three days to later in the year.

But the survey results make it clear that the department’s refusal to give schools this flexibility, and the inflexible scheduling of the day in June, are not in the interests of school communities. ◆

SLATE

NEW members will soon be able to join the AEU

online — while old members can update their membership details.

A membership system upgrade means that Victorian educators will be able to complete the joining process electronically — including making payments or setting up direct debit mandates.

Until now, it was necessary to download a mandate form and fax it to the union. Our new secure online payments system means that is no longer required.

You'll be able to use the system to update us on your details — including change of address, time fraction, workplace or payment information.

It’s essential that we have up-to-date information to ensure members receive AEU communications and are paying the correct fees.

To join or update your details, just go to www.aeuvic.asn.au/join.

Get the AEU News onlineYou can now read your AEU News online, or download it as a PDF. This members only service is part of the AEU’s drive to cut its carbon footprint. The online version uses the latest page-turning software for an easy on-screen experience.

If you’d like to read the AEU News as well as or instead of receiving a paper copy, email [email protected] and let us know. ◆

— Nic Barnard editor, AEU News

An Australian aberrationFULL marks to The Australian (October 12) for printing an interview with Melbourne academic Margaret Wu on its front page and thereby effectively dismantling its own case for league tables.

Professor Wu, associate prof at Melbourne Uni’s assessment research centre, laid into the reliability of NAPLAN tests, calling results in seven out of 20 subject areas “aberrant”. As The Oz summed it up, the “tests are unreli-able and cannot accurately compare a school’s performance from year to year or track the progress students make as they go through the school”.

(So convincing were the findings, the paper didn’t even bother to add a "she said" qualifier to that sentence.)

Unfortunately, that would make the NAPLAN tests useless for News Ltd's beloved league tables — though the article declined to join those particular dots.

Of course ACER, which devised the tests, has been saying this for ages, but you know it’s true when it’s on the front of The Oz.

Lies, damned lies and exclusivesBUT wait — what’s this “Exclusive” tag above the story? If Margaret Wu’s name rings a bell, it may be because she was in The Age just a week earlier.

“New research has raised doubts about the reliability of results from controversial national literacy and numeracy tests,” the paper reported in its education section on October 5, giving a sneak preview of the prof's report.

But even that wasn’t the exclusive — that came on The Age’s own letters page, way back on September 28. “NAPLAN results have large error margins,” the letter ran.

The author? One Margaret Wu of Doncaster East. ◆

Now you can join the AEU online… and read this magazine while you’re there!

Pupil

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Rachel Power AEU News

ORGANISER Jeff Walters travelled to East Timor to see first hand how Union Aid Abroad–APHEDA

works on the ground.“It was great to see how and where the money

was being used,” says Jeff. “It was good to see how little is spent on admin and that the emphasis is on facilitating local projects.”

Walters was one of 12 union representatives and three APHEDA staff who travelled to Dili as part of the Timor-Leste study tour in August.

Travelling from Dili to Bacau to Viqueque, the group visited various projects receiving support from APHEDA, including the Lorico Lian community radio station, a powerful medium in a country where literacy levels remain low.

They visited a lean-to workshop set up by the side of the road by a man who repairs tyres for military vehicles. APHEDA has taught him to do the

books, develop a business plan and helped with the provision of tools.

Other projects included income-generating literacy programs being run by women out of their own homes.

“They are like mini schools,” Walters said. “Essentially a train-the-trainer model.

“They say if you educate the women, you educate the village, and that was certainly evident there. The women were particularly motivated to learn.”

The group met Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao and other government officials. Gusmao recog-nised the importance of the Australian trade union movement in supporting Timorese independence at a time when the nation felt forsaken by governments in the region.

Bendito Freitas, the Timor-Leste Secretary of State for Vocational Training and Employment,

acknowledged the role APHEDA plays in helping to overcome high unemployment in Dili and the districts. Currently over 80% of Timorese are working as subsistence farmers.

Walters said he was struck by how “back to basics” life in East Timor was. “The environment there is so degraded; they’re rebuilding from the ground up.”

He found APHEDA to be a very hands-on, grass-roots organisation.

“APHEDA supports projects that also have invest-ment from locals who are prepared to take some responsibility in doing something for themselves.” ◆

Teach in East Timor

THREE volunteer ESL/EFL teachers are needed to train teachers in East Timor in 2010 under the Supporting

Teachers of English Program (STEP).The volunteers will implement a four-month PD program

for secondary teachers of English from early February in the district of Ermera in Timor-Leste.

ESL/EFL qualifications and experience in PD program design

and delivery are required. A pre-departure program, travel expenses and living allowance are provided.

The project follows a nine-month pilot which was positively received by local teachers and education officials. The STEP model is now ready to be delivered to all 30 teachers of English in the district. The project is based in Gleno, 40km south of Dili.

Friends of Ermera is a community-based organisation with a significant history of projects in Timor-Leste. Contact president Jan Trezise for more details at [email protected]. ◆

PHOTOS: JEFF WALTERS

Union aid “reaches Timor grassroots”

www.aeuvic.asn.au 7

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ONE piece at a timeRachel Power AEU News

KIDS across the world are making pledges to save the planet by

adding their patch to a giant quilt for the Climate Quilt Campaign.

The Australian-based campaign, co-founded by Habitat Heroes and the Green Schools Alliance, is a creative and practical initiative that will give kids a united voice in the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen in December.

“It is an effort to tangibly connect children worldwide around the issue of climate change and what they can

do about it,” says Leigh Hofman, “projects and propositions crusader” for Habitat Heroes.

She hopes it will

empower youth,

raise awareness, build global community, and be the voice of children at Copenhagen.

The eight-metre starter quilt has already received international publicity since travelling to New York for UN Climate Week, and patches have started arriving from around the world.

Symbolising children’s desire to protect and care for the Earth, each patch celebrates an individual child’s pledge to improve the environment, Hofman says.

These individual patches are sewn together into one unified quilt, illustrating that when you join together, the impact can be big.

The Australian quilt will be handed over to a government official at a ceremony in Melbourne on November 11 to take to Copenhagen on behalf of the children of Australia.

There are many ways kids, parents and teachers can get involved

with the Climate Quilt Campaign, says

organiser Sharon Lowe.You can create patches,

volunteer to help sew panels of the quilt together in your area, or even lead the campaign in your class, school or neighbourhood.

Instructions on how to make and where to send pledge patches can be found on the Climate Quilt Campaign website. School kits, including flyers, letters to parents, pledge ideas and lesson plans, are also available.

Kids are asked to include their name, age and city on their patches, and schools can incorporate their logos or emblems.

Lowe hopes that as many kids and schools as possible will be repre-sented in the finished quilt. She says

students have responded enthusias-tically to the patch-making workshops.

“The kids are eager to do something and have a voice. There have been responses coming to this campaign from all corners of the globe.”

The Green Schools Alliance and Habitat Heroes are inviting Grade 5 students from all schools to take part in Making a Difference Day on November 11 in Melbourne, which will culminate in the official handover of the Australian Climate Quilt.

The event will include a keynote address from one of Al Gore’s Climate Project youth speakers and free workshops throughout the day. ◆

Find out more at www.climatequilt.org or email [email protected]

TODAY’S secondary students could enter the workforce amid a clean energy boom if the union movement succeeds in its push for a clean

economy.The ACTU has joined forces with welfare, environment and research

organisations to launch a national Clean Energy Jobs campaign, arguing that renewable energy provides a common solution to the economic crisis and the climate crisis.

“We can generate more jobs if we take strong action on climate change. But we have to be the leader now — with new technologies, jobs and industries — to win the race,” says campaign spokesperson John Connor.

At the launch in August, Connor called on the “dinosaurs” in politics and business to stop blocking urgent climate and clean energy action.

A recent CSIRO study indicated that 2.7 million jobs could be created in Australia over the next 15 years if we move to a cleaner, low-carbon economy. Up to one million of these could be clean energy jobs using traditional skills in new industries such as solar, wind, water and recycling.

The renewable energy sector already employs around 2.3m people worldwide — more than the total number employed directly by the oil and gas industries.

The multimedia campaign is aimed at ensuring parliamentary negotia-tions strengthen climate action and clean energy policies. It will roll out around the country with actions and educational events.

To find out more, or to let your local MP know you want Australia to be part of the clean energy boom, visit www.cleanenergyjobs.com.au. ◆

DUMP THE DINOSAURS

A green jobs boom awaits if politicians look to the future, discovers Rachel Power.

PHOTO: DAN O'DAY

PHOTO: SHARON LOWE


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Does your school or workplace AEU Rep deserve special recognition? Email [email protected] telling us who you’re nominating and why. The Rep of the Month receives a limited edition AEU leather briefcase.

Nominate your REP!

Marie RileyAraluen ATSS

Carolyn Clancy and Rachel Power

THE Federal Government is investing around $16 million in a four-year Indigenous education

program to be led by Aboriginal education leader Dr Chris Sarra.

The new program will be open to teachers and

schools across the nation and will operate out of Sarra’s newly named Stronger Smarter Institute.

Education Minister Julia Gillard announced the spending at the National Summit on Successful Strategies for Indigenous Education held in Brisbane during the Term 3 break. Over 500 education leaders from across Australia attended the summit.

The program is an extension of Sarra’s Indigenous Education Leadership program, which seeks to enhance the leadership skills of principals, teachers, teacher aides and community elders who play a significant role in the education of Indigenous students.

Sarra reiterated his belief that Indigenous education has reached a “tipping point, beyond which we demand high expectations for all Indigenous students”.

Among the Victorian programs represented at the conference was the Koorie Literacy Initiative, presented by Koorie coaches Pamela Dowling and Wayne Harradine from Warnambool East Primary School, where 5% of the student population is Indigenous.

The program focuses on teachers rather than students, using intensive one-on-one coaching to build teacher capacity.

Teachers have a pre-coaching conversation prior to the lesson at hand; their coach then observes the lesson and offers feedback and planning for future lessons.

“Initially there was some anxiety attached to it among the teachers,” says Dowling. “But now the activity has turned the other way with the rest of the staff starting up a peer-coaching system.”

Part of the Wannik Initiative, the aim is to improve students’ literacy outcomes within a cultur-ally inclusive classroom. While Dowling says the data is not out yet, the benefits to students’ personal growth are already apparent. ◆

UNIONS have a proud history of campaigning on environmental issues. But rarely have the

stakes been as high as they are now.Scientists are telling us that if we achieve a

global agreement on climate change in December at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, we may be able to save the Barrier Reef, stop 100 million people from being displaced and minimise the number and intensity of cyclones, bushfires, floods and droughts.

Our changing climate is one of the biggest challenges we face as workers, as a nation and as a globe. That is why unions around the country are joining together to ask members to sign up to be part of the solution.

The Climate Connectors campaign has been developed by Australian unions, including the AEU, and the Australian Conservation Foundation to give

workers an opportunity to get involved at home, at work and in the community, and make a lasting difference to the planet.

In its first week, over 1000 passionate union members from a wide range of workplaces around the country signed up to the program.

The ACF will provide kits, web tools, phone support and face-to-face training (in association with the ACTU Organising Centre) — everything you need to campaign in your workplace and in your community.

We’ve got until world leaders meet in Copenhagen in December to mobilise a worldwide movement. The big polluters are spending millions to defeat us, but while we can’t match their dollars, we can use our networks to mobilise thousands of citizens in Australia and worldwide.

To sign up, visit www.climateconnectors.org.◆

Summit launches INDIGENOUS EDUCATION FUND

Become a climate champion

Warrnambool members join national showcase of projects to improve teaching and learning for Koorie students.

MARIE Riley can boast almost full membership following her latest recruiting drive at disability service Araluen

ATSS, which has facilities in Lower Plenty and Rosanna.Working to improve communication between staff and

management, Marie, October’s AEU Rep of the Month, tells colleagues that there’s no use whinging if you’ve done nothing to help yourself. “I try to get as many to come to meetings as possible. You need to put back in to the union. You can’t just stand back and thank them for the pay rise.”

AEU organiser Kerry Maher says Marie is a highly active recruiter and has assisted many members with their individual issues by contacting the union, calling meetings, holding meetings off-site and being prepared to take

sub-branch issues to management. “She is a really kind and caring person, as are most members in disability,” Kerry adds. “At times this role has been difficult for her.”

Marie has been the rep at Araluen ATSS for seven years. She is currently seeking advice from the AEU about the duties of Band 1 employees, who are not yet trained in disability. The agreement states that these employees should work with supervision.

She says she’s proud to represent the union at work. “We know that [the AEU is] trying their darnedest to get us more money, as one of the sectors where workers are severely underpaid, and I’m really pleased to be able to tell people that.” ◆

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David Colley industrial officer

THE Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) has handed

down three more Modern Awards: the Educational Services (Teachers) Award, the Educational Services (Schools) General Staff Award and the Educational Services (Post-Secondary Education) Award.

The awards will apply nationally without reference to any state-based criteria and without distinction between public and private sectors.

So from the start of 2010, unless an employee is covered by an enterprise agreement — or an award where the employer is the state government — these modern awards will form the minimum terms and conditions, and Victoria’s state-based awards will cease to exist.

So what does this mean in practice? Thankfully not much, as enterprise agreements cover most AEU Vic members. Some early childhood centres and some disability services rely solely upon the relevant state-based awards.

However, the potential exists for these awards to form the safety net against which future agreements are measured. This will be a factor in TAFE and for school council employees.

The new system relies upon what is called the Corporations Power and applies only where the employer is a corporation — not just a typical business or company but any body whose income derives from the buying and selling of goods and services.

So, school councils, TAFE boards, and early childhood centres are all corporations, but state government employees only become involved if the

state refers its IR powers to Canberra.Victoria is so far the only state to

have done this. However, under the terms of the referral, current awards for state employees will remain but over time be “modernised” to reflect “modern award standards”. They will be permitted to retain specific state features where appropriate.

So, government-employed ES staff and teachers remain covered by their

existing awards (which have no effect because the relevant agreements apply), but school council employees and TAFE teachers will be covered by their modern awards (although both are trumped by their agreements).

Note: principal class employees and bursars are specifically excluded from Modern Award coverage.

The Modern Awards can be found online at tiny.cc/so0qO. ◆

This is the modern (award) world

A NATIONWIDE survey conducted by the AEU has found that two-thirds of parents believe the

Federal Government should pass laws preventing the misuse of test data by newspapers, with Victorians the most opposed.

The polling also showed two thirds of parents felt publishing more online information comparing schools should not be a top priority for the Rudd Government; 93% named investment in teachers as the most important issue.

The AEU is calling on the Federal Government to abandon its plans to establish a website comparing schools in the absence of promised information on school funding and resources.

AEU federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said the absence of this information meant parents would get an incomplete picture on school performance.

“The Education Minister Julia Gillard has repeat-edly said information on funding provided to schools would be included on this new website,” he said.

“She was totally correct when she said that ‘only by understanding the total amount of funds at the disposal of individual schools is it possible to understand the relationship between resourcing and educational outcomes’.

“At the very least this project must be postponed until there has been a sensible consultation with teachers and parents.”

Minister Gillard’s beloved New York City school reporting system has been completely discredited following the recent release of new letter grades for elementary and middle schools.

The new results have been received with utter disbelief and ridicule by the New York media, academics and parent groups.

Former US assistant secretary of education Diane Ravitch, writing in the New York Daily News, said the results were bogus and made a mockery of account-ability since nearly every school scored an A or B.

A collapse in testing standards, rather than

improvement in schools, is being credited with the results.

An investigation by Columbia University has found that the annual state tests are getting easier because the state sets nearly identical questions each year and doesn’t cover the whole curriculum. That has made it easier for schools to coach students intensively and boost results.

In almost every grade, the state has lowered the bar, making it easier for students to get a higher score.

Ravitch, now Professor of Education at New York University, is arguing for New York City’s school report cards to be revised or scrapped. “We are reaching a perilous stage where the test scores go up while real education — the kind that is available in the best schools — disappears.” ◆

— Rachel Power AEU News

Parents OPPOSE tables


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Western AustraliaTHE SSTUWA is challenging the Barnett Government on its manage-ment of the “half year cohort” entering high schools in 2010 which threatens the jobs of 500 teachers.

In 2003, the starting age for WA students entering Year 1 changed, meaning only half the usual number began school that year.

The department recently announced it would be applying the current staffing formula, with the consequent loss of approximately 500 jobs in the high school sector.

The union has consistently called on governments (past and present) and the department to absorb the surplus staff for the five-year period.

South AustraliaTHE AEUSA is calling on the Government to make a public commitment to boost funding for kids with special needs ahead of the March state election.

Branch president Correna Haythorpe says special needs education is chronically under-funded and parents are bearing the financial burden of extra services. “In mainstream schools in particular, educators are finding it increasingly difficult to meet the needs of all their students,” she says.

“This task is made almost impos-sible with the increase of students with special needs such as autism, who have a rightful place in main-stream classes but require intensive early intervention and ongoing support.”

QueenslandBRISBANE QTU members are determined to show the government that they will not give up on their campaign for salary justice.

Teachers have held another after-school rally outside Parliament House, a week before their pay dispute is due to be arbitrated by the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission.

Interview techniquesPARENT–teacher interviews are a nerve-wracking

experience — for teachers and students. Greg the principal certainly finds them cause for

concern and personally supervises an elaborate cleaning up of the school before the interviews start. Any student finding themselves on detention in the days leading up to the interviews will be handed a bucket and a pair of tongs and sent out to collect as much rubbish as possible.

Artificial pot plants appear from storage and are strategically placed in areas that parents might walk past on their way in. Greg must feel these potted eye sores somehow enhance the Feng Shui of the school and perhaps promote friendly encounters between staff and parents.

It’s amazing to see what some of your colleagues end up wearing to parent–teacher interviews. Suits that haven’t seen the light of day since the Year 12 Formal resurface and female staff apply more make up than usual and ensure their hair is in place.

Hilda, one of the Science teachers, heaves huge piles of student work onto her desk and has prepared graphs to indicate each student’s level of progress compared to the rest of the class. I sit next to Warwick, one of the PE teachers, who appears to have forgotten to dress appropriately and still has on his tracksuit pants from class. Luckily, he has managed to scrounge his distressed crocodile leather jacket from the boot of his car and wears it nonchalantly over his Adidas t-shirt.

Not even the pot plants can stop the stares and soft guffaws from the students as they eye off his outfit.

“Good evening, my name’s Christina. I teach Marcus English. On a scale of one to ten, Marcus, with one being really bad and ten being absolutely wonderful, how would you rate your attitude to English classes?”

“I don’t know, maybe a two?”

It looks like Marcus has a lot of explaining to do on the way home. I would have rated him a seven.

Next, a parent who struggles to understand that parent–teacher interviews are an opportunity to discuss her child’s progress at school.

“...and so that’s when the doctor said I needed a hysterectomy. Unbelievable! So I said…”

“Hmm. Well, Caitlyn has been showing steady improve-ment in English since the start of the year. She’s still a bit chatty in class…”

“That’s exactly what I was saying to my next door neighbour the other night. Doreen, my neighbour, gosh she’s been through a rough patch lately. Ever since her letter box got stolen, she’s…”

Next to me, Warwick is alone. Maybe it’s the jacket, or just good luck, but he has barely seen a single parent all night. Even Greg has noticed — and has asked for a hand to move some of the pot plants into the reception area.

“You really need to get rid of these fake plants, Greg. They’re just really bad taste.”

Greg eyes off Warwick’s jacket and smiles to himself. The night is officially over. ◆

Comedian and teacher Christina Adams was last seen in pancake make-up hiding behind a pot plant.

The latest issue of Professional Voice, the AEU’s professional

journal, is now available. The theme of the Spring edition is Developments in Learning.

A strong line-up of writers includes Guy Claxton on how an obsession with exams is leaving students unprepared for life, and Howard Gardner on the thinking skills students will need in the 21st Century.

Neil Hooley writes on a narrative approach to learning for Indigenous students, while award-winning Victorian teacher Andrew Douch outlines how podcasts, social media and other new technology can revolutionise classroom practice.

PV is your entry to the debate on current educa-tional thinking, and comes free to AEU members. For your copy, email [email protected], or read it online at www.aeuvic.asn.au/professional. ◆

PROFESSIONAL

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Issue 2

RRP $10

Spring 2009

Professional Voice — out now

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This year’s Victorian Teachers’ Games proved a perfect way to unwind before a hectic Term 4 — and the AEU was on hand to help things along.

All in the GAME

Principal Peter Bush (in dark sunnies) and his East Gippsland Specialist School netball team stand behind Roger, the AEU Teachers Games mascot

Danielle from Berwick Secondary College met her husband at the 2007 Games in Geelong

AEU staff member Julie Lynch and Meredith Peace, AEU vice president, secondary take bronze in the tennis

Corey from Macleod College

Sarah Kupsch from Teachers Federation Health


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THINGS were looking pretty relaxed on the first day of the lawn bowls competition at the 2009

Victorian Teachers’ Games.“It’s a great way to start the holidays, having a

sneaky drink on the green,” said Corey, AEU member and McLeod College teacher. “It’s all healthy compe-tition — so far.”

Over 1,500 teachers and educators descended on Bairnsdale for this year’s event, once again sponsored by the AEU.

Over on the netball courts, principal Peter Bush admitted two of his East Gippsland Specialist School’s mixed netball team had only learned the rules that morning. “It’s just about education staff getting together to have fun,” he said.

Melton Primary School teacher Brendan agreed, despite winning gold in the squash competition. “I’m just here for the fun and the social time after a hard term at school. It’s a good way to get out all the frustrations of the term and just relax.”

Danielle from Berwick Secondary is a big fan of the Games, having met her husband Clayton “after the tennis” at the 2007 event in Geelong.

Squash player Nick, from Rye Primary School, also attended the Games for the first time in Geelong. “My team teacher, Leanne, and I used to set up the ping-pong table at lunch time and have a bit of a hit, so we decided to join the competition. It’s a great time. I love it.”

AEU water bottles, visors and towels ensured members had no trouble spotting each other. And for those all-important post-match debriefings, the AEU was on hand with drinks vouchers and free BBQ lunches for members.

It wasn’t all off-the-field. The AEU also entered teams of staff and members. Among the big winners were the AEU women’s and mixed netball teams, winning two gold medals.

“It’s awesome — the networking, the social aspect, getting to know the AEU guys,” said Corey. “It’s a great way to break through the politics in the workplace.” ◆ — Rachel Power

PHOTOS: PETER LAMBROPOULOS

Browny and his Angels (Paul Brown, Pam DeGues, Celeste Hardy and Meg Stephens) from Bairnsdale Secondary College make sure the competition measures up

L-R The Sunbury Smurfs: Fran, Tracey, Tracy and Rayma from Sunbury Macedon Ranges Specialist School


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Teaching from a distanceFrom its origins as the Correspondence School in 1909, the Distance Education Centre Victoria has come a long way. Teacher Peter Murphy hails the centenary of “The Corro”.

ON SUNDAY, October 18, there was a party at the Distance Education Centre Victoria (DECV)

in Thornbury to celebrate the first 100 years of its operations.

This was the culmination of all our centenary projects, and included the launch of Across the Distance, a book about the school’s history, our centenary mural, an exhibition of work created for centenary student projects and an exhibition of DECV memorabilia.

A centenary postcard has been mailed to past and present staff, families and students but, naturally, it’s difficult to reach everyone. For decades, our students have been spread around Victoria and there are always some who are travelling around Australia and overseas.

It was a very happy occasion for everyone associated with the school, many of whom over the years, with the help of the AEU, have promoted its services and place in the state’s education system.

Indeed, the AEU (and its predeces-sors) have provided valuable support through various departmental reviews and proposed and actual site changes, ensuring that the working conditions of teachers were maintained or enhanced and that students’ learning needs were met.

Current branch secretary Brian Henderson also ensured that adequate work space and parking space were provided when the current building was refurbished.

This is an appropriate occasion to reflect on the school’s growth from its modest origins at the start of the 20th century to its current position. Its history reflects the increasing provision for different categories of students whose needs were not being fully met by mainstream education.

In the early days the school was very much concerned with the provision of services to rural areas. This began in 1909, when the chief inspector, Mr W Hamilton, proposed that corre-spondence tuition be provided for student teachers in remote schools to upgrade their teaching qualifications.

Then, in 1914, we began offering lessons to school age students. In 1922, the enrolment of secondary students began. In 1944, enrolment for correspondence tuition was made compulsory for all school-age children prevented by remoteness or physical disability from attending day school.

By 1969, almost 5000 students (including 800 primary students) were receiving tuition from 121 teachers, assisted by public service staff including typists, printers and posting personnel.

In 1974, adults were permitted to enrol in Years 7–11 and, the following year, in Year 12. From 1975, when it moved to 415 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, the school continued to expand until the

reviews of the late 1980s and early ’90s cut staff sizes and tightened enrolments. The languages other than English (LOTE) section was incorporated into the Victorian School of Languages in 1993 and in 1995 the primary and secondary schools were merged to form a P-12 school.

The history of the school also reflects the changes in distance education technology. In 1914, its first school-age students were provided with handwritten lessons. Printing media did not begin until the 1920s with handwritten stencils, then progressed to typed stencils, then to offset printing until, by the mid-1980s, computer technology began to be introduced.

Around 1994 the school’s change of name to the Distance Education Centre Victoria reflected the increasing take up of new technology. Email was increasingly adopted as a means of submitting student assignments and for communication between teachers and students.

In 2001 the school moved from South Melbourne to its present location and since then the

enhanced delivery of curriculum through interactive technology has become an increas-ingly important part of its operations.

From the early days of handwritten materials, DECV has become a state-of-the-art distance education school, providing tuition through a variety of media (including printed notes) to students around the state and to those travelling around Australia and overseas. ◆

Distance Education Centre Victoria has launched a blog at www.decv100.blogspot.com to gather memories from staff and students past and present. To read more on the centenary or to order Across the Distance, go to www.distance.vic.edu.au.


The Corro in the 1960s

Correspondence School staff room in the 1930s

“CHILDREN today have so much electronic stimulus, they have forgotten how to just play,

to use their imaginations,” says Nicole Burke, early childhood teacher at Ascot Kindergarten in Ascot Vale.

It’s an observation that prompted Nicole and the kindergarten’s director Justine Walsh “on a journey” over the past two years.

“Justine went to a few PDs and started rethinking things. Then I came on board as the three-year-old teacher last year and we devised the program together.

“We started from scratch with an evolving program, and now we’re doing exactly what we want.”

The result has been a new approach that is starting to gain attention for the way it draws from the ideas and principles of Steiner, Reggio Emilia and Montessori, as well as more recent theories on play-based curriculum, without being ruled by them.

“We’re lucky that we’re independent, so we take some of the principles of program flow, but we also draw from outside ideas,” Nicole says.

“Because we’re not council-run, we’re free to do things a bit differently. Other centres are often too fearful of regulations to try anything new.”

The “program flow curriculum” now practised by many kindergarten teachers moves away from set themes to a program led by the interests of the children.

“Instead of having strict time limits on activities, we have just that last transition at the end of the day when we all pack up,” says Nicole.

“That way, there’s more time to spend on kids with particular needs. We’ve found that the time

we’ve got to spend is more quality, and we’re much more relaxed in our teaching.”

With Justine and Nicole working together, there is also more coherence now between the three and four-year-olds. Nicole says this has allowed for a focus on the boys, who need “space and time”.

Central to the program at Ascot is looking at learning from a child’s perspective and not putting too many restrictions, she says. “We’re going back to the value of play, and how much you can learn through play. There’s no focus on product; it’s all about the process.”

This means valuing outdoor learning as much as indoor, as well as an emphasis on natural and organic objects.

“We are going back to basics. We use a lot of real-life stuff, lots of glass and crockery, and the kids have to learn how to handle these types of materials.”

She says the change has required educating parents about what the new program involves and why they’re moving away from more traditional approaches.

“It was a big leap of faith all round. We need to be confident to talk to parents when they ask ‘Where’s all the literacy and numeracy?’ We explain that we’re giving them life skills, not just teaching them how to count to 10.”

Martel Menz, AEU deputy vice president for early childhood, says the program offered at Ascot Vale Kindergarten is an excellent example of play-based, emergent curriculum.

“With a shared commitment to rethink their approach, Nicole and Justine are drawing on a range of ideas to inspire their children,” she says.

“Early childhood teachers have long recognised the power of play. It’s great that this approach is being advocated to the families and sector more broadly.”

Alongside its revamped curric-ulum, Ascot Kindergarten is

also aiming to become the greenest kindergarten in the area.

It has installed an impressive solar system worth more than $25,000, with plans to

sell power back to its energy provider.That started with a parent

entering a competition on behalf of the kinder to win $4000 of solar

equipment. This success led to other grants from the federal and state governments and Moonee Valley Council, and taking advantage of the rebates then on offer.

The project has had the added benefit of helping to educate the children in the basics of solar energy, says Nicole.

Nicole and Justine are now doing Certificate IVs in training and assessment so they can help other early childhood teachers develop their own programs. ◆

Contact Ascot Kindergarten on 03 9375 3548.

A community preschool in Melbourne’s west is taking an à la carte approach to educational philosophy to create its own play-based menu. Rachel Power reports.

The play’s the thingNicole Burke (right) with Justine Walsh


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IT’S “not about ranking schools or creating league tables,” Premier

David Bartlett declared as he launched a website containing test results and other data for every school in Tasmania.

It didn’t take the Hobart Mercury long to prove him wrong by extracting the test results to construct a crude league table.

At its bottom was Bridgewater High, a school that had burnt down just six months before the tests were taken, was temporarily housed in a primary school and facing a total restructure.

Bridgewater High principal Rosanne McDade says the effect on students and staff was devastating.

“I have spoken to a number of the students and (heard) the same kind of feeling: ‘Everybody thinks we are absolutely hopeless anyway and this has just been another public acknowledgement of the fact that we are absolutely hopeless.’

“They feel that they cannot rise up from this type of stigma that is put upon them.”

For teachers it is as if their hard work has been thrown back

in their faces.“It is very hard for the morale of

teachers, particularly when the judge-ments are made that the students are failing because the teachers are failing,” McDade says.

“And that to me is the biggest thing. The teachers are extremely hard-working, they are very caring,

they really work hard to try and help students achieve good results.”

School council member and parent Marie Bennett says the impact on the community was widespread. “As a parent I was concerned that we were

at the bottom of the league table. But I was also concerned for the children. They live with so much stigma as it is.

“I was also concerned because I didn’t think the league table showed the whole story of our school. It didn’t take into account the innovative programs that we have running here and the effort the staff put into these programs. Unpaid hours so that these programs can work aren’t shown on a league table.

“Somebody who is looking at the internet and looking at the paper and

who is looking at sending their child to our school is not going to be able to see that. … It also doesn’t show that this school is the heart of our community.”

Bridgewater is one of the lowest

socio-economic areas of Hobart, with a low average household age and above average unemployment.

The fire in October 2007 caused $5 million in damage. For the rest of the year, the grades were split up and housed at two different high schools. In 2008, Term 1 was delayed for students, while staff prepared for a whole school shift to Bridgewater Primary School.

At the same time, Bridgewater HS was facing a total restructure and amalgamation with two other schools. “There were quite a few distractions,” says Tasmanian AEU president Leanne Wright. “It was a very difficult situation in already one of our hardest schools. As it is, they struggle on a day-to-day basis.

“The primary school just wasn’t suitable for the type of studies they need at high school, particularly for practical studies, which was very important for this cohort of students.”

The school runs an unusual set of programs outside the classroom, making use of its farm and pea shed to teach practical skills alongside literacy and numeracy programs.

While Victoria braces for league tables, schools at home and abroad already know the bitter taste of being named and shamed. Rachel Power reports on the school that propped up the Tasmanian table … just months after burning down.

❛ They are not seen as good enough because they come from this community,

and now they have people looking down on them because they are in the

lowest school in the state. ❜

Coping with stigma

Bridgewater High School after the firePHOTOS: COURTESY DON RENNISON, BRIDGEWATER HIGH SCHOOL

Bridgewater High principal Rosanne McDade


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“If we believe in our children, hopefully they will start believing in themselves,” Bennett says.

“They are not seen as good enough because they come from this community ... and now they have another area of people looking down on them because now they are in the lowest school in the state.

“That is a lot of burden for a young person to have and then to be expected to go on and thrive.”

Tasmanian teachers are now pushing for a ban on school league tables. AEU Tasmanian branch members, backed by parent groups,

have voted to boycott NAPLAN tests unless the Government acts.

“Unless we can find some way to work with the Premier to put his words into action, then it appears very likely that teachers will not be running those tests in 2010,” says Wright.

Wright says the simplistic rankings published in the Mercury made life harder for teachers, who were then asked to explain to parents why their schools weren’t performing well.

Jenny Branch from Tasmania’s Parents and Friends group says league tables don’t really reflect what is going on inside the walls of

a school. “We have no problems with transparency but a simple ranking of schools can mislead parents into making decisions that don’t really turn out to be the best for their child.”

Premier Bartlett — who doubles as Education Minister — has told the AEU he would not legislate against league tables because he believes in freedom of speech.

“Can I say 100% that I totally and fundamentally agree with you that league tables are a very bad thing for education,” he said.

“It is fundamentally flawed and deeply ridiculous in my view and I’ll

say it to any journalist who wants to hear it and I will say it to any editor as well.”

But this attitude is hypocritical, says AEU federal president Angelo Gavrielatos. “You cannot talk about an opposition to simplistic league tables and sit back and do nothing.

“Our opposition is based on all the evidence and research from around the world that the introduction of such reporting regimes will narrow the provision of the curriculum, undermine the curriculum, undermine equality and deepen segregation.” ◆

The class the media failedIt was an infamous case that led to the banning of league tables in NSW. But 12 years on, teachers still struggle to shed the stigma.

“THE saddest day in education reporting in this country” is

how AEU federal president Angelo Gavrielatos describes the Daily Telegraph’s front-page headline “Class We Failed”.

Mount Druitt High School in Sydney’s western suburbs was publicly humiliated in January 1997 when the Telegraph ran a picture of its entire Year 12 cohort alongside an incorrect report on its HSC results.

The story claimed that every student had failed to top 50 in the tertiary entrance rank. In fact, many achieved high scores, while others had not applied for TER scores.

Students took the matter into their own hands, suing News Limited for defamation and forcing the Telegraph to publish a full apology.

A public outcry led to a general ban on the publication of school results in New South Wales — one the NSW Government is now doing its best to overturn.

The NSW Labor Government’s latest attempt to lift the ban was defeated by the Greens, the Coalition and an Independent in September, following a mass rally and intensive

lobbying campaign by an unprec-edented coalition of the education community across the public and private sectors.

But the damage to Mt Druitt HS and its students and community has been done.

“They denigrated a whole school without taking into account any of their personal circumstances nor their achievements at the time,” says Gavrielatos. “Many of those kids were the first in their families to ever finish high school.”

The hurt and anger remain raw among staff and community. It created a stigma those students are still trying to live down, says Dianne Pyne, a teacher at the school, which has since been renamed Chifley College Mt Druitt campus.

“They were devastated and outraged,” she says. “Coming from Mt Druitt, these kids are already victims of stereotyping, unfairly. But this incident really heightened those assumptions about our school and that affected them even down the track when applying for jobs.”

She describes one student who had extreme

learning difficulties, as did all of his immediate family. Unable to write, he needed a full-time scribe, and yet still managed to complete his HSC.

“Then to have his photo there, branded as having failed… It completely ignored the amount of effort he’d put in, and his parents’ support to get him there,” she says.

Other students had achieved impressive results in subject areas that weren’t tested, such as home economics.

“There were so many things behind the scenes that weren’t explained. It was a complete misinter-pretation of the data, and that’s what league tables do.”

Pyne says it took some years for staff morale to recover. “‘The class who failed.’ Well, who failed them? The teachers did read it that way — that they were being judged and blamed, and the education minister at the time didn’t come out with a strong message in support of them.

“Fortunately we were always supported by our principal, and the Teachers Federation [the AEU in NSW] was fantastic.

“We had so much support in 1997 from the community and the education sector, both public and private. We were strong, because we knew we were right.”

Cathy Anderson, the current principal of the Mt Druitt campus, says no community should go through the hurt and the anger she found when she arrived at the school.

But plans for a national website listing primary and high school results has the Mt Druitt teaching community worried. “I can’t believe we’re fighting this battle again,” Pyne says.

Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard maintains the website will give parents more information about a school’s performance and show which schools need extra support.

Pyne says: “The Government doesn’t need newspapers to rank

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NSW shadow education minister Adrian Piccoli with MT Druitt HS rep Dianne Pyne

FOR Barbara Murgatroyd, the memory of what happened after

the school she led finished bottom of England’s national test league tables is still nightmarishly vivid.

“There are days when I still feel utterly sick,” she said. “I have also developed colitis, the stomach condition. But in a more general sense, I have found myself talking to other heads and saying to them: ‘Watch your back.' It was horrendous.”

Barbara, 62, left teaching three years ago, after a poor set of results in 2006 set in train a course of events that sounds like something out of a novel by Franz Kafka.

Only two years previously, the national inspection service Ofsted had pronounced Featherstone Streethouse Primary, in West Yorkshire, a good school under the “very successful” leadership

of Mrs Murgatroyd.This, the last official judgement

before the school’s 2006 results, was some achievement. The small primary serves a village in the former coalfields, which have been blighted by high unemployment since the pit closures of the 1980s.

Mrs Murgatroyd said: “There was a drug problem, an alcohol problem and lots of comings and goings in and out of the village. It was a challenging area.”

The school had expected particu-larly bad results in the 2006 tests for 11-year-olds, she said, because the year group had been identified as weak since they had entered the school aged 5. It also knew that, with a year group of only 15 pupils, underperformance on the day by even one child could have a big impact on the school’s score.

The results showed that only 20%

of pupils achieved the Government’s “expected” performance in English tests, while the figures for maths and science were 27%. National averages that year were 79%, 76% and 87%.

A few months later, the local authority — prompted by a Government scheme which targets schools with poor results for extra attention — sent four officials to visit the school. They interviewed teachers and pupils. They then compiled an 11-page report.

The next day, two more senior staff came back for a one-hour meeting. Mrs Murgatroyd said she wanted union support there. The officials said this was not necessary, as it was “only a chat”. But they also told her the report would be “damning” for her. They were not interested in the educational starting points of the children, she added. She was

told that, given her age, she should consider early retirement.

Mrs Murgatroyd went on sick leave the next day. While she was off, she found her school email address had been changed. Seven months later, she signed a “compromise agreement” and retired, after six years leading the school and nearly 40 in teaching.

Mrs Murgatroyd is now helping spearhead the campaign the National Association of Head Teachers is running with the National Union of Teachers against league tables and the national tests.

She added: “Ultimately, our local authority does not care about head teachers; they don’t care about anything other than hitting their results targets. Once you have this system, that is all anyone cares about.” ◆

One strike and outOfficial praise was not enough to save one experienced principal’s career when her school came bottom of England’s primary league tables. Warwick Mansell reports.

schools to see which ones need support. It’s their data.”

The Mt Druitt case shows how crude rankings can in fact have the opposite effect: creating a long-lasting stigma, rather than improving outcomes.

“This data is created by adding up literacy and numeracy scores, then halving it. That doesn’t tell you anything about the development of a student’s social skills, or how far the kids have come,” says Pyne.

Gavrielatos agrees that league tables create a culture of “winners and losers” which is inappropriate to education. Nor does the ability to give targeted support to schools depend on league tables, he says.

Instead, it requires sustained investment in equity programs to tackle entrenched disadvantage.

The AEU’s call for a federal ban on the misuse of test data by

newspapers has widespread public support, as a recent AEU survey found. But despite condemnation by state and federal ministers of “simplistic” league tables, only NSW has laws in place.

The Federal AEU has stated its opposition and warned that the 2010 NAPLAN tests may be jeopardised if the Government doesn’t act on the issue. NSW Education Minister Verity Firth has threatened the union with the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) if action takes place.

Firth argues that publishing data is necessary to inform parents how their children are doing — despite the fact that parents already receive annual school reports, bi-annual student reports, parent–teacher interviews

and school newsletters. The Daily Telegraph is leading

a parallel campaign by print media to overturn the NSW laws, arguing parents’ right to know — an argument Gavrielatos describes as shockingly disingenuous.

Back at Mt Druitt, teachers are still

fighting to shed the stigma of those newspaper reports of 1997. Students no longer graduate with Mt Druitt on their reports — instead they say Chifley College.

As Dianne Pyne says: “The more public the denigration, the harder it is to recover.” ◆ — Rachel Power

continued from previous page

Mt Druitt members going to a leagues table protest with rep Dianne Pyne

Barbara Murgatroyd with student from Featherstone Streethouse Primary leafletting against league tables.


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WITH a million young Australians combining part-time work with their studies, an innovative

curriculum resource offering them advice on their rights and responsibilities as employees would seem to be exactly what many need.

Work Right is just such a package and it will be available to all Victorian secondary schools next month. Among its many novel elements is the fact that young people themselves identified the 10 key themes they saw as being critical in ensuring young workers get a fair go — from their employers and others around them.

As well, Year 11 Eltham High School student Seb Haquin designed the graphics for Work Right and this set the format the designer used for the final layout.

The resource is intended for teachers working across the curriculum with students in Year 10 or at Levels 5 and 6 of VELS. The package promotes the view that the issue of students who work part-time is not only a matter for careers teachers but “a whole of school, whole of staff responsibility”.

As such it has activities that all teachers could use and includes curriculum and teacher reference resources, a student take-home section, plus a set of classroom activities mapped against the VELS curriculum.

The activities were prepared by Glen Pearsall, an English teacher at Eltham High and an experienced

curriculum developer and board member of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority.

Michael Victory, executive officer of the Teacher Learning Network which developed the resource, said Work Right contains learning sequences that should not only engage students but allow teachers to bring their own experience and creativity to bear.

Pearsall says that as well as 33 possible classroom activities, the package has 39 “rich tasks” that could be tackled in mathematics, science, the humanities and other curriculum areas.

A rich task in mathematics, for example, asks students to design a “fair wage calculator” by devising a formula for calculating money per hour minus expenses times work and opportunity cost. Students have to present their formula as a wallet-size flip card or email message.

In English, students might be asked to interview employers for an article on businesses in their community that are particularly noteworthy for consistently giving young people a “fair go”.

For science, PE and technology, another task is to design a WorkSafe audit form. This requires the students to think about the possible hazards involved in the subject and helps them realise that health and safety issues are of concern to everyone in a workplace.

Pearsall says a key aspect of the resource is providing students with the information and strategies that will help them to create healthy relationships at work. Whether students are undertaking work experience, in a part-time job or about to leave school, the resource will help them learn more about their rights and their obligations at work.

“What we hoped to do was move beyond just outlining the rules of work and to get the students thinking about what kind of workplace is healthy and fair for them. As one kid said to me, ‘You might know the rules of football but that doesn’t mean you know anything about how we play it at our club’.”

Pearsall says the resource offers more than discussions about what happens when something goes wrong at work. Instead it gives students the chance to identify workplaces that are successful, that support the people who work there.

A core idea is the notion of good faith, he says, of students not only being treated fairly at work but encouraging them to think of the workplace as based on relationships and the concept of a “fair go for all”.

Victory says the project was overseen by a steering committee of government, employer and employee representatives — including the AEU — and was financed by the Victorian Department of Industry, Innovation and Regional Development.

The package includes articles for teachers by experts on the new workplace legislation. A separate teacher-only resource provides detailed knowledge to help them implement the curriculum activities.

The package also lists the rights and obligations for employees and employers as well as phone numbers, websites and “passport” documents to help young people. ◆

The Work Right resource will be loaded to the Education Department’s FUSE (Knowledge Bank) website and will also be available at www.tln.org.au and www.aierights.com.au. Glen Pearsall will present a workshop on the resource at the Careers Education Association conference on December 8 and at the TLN in early 2010.

Ten topics• Everyone should have a fair go at work• Everyone has a right to be treated with dignity• Discrimination and harassment are against the law• Everyone has a right to a safe and healthy workplace• Everyone should get a say about the things that affect them• You should always be able to ask someone to speak on your

behalf• No-one should be asked to leave a job without a fair reason• Everyone is entitled to fair basic conditions• All young workers or their representative should be allowed to

bargain for a fairer deal• Disputes should be resolved quickly and fairly.

Young rights at workA new curriculum resource aims to teach students about their workplace rights and explore the meaning of a fair go at work. Geoff Maslen reports.

atticus design: Client: AIER Job: Work Right Kit © 2009

work right

Folder Cover design

Artwork by Eltham HS student Seb Haquin

feature


ONLY in Korea and Japan does more of the burden for education spending fall on families

and individuals, a new international report has found.

The 2009 edition of the OECD’s Education at a Glance reports that in 2006, 20.7% of Australia’s education expenditure came from “households” — that is, from families and individuals.

Even the home of laissez-faire capitalism — the United States — did not require its citizens to spend so much of their own money on becoming formally educated.

While Korea at 31.5% and Japan at 21.8% exceeded the Australian figure, households in the US and the United Kingdom — countries often used as a benchmark for Australia — contributed less at 20.3% and 16% respectively.

Finland, the new poster child for lifting student achievement, lay at the opposite end of the table to Australia. In international literacy/numeracy/science league tables, Finland sits comfortably above Australia, just as Australia out-performs the US and UK.

When all sources of expenditure are taken into account, private sources provide 27.6% of Australia’s spending on educational institutions. By comparison, private sources provide just 2.5% in Finland. This means that 97.5% of expenditure on education in Finland comes from public sources, the highest public-to-private ratio of any country in the OECD.

The OECD report breaks up education expendi-ture into two other categories — pre-primary education and primary/secondary/post-secondary non-tertiary education. In pre-primary, Australia is ranked third for private household expenditure — first is Korea with 51.5%, Japan is second with 38.3% and Australia gets the bronze with 36.5%.

The schools and post-secondary sector sees

Australia again in third place with 14.3% of expenditure coming from families. Korea tops the list with 20.6%, followed by Mexico with 17.2%. The UK is at 13.7% and the US at 8.5%. When all private expenditure in this area is considered, 17.2% of Australia’s total spending comes from private sources as compared to only 1% in Finland.

Public to privateIn some ways, an even more significant indicator of the way in which Australia has privatised its education system is the proportion of public money given by governments to private institutions.

Australia gives the expanded private schools sector 21.1% of all public spending in this area. This places it second among OECD countries behind Belgium at 53.3%. The Australian figure is more than double the OECD average of 8.1%.

While the OECD data refers to the end of the Howard years, there is no indication that things have changed under the Rudd Government. It is steadfastly committed to funding private schools at their present record levels until at least 2012.

The size of the private school sector in Australia, which is staggering in world terms, seems of no concern to the present Federal Government. The fact that 34.1% (2008) of the country’s students attend private schools, as compared to 7% in Britain and 11% in the United States, is seen as a plus rather than a minus.

The Rudd Government has made it clear that its priority, through what it misleadingly calls its “trans-parency agenda”, is to manage and facilitate an education market. This is despite much recent data indicating that such quasi-markets simply reinforce existing socio-economic differences and show no evidence of lifting overall student achievement.

An important OECD study of the effect of such markets, published in August, poured cold water

on one rationale often used to justify choice and competition policies in education. The study of developments in 20 countries found no direct causal link between market-driven choice and competition and innovation in the classroom.

Instead it found that markets encouraged schools to compete for the same type of student (based on socio-economic status) and to stand-ardise their approaches to attract them. The major innovations were found to be in marketing itself. Consumer preferences were shaped not by classroom innovation but by innovative marketing techniques.

Beacon statusIs there any Federal Government light on the hill for public education at present?

Not if you follow the actions of the Federal Minister for Education, Julia Gillard. As reported in the last edition of AEU News, her office was behind a push at the recent national ALP conference to remove the longstanding ALP policy supporting public education.

The Australian Financial Review has commented that the Minister prefers “the private school crowd”. Recent evidence of this may be found in her accept-ance of an invitation from Jeb Bush, the brother of George W, to speak at a Washington conference on school reform.

“Ms Gillard will be one of three panellists in a session entitled ‘Allies in the International Education Arms Race’ next Thursday,” the Sydney Morning Herald reported on October 3.

“She will appear alongside James Tooley, a British professor of education policy who focuses on low-cost private education, and Peje Emilsson, a Swedish entrepreneur who founded a chain of 22 private schools.” ◆

Privates on parade

Australia has become a world leader in privatising its education system, research officer John Graham discovers.


study

FOR Jessica Stainton, challenging behaviour is more than just an occupational reality — it’s

something she looks forward to.“It’s really the behaviours that I like,” Stainton

says of her work with adults with intellectual disabili-ties at the Onemda Association in East Doncaster.

“I’ve got the patience to sit there and figure out why that person is frustrated, and tolerate it. That’s just me, I guess.”

Stainton has been a disability trainer for nine years, and since 2006 has been at Onemda. She is part of a team of 35 working with 107 clients ranging in age from 18 to 70.

“We have very high-support clients who need assistance with meals and personal care, physio and hydrotherapy, to those who are starting work placements at Bunnings or factory work,” she says.

There was a childhood fascination with an intellectually disabled cousin who had contracted meningitis when she was just three days old — she remembers washing her hair. But this did not influence her choice of career, she says.

Instead, she drifted into it at 19. Toying with the idea of being a nurse, she took up the suggestion of a friend who worked at the Wallara disability services organisation in Dandenong to volunteer there. She liked it, moved onto the paid staff and stayed five years.

Stainton says it’s especially rewarding when she can help a client work through a behavioural problem. “I worked with one guy who was 25 with Down Syndrome. A lot of his behavioural issues were stemming from lack of communication.”

Stainton, who is keen on new technology, knows her way around Photoshop, and started a photo book for him. It’s not a new idea in the disability field, but she took it further.

“Most photo books show you a picture of a

toilet, or a drink — the client can point to it and it’s satisfying their basic needs. But really, you can take it as far as you like with the images that are around on the internet … I put in pictures of his favourite foods, CDs, things about him that he really liked.

“I did a page on facial expressions. Clients who wanted to show their emotions could point to a picture of somebody being upset.”

It takes a lot of work to achieve these commu-nication breakthroughs, but Jessica fears progress

is being undermined by the mainstreaming of tertiary disability qualifications.

Stainton, who holds a TAFE Certificate IV in Community Services (Disability), says disability-specific teaching degrees have all but disappeared: “RMIT Bundoora is the only place where you can do Disability Studies now. Deakin had a really good one and mainstreamed theirs.”

Stainton is working towards a move into teaching at special schools — partly for the career prospects and also because, although she loves her job, the disability field is notorious for the bad pay.

From a Bachelor of Applied Science (Disability), she hopes to segue into a Bachelor of Education by correspondence.

Having had a son at age 16, when she was halfway through Year 11, Stainton is no stranger to juggling a packed working life and part-time study. To complete Year 12, she studied two nights a week for three years.

“I’ve always been quite driven,” she says. “You don’t plan those things when you’re 15 or 16. But once I got pregnant I didn’t think twice about finishing Year 12. I thought, That’s OK, I’ll just do it slower.”

Someday, she says, she might even travel and volunteer abroad. “My goal is to go backpacking with my son when he’s 18. I’d like to go teach English in some place like Cambodia, and see what the disability field is like there.”

Ever the lover of challenges, when I suggest that would be grim, she’s quick to correct me: “Rewarding,” she insists. ◆

pro

file

The most important thing I take into work every day is …My sense of humour and a spare set of clothes.

My best trick for coping with staff meetings is …Watching people fall asleep can be quite amusing.

The best piece of advice I ever received was …Observe and empathise.

My advice to a beginning disability instructor is Leave your expectations at the door.

The most important thing the AEU does is …Give the individual worker a voice.

The most inspirational figures in my life are …The parents of children with disabilities that I meet on a daily basis.

The book that changed my life was …The Good Women of China by Xinran — it really readjusts your perspective. I highly recommend reading it.

My favourite teacher at school was …My home economics teacher in high school; she was quirky and we shared a love for efficiency and organisation.

If I had a private meeting with Human Services Minister Lisa Neville, I’d tell her …That I think its a shame only one university in Victoria offers the Bachelor of Applied Science (Disability.)

& tellshow

Challenging behaviourDisability trainer Jessica Stainton loves a challenge — from working with difficult clients to juggling a demanding job, raising a family and studying. Elisabeth Lopez tries to keep up.


DisabilityRob Stewart deputy vice president, TAFE and adult provision

Minister needs to talk on pay

GOVERNMENT funding for adult training and support services went up by 3% on July 1, with the clear expectation that this money would be passed

on to staff as pay rises.While negotiations for a new agreement continue between the AEU and

employers, members in the disability sector will be pleased to note that a couple of ATSSs have already passed this money on in good faith.

It raises the question as to what other centres will do in the next few weeks as the AEU pushes for the increase to flow to all centres irrespective of progress in enterprise bargaining.

The union has not been able to get the three employer representatives to sit down collectively with the AEU and reach agreement on how to proceed with a new agreement.

But by the time you read this we will have met two of the three organisations and the message is pretty clear. All parties acknowledge the sector has real issues around workforce and that the government must address salary as a priority, along with the general working conditions in the sector.

For that reason alone, the AEU calls on Human Services Minister Lisa Neville to meet with the AEU as a matter of urgency to discuss the question of salaries and enterprise bargaining. ◆

Early ChildhoodMartel Menz deputy vice president, early childhood

Back by popular demand

Education SupportKathryn Lewis ES organiser

Stay alert for contract abuse

TERM 4 is a busy time for Recruitment Online (ROL) and sub-branches need to be alert to ensure that contract positions advertised are legitimate and

that the school is striking a balance between fixed-term and ongoing positions. There is no need to waste valuable time with unnecessary advertising and

selection processes — not to mention the anguish of ES members reapplying for their jobs. The ES Agreement in Clause 17(2)(f-g) allows eligible staff to be offered ongoing positions, while Clause 17(2)(c)(ii) allows contract staff to be offered one more contract, both without advertisement.

ES members may need to bring these clauses to the attention of sub-branches and consultative committees.

Getting flexibleIf schools cannot offer ongoing positions for integration staff the next best thing is an “up to seven years” contract (Clause 17(2)(d)(ii)). This provides constancy for ES staff without locking schools into a restrictive contract.

If funding declines the school can put an end date on the contract (with the usual 12 weeks’ redeployment rights — see below) at any time of the year — but if funding is maintained the ES doesn’t have to reapply for their position for seven years. A win–win situation for all.

Recall rightsAt the end of every school year, recall becomes an issue. The only way to avoid tension is to ensure there is good — informed — consultation with all staff.

It is up to each school and each work area within the school to determine whether they need to recall staff over the summer holidays.

If you are not needed, then great — enjoy the summer. The AEU is concerned however that some schools who don’t need ES staff to work during the holiday are telling them they “owe” the school recall days and must work time in lieu during term to offset it.

This is simply wrong. Work must not be “created” to offset recall. if you have any questions call our Membership Services Unit on (03) 9417 2822.

RedeploymentIf you have had two consecutive contracts resulting in employment of longer than 12 months, you are eligible for redeployment and should be notified, preferably in writing, 12 weeks before the second contract ends.

Redeployment gives ES staff an advantage when applying for positions, as they must be considered ahead of any outside applicants. So make sure you understand your rights. For more information on redeployment call the MSU. ◆

DUE to overwhelming interest in our Early Childhood Conference this year, we are offering a number of repeat opportunities in Term 4 for some of

the most popular workshops. The following are free for AEU members:• Sandplay: More than Fun with Neta Kirby — November 6, 2-4pm at the

AEU building, Abbotsford• Environmental Education in the Early Years with Stephanie Ralton —

November 20, 2-4 pm at the AEU building• ICT with Children and Families with Max Grarock — December 4, 1-3pm

at the Retreat Hotel, Abbotsford.Further details and registration can be found at www.aeuvic.asn.au/

childhood/ — look under PD. We realise that not everyone can get to these Friday afternoon sessions,

particularly members in rural areas. If a group of members in your area has a particular training need, please call me on (03) 9417 2822 or email [email protected].

Agreements updateEarly childhood members recently received a bulletin on progress with the community sector MECA and the status of the local government multi-employer agreement.

The AEU, LHMU and employers’ body KPV have sought approval for MECA under the Fair Work Act as a single-interest employer enterprise agreement. This will involve a number of steps, including a new ballot.

Negotiations for the local government agreement have now been finalised, with 24 councils deciding to participate. By the time you read this a ballot will have been held and we are hopeful of gaining approval from employees in each of the 24 council. ◆

AMESGillian Robertson vice president, TAFE and adult provision sector

Reviews should recognise and reward

WHILE the new AMES agreement is now firmly in place, a level of anxiety continues over the new performance review process. Members are

reminded that all teachers in all sectors have such a review process as a normal part of their employment.

AEU officers are working with members and management to ensure the process is not onerous and reflects the high quality of AMES members’ normal teaching and related activities. Members need reassurance that their quality teaching is in fact valued and will be rewarded in accordance with the new agreement. AMES teachers’ next salary increment took effect on October 22.

By the end of the agreement, significant progress will have been made in achieving parity across all teaching sectors. ◆

22 aeu news I october 2009

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Women’sFOCUSBarb Jennings women’s officer

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Taking a leadWomen remain under-represented in education leadership — but a new AEU program for 2010 aims to redress the balance.

THE most recent figures that the AEU has been able to draw from a reluctant Department of Education and Early Childhood Development show that

women make up only 48% of primary school principals — despite making up almost 80% of teachers.

In secondary schools, the figure is only 34%. Yet the department no longer has a Women in Leadership section or program (save the Eleanor Davis Program which involves about 30 women per year).

Increasingly, women educators are turning to the AEU to fill this profes-sional development void. Our members are telling us very clearly that they want quality PD around women and leadership.

During September and October the AEU women’s program has run a range of women in leadership events, attracting over 300 women. Out of that it has developed a suite of options for 2010.

The Women’s Leadership Development Series will be a two-stage program, running in country areas and Melbourne growth corridors. The first stage is an interactive workshop, entitled Making Myself a More Effective Leader. This will be followed by a second stage, dealing with practical examples.

The Women’s Principal Class Network will run a series of events in conjunction with AEU Principals, Kerrie Heenan and Helen Rix.

The women’s program and AEU Principals will reprise their popular Flexible Work Options Seminar — a key event for helping schools adopt family-friendly working practices that encourage women into leadership roles.

The Gippsland Women’s Network — a partnership of the AEU and Education Department — will hold further events to promote women in leader-ship. And the AEU will also organise a Women in TAFE rural event.

Planning for these events is still at an early stage, but for more information on any of them, email me at [email protected].

Federal conference, global concernsTHE AEU Federal women’s conference was held over the school holidays. “Taking on Global Crises — sisters with solutions” addressed the challenges of the global financial crisis, climate change and free quality public education for all.

Speakers outlined the disproportionate effect the GFC has had on women and their education and employment opportunities (both in Australia and around the globe). The issue of climate change was another issue analysed and, again, the disproportionate effect on women was obvious.

Concerns about changes in Victorian TAFE were taken up nationally.The conference saw the launch of the AEU Girls Toolkit, helping to fill an

identified vacuum of career advice for girls and women. The toolkit will be available through the Federal AEU website and as a DVD, providing resources and information for career advisors, educators and students.

Conference was concerned about the apparent lack of real consultation by governments when introducing changes under the National Partnership Agreement. It also wrote to Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard to urge her to act on the findings of the Federal Government Pay Equity Inquiry.

The conference brings together women delegates and observers from around Australia. It’s a great event and a chance to learn lots and to influence the activities of the AEU. If you want more information please email me at [email protected] or go to the Federal AEU website www.aeufederal.org.au — look under Women’s Focus. ◆

Education SupportKathryn Lewis ES organiser

Stay alert for contract abuse

SchoolsMeredith Peace vice president, secondary

Consultation takes off

ALL but 25 schools told the Education Department that they have reached agreement with staff on consultation processes for 2010 by the deadline

of September 1. Of the rest, 15 didn’t report on time and 10 said they hadn’t reached

agreement. The AEU and the department are following up these cases — most will be told to implement the default processes in the teacher or ES agreements.

The figures highlight the success of the consultative process won in our last agreements — AEU members are now more aware of the importance of consultation and are working hard to get effective procedures.

Returning from leave in 2009? The AEU has been pursuing a number of cases of members who were absent on leave without pay on May 1, 2008 and resumed duty this year on or after January 2.

These staff were not eligible for an increment on the new common date of May 1, as they had not completed four months’ service in the past 12 months.

The AEU has reached agreement with the department on a mechanism to put in place salary progression arrangements for this group. The department has asked all principals to provide names of any staff who returned from leave in 2009 by November 16 — if you are one of them, please raise this issue with your principal or ring the AEU for advice. ◆

TAFEGillian Robertson vice president, TAFE and adult provision

Another bump in your pay packet

REMEMBER that first TAFE stopwork in Collins Street in August last year? Employers and the government were offering a measly 3.25% pa which

they regarded as “fair and appropriate”.It’s gratifying to know that the latest salary increase — which should by

now be in your pay packet — gives AEU TAFE members between 10–15% in this the first year of our new agreement.

The AEU showed the Brumby Government that TAFE teachers would not be treated as second rate teachers. TAFE members’ support for the union’s bargaining campaign, along with encouragement from members in other sectors of the union, delivered these increases. Enjoy it!

National TAFE DayThe Victorian Branch is joining the Federal Office’s National TAFE Day event on October 28. We are asking you to wear red on that day to show solidarity with all TAFE teachers across Australia.

Here in Victoria it’s even more important that we celebrate the achievements of the public TAFE sector because of the attacks on TAFE that are happening as a result of the Brumby Government’s skills reforms.

You can mark National TAFE Day by encouraging your colleagues to visit our TAFE4All campaign site, signing the online petition and adding a comment to one of our blog postings. Go to www.tafe4all.org.au. ◆


AEU TRAINING Rowena Matcott and Kim Daly training officers

TAFE changes explained

THANK you to all the members who have attended AEU training this year. We have been

overwhelmed by the numbers and many courses had waiting lists. The two of us — Rowena and Kim — would very much appreciate any further feedback on the training program for 2009, and especially reports on what you have achieved in your sub-branches.

Our training program is not as busy this term, and by the time you receive this most events will have taken place, but there are still some important events.

Firstly, our final AEU Active course of the year will take place at the AEU Office in Abbotsford on October 29-30.

Secondly, we are running a TAFE 4 All training event for secondary members at the AEU Office on November 12, from 1pm–4pm.

This is a very important event for secondary college career teachers, VET and VCAL teachers and MIPs (managed individual pathways) coordinators.

The State Government’s skills reforms came into effect on July 1 this year, bringing major changes to the TAFE system and the way student places are

funded. Fees have gone up dramatically, with further increases still to come. Access to concessionary rates have been abolished for many courses, and a loans system introduced instead.

A review is promised in early 2010, with more changes expected.

The AEU supports the objective of addressing Victoria’s present and future skills shortages; however it is strongly opposed to many of the changes made by the Victorian Government to implement this policy.

You need to be aware of the changes and campaign to have an impact on the review. The high increase in fees will disadvantage all of the students you are advising.

We would like schools to send two members and we will pay the equivalent of one day’s CRT.

Looking aheadWe are now planning our 2010 program. We will be running our two-day AEU Active courses for teachers at Karingal Golf Club, Altona, the Dandenong Club, Leongatha, South Morang, Benalla, Mornington Gold Club, Yerring Golf Club, Geelong, Sunshine, Keilor, Bendigo, Heidelberg, Abbotsford, Eastwood Golf Club, Ballarat, Morwell, Craigieburn,

Warrnambool and Pakenham. Venues and dates are still to be finalised.

There will also be plenty of training opportunities for ES members, including two-day ES AEU Active courses, ES conferences, a business managers conference, and a series of ES afternoon coffee and cake sessions.

On top of all that we will continue to offer a number of one day courses on a range of topics, including campaigning for state and federal elections, both of which are due next year.

Please contact us with feedback from this year’s training, suggestions for 2010 training or requests for training during the first three days next year. Email [email protected] or [email protected]. ◆

The hike in TAFE fees and abolished concessions will have a huge impact on secondary students. A special AEU training event will bring secondary teachers up to speed.

AEU Apple training — iLife in the classroom THE latest free training for AEU members will

look at making better use of your Mac in the classroom, using iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband and Frontrow.

Sessions count as PD for VIT registration requirements, and participation certificates will be issued.

Three training sessions at the AEU Office in Abbotsford will run from 10am on November 19 and 28 and December 1. Details on the AEU Apple page at www.aeuvic.asn.au/membership. This members’ only page is password protected — user name is AEUmember, password is AppleAEU08. ◆

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On the PHONESMembership Services Unit — 1800 013 379

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Ken Sampson membership services unit

HERE’S a snapshot of the calls I have responded to in the past two weeks.

Sick leave and holiday pay; contracts and holiday pay; family leave, maternity leave, leave without pay and work; the AEU Apple Mac offer, the VIT, bereavement leave, 54/11, CRT and contract work, principals' walk-throughs, legal referrals.

There’s more: contract to ongoing eligibility; superannuation; probation; long service leave; wills; lapsed membership; returning to work; staff elections; difficulty with assistant principal elections; the exit strategy for teachers, mediation, complaints, sick leave for part-timers and face-to-face teaching time. They've come from all sectors and all over the state, but let me expand on just a couple.

Enter the exit strategyThe exit strategy for teachers was flagged up in the Memorandum of Understanding to the new Schools Agreement last year.

Immediately the MSU took a large number of

calls about it. All we could say was, “The strategy hasn’t been developed yet.” Since then, the AEU has had discussions with the Education Department and we expect the department to have the scheme in place in late November or December.

It will be a voluntary scheme via application, with a payment (expected to be in the order of $50,000) to teachers who volunteer to leave the service. The department has committed to replacing these departing teachers by giving ongoing employment to teachers currently on fixed-term contracts.

Further details will be provided as the strategy is developed.

Principals’ walk-throughI’ve now taken several calls on instructional rounds from different schools across the state concerned that this was just another monitoring process.

My initial response was the result of a call from a comrade who remembers the bad old days of inspectors. While my initial reaction was to sympa-thise, I did what we so often do in the MSU and consulted my colleagues and leadership.

I learned that participation in this program is voluntary. The classroom visitation isn’t to assess the teachers but to observe and reflect on the teaching and learning. Staff should have an introductory session before the program begins, to explain the visit's context, and a debriefing after each visit.

In most cases, the visit is for the benefit of visitors from outside the school (usually regional staff) to see good practice, rather than a scrutiny of the teacher in the classroom.

You can read a good introduction to the program online at tiny.cc/ipcbl and in the new edition of the AEU’s Professional Voice journal.

Keep in touch. ◆

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WELCOME back to school for Term 4. I know it seems like there is still a long time until 2010 but it will be

upon us before we know it. Although you are all busy with testing and assessment,

and thinking about all of the teaching you need to get in before the end of the year, it’s time for many of us to think about work for next year or to plan how our schools will respond to other new staff in 2010.

There are a few things that will need to be done before the end of the year. Firstly, making sure you have a job for next year! Those lucky enough to have an ongoing job can relax a little and focus on teaching, but for those on contracts the time has come to start the gruelling process of reapplying for the job you are already doing or finding another one.

As this edition of AEU News hits letterboxes, it will be silly season in terms of schools filling new positions. You should be thinking about rewriting your selection criteria and asking some questions at school about when jobs will be readvertised.

You can find all you need about contracts or gaining translation to ongoing on our website at www.aeuvic.asn.au. If you have questions to which you can’t seem to find an answer, please feel free to call us at the AEU or ask a question on our Facebook group, New Educators Network.

The other thing we need to start thinking about is making sure that important conditions for new teachers are brought up at consultative committee for next year.

That means ensuring that as many positions as possible are advertised as ongoing. We also need to ensure that a 5% reduction in workload is in place for graduate teachers, as are the mentoring and induction processes for new staff.

And don’t forget grade allocations and class sizes to make sure that the new teachers don’t get the most difficult groups, and have manageable class sizes.

Thinking about all that, it’s probably time to call a union meeting. ◆

Getting ready for next year …In between testing and report writing, it’s time to plan for 2010.

James Rankin graduate teacher organiser

Giving blood without losing pay

EDUCATION Department employees can take paid leave to give blood.

The department’s A-Z Guide states that “the giving of blood is a valuable community service and (it) supports employees' participation in blood donation programs.”

Permission may be given by the principal or manager “to be absent from duty to donate blood” but staff are expected to arrange their donations at times when students are not in school or other convenient time. Proof of attendance may be required.

Only one in 30 adults donates blood but sooner or later one in three of us will need it, according to a recent edition of the Teachers Federation Health journal.

Blood is needed for a wide range of interventions, including open heart surgery and burns, obstetrics including pregnancy and birth, and for trauma including road accidents.

To find your nearest donation centre call 13 14 95 or go to www.donateblood.com.au. ◆

— Tony Delaney AEU organiser

The Credit Union weathered the Global Financial Crisis and continued to experience strong growth throughout the 2008–2009 financial year. Total assets reached $1.11B (15.77% growth) and we achieved an operating profit of $10.15m (after tax $7.22m).

Total membership grew to over 81,000 with the overwhelming majority of new members continuing to be from the education community.

Delivering member value We continued to receive industry recognition; in 2008 we received the AFR Smart Investor Credit Union of the Year award for the second consecutive year, a remarkable achievement for the Credit Union. 2009 CANSTAR CANNEX research indicated that our members save $147 pa on average by banking with us, compared to the Big Four banks. We were rated the Lowest Basic Mortgage – Best Mutual, by infochoice in June 2009.

We successfully implemented a security upgrade to our Internet

Banking system, reviewed and stream-lined our joining process, upgraded our insurance quoting systems and undertook a fee review to ensure our program is fair and equitable for members. We were also one of the first financial institutions to launch the First Home Saver Account in October 2008.

Supporting the education community We continue to support the education community through a range of sponsor-ships, donations, support services and partnerships. Our financial commitment to the education community totalled over $280,000 in 2008–2009.

Our members who were affected by the Victorian bushfires were offered interest free loans to assist with short term financial needs. Members could access term deposit funds without penalty and also received emergency replacements cards as soon as

possible. The Credit Union also made donations to affected schools and preschools to assist with rebuilding their communities.

Our financial literacy initiatives range from free financial planning seminars, free home loan educational sessions, financial management workshops for all graduate teachers in Victoria and investment/money related articles in our newsletters.

Our relationship officer team provides a mobile service to members, including school visits. Over 1,600 schools were visited and 145 confer-ences attended in 2008-2009.

Going forward We face the challenges of the new financial year with confidence. In particular, we will be undertaking various new initiatives to improve our product offering to our members.

We will also continue to deliver value to our members, support the education community and develop our workforce, to ensure the Credit Union continues to grow and remains sustainable into the future. — Alan Dash Chair

Victoria Teachers Credit Union — The Year in Review International Teaching Fellowships APPLICATIONS close on November 5

for the 2011 International Teaching Fellowship — a chance for teachers and principals to spend a year working in another country’s education system.

Fellowships are available in Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, the UK and US. There are also opportunities for French, German or Italian teachers to teach in Switzerland, and for German teachers to work in Germany.

Fellowships involve the direct exchange of teaching positions and accommodation and run for 12 months from January to December 2011. Applicants must be in full-time, ongoing positions. While abroad, they will be expected to undertake research relevant to their school and share it with colleagues on their return.For more, go to www.study.vic.gov.au/professional/fellowship.asp or contact Mary Kelleher on (03) 9637 2085 or [email protected]. ◆


Safety MATTERSChristine Stewart deputy branch secretary

Stress bustingTackling workload is a great way of reducing stress. Term 4 is the best time of year to do it — and here’s how.

STRESS is still a major risk to health for education workers. This is not telling you something you don’t already know. There are many

risk factors that can lead to stress related injuries, the main ones being chal-lenging behaviour from students, conflict in the workplace and workload.

As plans are made for next year, now is the time to do something to address workload problems. These can be tackled using the appropriate industrial agreement and through risk management — both can work together.

Firstly, you need to identify the risks (or breaches of the agreement, depending on which language we are using) — so use the relevant agreement to identify where workload is demonstrably excessive.

For instance, you may have a parent teacher interview evening that runs for five hours after the end of the school day; or the number of new initia-tives means that extra lunchtime meetings have been added since the meeting schedule was agreed.

Not all workload issues will impact on all staff; there will be areas where it is an individual issue rather than a school-wide problem.

For example, a woodwork class of 25 may mean it’s not possible to maintain a safe environment, given the layout of the room and the skill level of the students. These can still be addressed through the Schools Agreement — Clause 23(4) deals with this.

Once the problems have been identified, meet as a sub-branch to discuss them.

Treating this purely as an OHS risk management issue, you do not have to present a solution, but consultation allows for staff views to be heard and improves staff morale. There is less stress where you have a say in decisions that affect your working life.

None of the potential solutions for a workload issue may seem ideal, but one advantage of consultation is that when a decision is reached there is an under-standing of how it came about, which results in an acceptance and consequently less stress.

Let’s look at one of the above examples — the five-hour parent teacher night. Firstly, is this the way you have always run parent teacher interviews? Or did you change last year from interviews held during the day? If these daytime sessions worked better for you and your school community, consider changing back.

But if the evening sessions are preferred, then at the same time as the timeline is being set discuss the time-in-lieu arrangements to compensate if the 38-hour week is exceeded.

This can be done by having meeting-free weeks — however, that would not be adequate compensation. It is worth considering starting later the next day if you want a whole school approach, or putting arrangements in place so that individuals can take the time for personal business when appropriate. There is no one correct solution. But the sub-branch needs to discuss it so the union representatives on the consultative committee can do their job.

Of course the agreement cannot address work we volunteer for — so when workload becomes a problem, support each other and learn to say no.

None of this is new; it is simply intended to be a timely reminder of how to reduce stressful workloads. ◆

Education is rehabilitationSchools can access special funding from the TAC to support children injured in car accidents.Emma Swann Holding Redlich

ONE of your students has been injured in a car accident. They suffered a brain injury and have missed two terms of school while in hospital and

rehabilitation centres. They return to your class next Monday. How will they cope? You certainly can’t be expected to give them all of the extra attention they now need with their schooling.

Fortunately the Transport Accident Laws in Victoria recognise that a child’s education is a vital aspect of their long-term rehabilitation. Children injured in a transport accident can access special benefits in relation to their schooling. The TAC also provides benefits to assist the family of the injured child.

Education assistanceAs part of the costs of the child’s rehabilitation, the TAC can pay for an integra-tion aide to help them when they return to school. If a child is experiencing difficulty with their studies due to a head injury from the accident, or because of time away from school, the TAC can fund the reasonable cost of tutoring services. Special education services are also to be provided to help teachers map out programs to cater for the injured child.

Sometimes children injured in car accidents are unable to use the same transport that they used before the accident. If provided with medical evidence outlining the transport need, the TAC can fund reasonable expenses for transport to and from school by private car, public transport or a taxi.

An injured student may also be able to receive funding from the TAC for computer equipment, provided that a specialist recommends that the student’s need for such equipment is related to the accident, and that the equipment will help the student to access education.

If a child needs to repeat a year of school due to their injuries, the parents can be reimbursed by the TAC for fees paid and other associated costs. School fees may also be paid where parents decide to send the child to a different school because of their injuries.

Assistance for the familyThe TAC can provide counselling for the family of a severely injured child. Reasonable nursing or attendant care services can be covered by the TAC, as well as the costs of a carer to allow the parents to have some respite.

The TAC can also cover the reasonable costs of any house or car modifica-tions needed for the child to return home. ◆

Hopgood steps upAEU federal secretary Susan Hopgood has

been appointed acting president of Education International following EI president Thulas Nxesi’s resignation to take up a seat in the South African parliament.

Hopgood was previously vice president of EI, the global federation of education unions, and is a former VSTA secretary. EI represents nearly 30 million teachers and education workers in over 400 unions in 172 countries and territories. ◆


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PORT MELBOURNE EXECUTIVE APARTMENT

Available anytime — can sleep six. Two-bedrm, 2 bath, pool, spa, sauna, gym, supermarkets and restaurants in building. 2 mins to beach, 5sq balcony overlooking bay. Contact Jill 0425 788 931 or Lyn 0402 019 552.

WYE RIVER“Wye Eyrie”: 3 bdrm house, all facilities, woodfire, balcony. Superb panorama: ocean, rockpools, surf, river, path to beach. (03) 9714 8425; [email protected]

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FRANCEStone houses in tranquil village surrounded by vineyards, near Carcassonne. Sleep 4 and 8. From $550 p/w. Website: www.frenchrentalhouses.bigpondhosting.com email [email protected] phone 0414 968 397.

FRANCE — PROVENCERestored 17th-century house in mediaeval fortified village of Entrevaux. Spectacular location, close to Côte d’Azur and Italy. Contact owners (03) 5258 2798 or (02) 9948 2980. www.provencehousestay.com.

FRANCE — SOUTH WESTRenov 17thC 2 bdrm apart in elegant Figeac,“centre ville”, or cottage in Lauzerte, 12thC hilltop village. Low cost. www.flickr.com/photos/clermont-figeac/ www.flickr.com/photos/les-chouettes/ Ph teacher owner (03) 9877 7513 or email [email protected] for brochure.

ITALY — FLORENCEBeautiful fully furnished apartment in historic centre. Sleeps 2-6, $1,700 pw, telephone 0419 025 996 or www.convivioapartment.com.

ITALY — UMBRIAApartment. Beautiful sunny 2 bdrm. Historic Centre Citta= Di Castello €625pw 2p, €675 3-4p. 0414 562 659 [email protected]

PROVENCE — LANGUEDOCLarge village house. Luxury plus location. Suitable for up to eight adults. (03) 5444 1023 www.houserentalfrance.com.au.

ROMEStudio apartment, Piazza Bologna, beautifully appointed, sleeps 2, opens onto garden courtyard, $1100 pw, telephone 0419 488 865 or www.ninoapartmentrome.com.

SOUTH OF FRANCE — LANGUEDOCTwo charming newly renovated traditional stone houses with outside terraces. Sleeps 4 or 6. Market town, Capital of Minervois, wine growing region, close to lake, Canal Midi, Mediterranean beaches, historic towns. From $460 per week. Visit, Web: www.languedocgites.com Email: [email protected].

VILLAS ITALY Villas in vineyards, carefully selected, Italia [email protected]

VILLA TUSCANYThree bdm classic tuscan country house, stone construction, external shutters, terracotta floors, fully equipped kitchen, lge outdoor terrace, panoramic views, complete privacy, 5 mins to shops/services, direct bus service to Florence $1500AUD/week www.italyallover.com [email protected]

NOTICES

AGRITOURISM AUSTRALIA LINKING AUSTRALIAN FARMS

WITH THE WORLD

Know a farmer wanting to start up an agritourism business? Or do you offer farm accommodation, food and beverage, activities, or sell some farm made products — we can help! Contact Pauline 0414 872 729 or [email protected]

Coming soon — a brand new website for consumers to find all this farm tourism information in one place, register to join our mailing list www.agritourismaustralia.com.au

HYPNOTHERAPY/COUNSELLINGJane Burns, Clinical Hypnotherapist and Counsellor offers a friendly and confi-dential approach to stress, stop smoking, phobias, panic/anxiety, pre-wedding, life/work balance, weight, nailbiting and more. Private Health Fund Provider. Preston and City. Holiday bookings [email protected] 0424 079 711

HOSTED WOMEN'S WEEKEND RETREATS

We run day trips, tours, retreats, even in school holidays, or let us arrange your next social club event. Contact us at email: [email protected] or call Liz on 0417 366 841. www.holidaywiththegirls.com.au

TRAVEL AUSTRALIA

AIREY’S INLET HOLIDAY RENTALHoliday rental, 3 bdrms, 2 living, large decks, 1 acre garden, bbq, woodfire. Phone 0416 234 808.

AIREY’S INLETSATIS BEACH HOUSE

Stylish and comfortable 3 bdrm house for six on the beach side of Great Ocean Road. Paddle our canoe on the inlet, walk to the lighthouse, cliff walk and beaches. Phone (03) 5380 8228 or email [email protected].

APOLLO BAYThree bdrm holiday house, sleeps 8. Short walk to beach, shops. Available weekends, weekly, all year.Phone (03) 5826 9445.

BEACH HOUSE AIREYS INLETTwo bdrm, very close to beach, shops, pub. Summer rental: $920 per wk (Dec-Jan). Off-season: $570 per week or $135 per night (2 night min.) Kate: [email protected] or (03) 9486 2222.

HOLIDAY HOUSE PHILLIP ISLAND, VENTNOR

Two bdrm sleeps 6, available weekends and holidays. Jane (03) 9387 9397 or 0431 471 611 or Louise (03) 9343 6030 or 0413 040 237.

LAKE HOUSE HEALESVILLEIs the perfect place to relax and revi-talise. Boutique-styled home, suitable for one or two couples. Nestled in a very quiet location and is blessed with picturesque rural views and overlooks a beautiful lake with abundant birdlife. Contact Joan 0427 960 738www.lakehousehealesville.com

LORNE COTTAGESleeps 4, panoramic views, 5 mins beach and shops. Available December and January. Phone (03) 9387 4329.

OCEAN GROVEA lovely modern 3 bedroom holiday home for six, immaculately furnished and fitted out. Beautiful beaches, pelican landings, boat ramps, one of Ocean Grove’s best views. Handy to shops, golf club, restaurant, coffee shop & 5 minutes walk to surf beach. Stunning location, good proximity to all the Bellarine Peninsula has to offer. Relax on the front verandah soaking in the beauty of the river 50 metres away, enjoy a glass of wine while watching sensational sunsets.Phone (03) 5254 3263 for bookings.

PORTARLINGTONHouse overlooking You Yangs and Melbourne across bay. Two large bedrooms sleeping up to eight. For overnight, weekly or weekend bookings please contact Jennifer on 0428 866 433 / Alan 0425 736 369 for bookings.

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LOVE TO TEACHInclusion Melbourne is looking for volunteer tutors to help support its literacy and numeracy day classes held at Phoenix Park Community Centre, 22 Rob Roy Road, Malvern East 3145. Tutors required for one-on-one tutoring of students who have an intellectual disability on Mon, Tues, Wed and Thursdays. All tutors receive training, ongoing support and supervision. Phone Jo-Anne White (03) 9509 4266, [email protected]

NEW BOOK BY EXPERIENCED TEACHERA Practical Guide for Casual Relief Teachers in Victorian Primary Schools $24.95 www.vjsales.com.au.

PLAY SCRIPTSPlay scripts adolescents like. Their humour, their perspectives, no waffle. Great for performance, writing stimulation or pure entertainment as a period filler. Check out the website: robscripts.com.au

RETIREMENT VICTORIAVisit us at www.retirevic.com.au.

RETIRING SOON?Volunteers for Isolated Students’ Education recruits retired teachers to assist families with their Distance Education Program. Travel and accommodation provided in return for six weeks teaching. Register at www.vise.org.au or George Murdoch (03) 9017 5439 Ken Weeks (03) 9876 2680.

SPECTACULAR SPETTACOLOBilingual (Italian/English) Theatre in Education, specialising in fun, interactive, musical theatre primary school shows. Email [email protected].

TAXATIONTAX RETURNS FROM $75Teachers Special Offer

Most refunds in 14 days. With over 20 years experience we ensure all maximum refunds by claiming all allowable deductions and tax offsets. Business tax returns for sole traders, partnership, company and trust also available. After hours and Saturday appointments available.Contact M Georgy (03) 9467 7842.

VISAS IMMIGRATIONFor the professional advice you need — contact Ray Brown. Phone (03) 5792 4056 or 0409 169 147. Email [email protected] Agents Registration No. 0213358.

Deadline Edition 811 NOVEMBER


IT STARTS with a cow. The cycle that leads to the naturally dyed, hand-woven silk scarves worn

by AEU members this year begins not with the silk worm, but with something altogether more bovine.

In the remote northern villages of Laos, a cooperative venture is modelling a form of sustain-able farming that is now providing income to dozens of villages, as well as funding education and clean water programs.

The cow provides the all-important fertilizer that feeds the mulberry trees that produce the leaves that feed the silkworms that spin the silk that makes the scarves. The cows also provide meat to supple-ment villagers’ diets and tackle malnutrition, while the mulberry trees produce teas, soups, juice and fruit for sale. Nothing is wasted.

The silkworm waste feeds families' fish and chickens; the silk is coloured with natural dyes and woven into scarves and other products that are now finding an international market — which funds the purchase of more cows.

In all, it takes 21 people to produce each scarf, sold in Australia by Lao Silk and Craft.

AEU member Libby Morrison, a south Melbourne CRT and member of the AEU’s international committee, spotted the scarves on a visit to Laos. “I thought, what a fantastic product — there must be more of a market. Then I found it was a not-for-profit organisation,” she says.

“I thought the AEU might be interested in it if they could put the logo on (the scarves). It’s a good fit with the AEU.”

But Libby only made a connection with Lao Silk and Craft when she bumped into Boby Vosinthavong, daughter of founder Kommaly Chanthavong, at the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne where Boby lives after being sent to relatives in Australia as a child.

Kommaly began a weavers’ cooperative of 10 women under the family house in Vientiane in 1975. From there it has grown to an enterprise that provides work for 3000 people in over 200 villages.

The silk sericulture arose when Kommaly returned to her remote homeland region in the early 1990s for the first time since leaving as a refugee aged 12.

“She went to do a survey about silk farming and what was holding them back,” Boby says. “Her weavers were using a lot of silk but it was all imported. She wanted a local source to help the people in her own country.”

The area had been heavily bombed by US planes during the Vietnam war and is still littered with landmines from the civil war. Some villages grew opium; others were slash-and-burn farming. The Laos Government gave Kommaly 40 hectares to start a silk farm. It’s now a training centre for other villages.

Part of the profit from these projects goes towards providing clean water for villages — making filters and providing them to schools and hospitals for free and to individuals at cost.

The cooperative also runs an English language

school in Vientiane where children and workers can study English for free.

It’s a true cottage industry — many of the weavers work in their own homes in what Libby says are better working conditions than in many factories. They use traditional craft techniques.

AEU members have a chance to see for them-selves at the Fair and Square Festival, a fair trade and ethical products festival at Federation Square on December 13. Kommaly Chanthavong will be there giving a weaving demonstration. ◆

AEU scarves and bags are on sale at the AEU online shop at www.aeuvic.asn.au. Other products can be found at www.laosilkandcraft.com. More on the Fair and Square festival at moralfairground.com.au.

COLOMBIAN teacher trade unionists face the highest levels of human rights violations and

political violence in the world according to a new report for Education International.

Colombia’s Classroom Wars, an in-depth report prepared for the global union federation by Dr Mario Novelli of the University of Amsterdam, reveals a horrific litany of rights violations including murders, disappearances, torture, death threats, forced displacement, arbitrary detention, and more.

According to the Colombian National Trade Union School, 1,174 trade unionists were reported killed worldwide between 1999 and 2005. Of those, 816 were Colombian.

But of these, more than half — 416 — were teachers or education workers, Novelli reports. The vast majority of these assassinations are attributed to right-wing paramilitary organisations with links to the Colombian state. Virtually all of

the perpetrators committed their crimes with impunity.

Novelli said the killings were carried out “precisely with the intention of silencing the very organisations and individuals that are actively defending the economic, social and cultural rights of their members and the broader Colombian society.”

Novelli and EI are urging the international community to take action in solidarity with the teachers and trade unionists of Colombia; to call on governments to hold the Colombian Government accountable for its crimes; and to stop giving financial support to the Colombian military. ◆

Download the full report at www.ei-ie.org.

It takes a village

It takes 21 people to produce each AEU silk scarf. Nic Barnard hears how a cooperative is bringing education, clean water and income to remote villages in Laos — while keeping AEU members’ necks warm.

Colombian teachers face death and torture: EI

Lao Silk and Craft weavers at work


intern

ational

SAMSON AND DELILAHDir: Warwick ThorntonRating MA, 100 minsMadman DVD

THIS deeply affecting film pulls

no punches in depicting the worst impact of Aboriginal poverty and dispossession.

In a love story set against an atmosphere of tedium and quiet desperation, Samson sets his sights on Delilah, who lives across the way in their settlement in remote Central Australia. Samson is already on the slippery slope of addiction, while Delilah has been sustained by her loving relationship with her mischie-vous grandmother, an artist.

With breathtaking visuals and minimal dialogue, this Camera d’Or-winning film conveys the exploitation of Aborigines at the hands of some unscrupulous whites, the brutality and neglect that can arise within a Black community reduced to turning on itself, but also the tenderness that can exist even in the most brutal situations. — RP RE

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RADICAL HOPENoel PearsonQuarterly Essay124pp, $16.95

PEARSON attempts to unravel the

ways education can address disadvantage, particularly for Indigenous children, but makes for depressing reading. Not inten-tionally — he firmly believes in the hope education offers — but in his conclusions.

Pearson advocates a return to traditional teaching methods — complete with mandatory phonics — and a prescriptive instructional model for teachers. "Teacher autonomy is not necessarily a good thing," he says. From there it's a small leap to putting barely-trained graduates in front of Cape York classrooms.

Pearson’s inspirations are Teach for America, charter schools and the No Excuses movement.He approaches the issue with deep seriousness, but in trying to find answers, he’s listened too hard to the wrong voices. — NB

WAKE IN FRIGHTDir: Ted KotcheffRating: M, 109 minsMadman DVD

THERE’S an hallu-cinogenic quality

to this reissued 1971 classic. The searing light, the leering faces, the sweat, the beer and the flies are blazingly vivid in this story of a nightmare outback summer.

John Grant (Gary Bond) is the up-himself Sydney teacher heading home for Christmas from his job as a “bonded slave” in a bush outpost. Grant gets stuck in Bundanyabba (aka Broken Hill) after losing all his money in a game of two-up and falls in with the alcoholic Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasance).

It was reckoned anti-Australian when it came out, and the beer-drenched aggressive hospitality of outback men is certainly intimidating. The kangaroo hunt is as distressing now as it must have been in 1971. But it’s also slyly subversive — Grant’s real downfall is his own arrogance. It makes riveting viewing and a welcome reissue. — NB

THE WORLD BENEATHCate KennedyScribe352pp, RRP $32.95

SANDY and Rich met in the early ’80s

during the Franklin Dam blockade — the glory event that has defined their lives.

Having scarpered when their daughter Sophie was a baby, Rich is now a self-absorbed, middle-aged man working a series of dead-end jobs. He has barely seen Sophie, who has reacted to her mother’s new-age flakiness by becoming a control freak, disguising an eating disorder.

These relationships are put to the test when Rich proposes a father–daughter hiking trip into the Tasmanian wilderness for Sophie’s 15th birthday. As the trip descends into a psychological and physical nightmare, all three come face-to-face with their own delusions.

Full of rueful and cutting insights, this is an acutely intelligent novel about contemporary Australian life. — RP

Elisabeth Lopez AEU News

FROM the anodyne Dot and the Kangaroo to Little Boy Lost, the theme of children missing in the

bush has permeated Australian song, poetry and film since Settlement.

North Melbourne AEU member Mairead Hannan has just reprised her own, darker, take on this trope, One Night the Moon, at the Malthouse Theatre.

First produced eight years ago as a film directed by Rachel Perkins, it’s a desert tale from the 1930s about a girl who wanders off her parents’ property to follow the moon.

Her family refuses to engage an Aboriginal tracker, and the work explores the repercussions when the child’s remains are finally found.

“It’s the tragedy of knowledge offered and knowledge denied,” says Hannan, who loosely based the work on the 1997 documentary, Black Tracker, made by the grandson of tracker Alexander Riley. Hannan got in contact with musicians Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody, and writer John Romeril, to collaborate on what became an AFI-award winning film.

“What appealed to me about the story is how tragic it is, and how simple that tragedy is,” Hannan says. “It’s so archetypically Australian, but it’s also an allegory for reconciliation, because the mother feels she needs to go back to the tracker who (in the real-life story) has been haunted by this for years.”

Hannan says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations has given the work new resonance.

“It’s timely for the show to be on now the apology’s happened, but what next? What do you do to keep that interaction happening, to make it real? It’s part of accepting that we have to think about the wrongs of the past and make ourselves a more cohesive nation.”

Even more than in the film, music drives the story on stage — there are only 20 words of dialogue. The moon and the child are conjured via musical motifs. The bush is evoked with sound-scapes and a traditional smoking ceremony.

Hannan laughs that it is not common for fire and smoke to be part of a theatrical production.

“What we tried to do was appeal to the senses. Seeing fire onstage is beautiful, and hearing the bush recreates those sorts of things that can be highly dramatic and very sensitive.”

For a work whose outback aesthetic has preoc-cupied Hannan for the past decade, it’s ironic she’s spent most of that time living and working in an über-urban setting, teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) at North Melbourne Primary School to Somali, Chinese, Eritrean, Indian and Vietnamese kids, and completing a masters in ESL policy.

With the play’s October 3 close, Hannan has migrated round the corner to North Melbourne Football Club, to set up its Learning and Life Centre, in conjunction with the Australian Multicultural Foundation.

The Arden Street venue will have a schools program, a homework club, and community learning programs. ◆

Moonlight and musicAEU member Mairead Hannan has revived her musical about a real-life bush tragedy.

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©WAKE IN FRIGHT TRUST


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The Night We Made the Flagby Carole Wilkinson, illustrated by Sebastian CiaffagloneThe Eureka stockade is a key event in Australian history. This is a beautifully told fictional account of the making of the Eureka flag and the women who toiled one long night in support of liberty. It’s also a coming-of-age story — of young Mary who helps them. black dog books, RRP $29.99.

Welcome to the Wonderful World of the WotWots by Martin BayntonThe first book in a new series based on the energetic television show on ABC TV. The WotWots have quickly found a huge audience with preschoolers — they have big hearts, take great care of each other and are not afraid to show the affection they have as brother and sister. ABC Books, RRP $14.99.

Nit Boy by Tristan BancksThe Nit Boy series is the story of two “blood brothers”: Ned, a reluctant head louse and Lewis, his nit-loving human companion. In Lift Off! his teachers and mum want to shave his head but Lewis has had nits for so long he sees them as pets and Ned, the first-ever jumping louse has just been born. Bug Out! sees poor Lewis trying to cope with not only his shaved head but the loss of his beloved pets (or so he thinks). Both books are packed with humour and loads of interesting nit facts. Laguna Bay Publishing, RRP $14.95.

Pandora in the Congo by Albert Sánchez PiñolIt is 1914. Garvey, a bedraggled British manservant, emerges alone from the jungle of the Belgian Congo carrying two huge diamonds... from his prison cell in London, Garvey recounts his horrific and thrilling ordeal. Text Publishing, RRP $23.95.

Gamers' Quest by George IvanoffTark and Zyra are teenaged thieves on a quest to reach Designers' Paradise which is under threat of destruction. Can they save it... and their own world? Ford St Publishing, RRP $16.95.


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AEU News issue 7 2009

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Transcript of AEU News issue 7 2009