Last week, my provocative Facebook question explored teachers, their holidays and whether they really 'lesson-plan from home.' It was a social media bomb that ripped open the debate about school holidays for teachers that are the envy of many.
Since before chalk and slate was invented, debates around barbecues have probed teacher claims of 'working on holidays', a phenomenon hardly isolated to just one occupation.
So if teachers are performing inordinate and unpaid additional hours, why are we going backwards compared to most school systems worldwide? Is working hard always working smart?
Known as 'click-bait', my deliberately controversial post sought virality and got more than it bargained for. Education unions conducted an orchestra of wailing, petitions and form letters. Apart from the obvious question; as to why schools even need unions, let's answer the actual question. Like any occupation, most but not all teachers are diligent and devoted.
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Much of the online anger stemmed from a politician simply exploring the issue. Others felt it was picking on one of the many devoted occupations that performs a vital role for limited remuneration.
Australian schools perform limited formative student assessment, and offer limited teacher support. More concerning, unions oppose professional development for teachers in working hours without government putting more money on the table.
This month, I assiduously compared 165 Queensland high schools and their student gains between years nine and 12. The results were astonishing. From the same baseline at year nine, some public high schools triple the number of top score senior students in three years; others tragically diminish that cohort by a third. Despite hardworking teachers everywhere, there appears to be a six-fold variation in public high school performance that has nothing to do with community wealth. In fact, many of the best performing schools are in the poorest suburbs.
None of this information has ever been made public, because school systems prefer to bury indigestible data deep in the myschool website. Teachers remain isolated in 9400* school locations nationwide, trapped in systems that force them to take work home. Data showing some schools smashing ceilings is suppressed, to avoid embarrassing the rest. Fessing up that teacher performance actually varies is deemed heretical.
Compare that with nursing. Facing oblivion against higher paid and trained doctors and allied health professionals, nurses fought back and professionalised their degree. They introduced higher salaries for specialisations and a clinical hierarchy that rewarded talent and ambition. Today, nurses and doctors clinically 'self-develop' at home for financial reward. Teachers on the other hand lesson plan at home, for free. Top teacher salaries are only now touching triple figures; something around a quarter of nurses have enjoyed for years.
That is partly due to teachers being confined to salary increments which top-out at a mid-level bureaucrat wage. Unlike nurses and doctors, where the high earners remain on the beat, teachers must abandon the classroom in exchange for further pay rises.
Unions exert significant influence on Labor state education ministers; typically by opposing everything except pay increments. The list is long; opposition to Naplan, external testing, publicising detailed school outcomes and as a topper, opposing any rewards for higher performance. Apparently teachers do it for love not money and there is absolutely no way to fairly measure teacher performance.
In contrast to Australia's world-class health system, our schools are slipping not just against the best, but in some cases against our own results just a decade ago. Surely we can be honest, and admit that like every profession, some teachers work hard; some not so much. With the tireless paid the same as the soft-paddler, it is remarkable how the system survives.
As many of us take for granted, extra pay for excellence could activate a dynamic where the best teachers took on the largest challenges in the hardest locations, made the biggest differences and were paid accordingly. We pay specialist doctors more than High Court judges to cure the most complex patients, but deny specialist teachers an additional cent for working with the highest-need students.
Teaching should be an art. Instead we insist that every work fetch the same price. It should be a science, but efforts to capture data are actively discredited. Teaching should be a profession, but trade unions are doing their best to reduce it to just that: a trade.
It's a weaker nation that curbs this discussion using derision and personal attack. My call is not for an overhaul, but for baby steps towards a system where excellence is formally recognised with more than just a certificate.
If that generates such outrage, it is clear now is the time these entrenched union views be tested, to the benefit of all teachers and our children.
Andrew Laming is the Federal Member for Bowman.
* Correction: This figure has been changed from 3500 to 9400.
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