NT teachers give government an F

Teachers in the Northern Territory are locked in a battle with the conservative state government over savage cuts to education.

The Country Liberal Party is axing 71 positions, including English as a second language teachers and behavioural support staff, “regionalising” a further 85 positions, axing the scholarship for Indigenous students pursuing a teaching career, and leaving out to dry the English as an additional language program – which provides crucial language support to Indigenous students.

Though NT Chief Minister Adam Giles is Indigenous, that hasn’t stopped him from making these cuts, which will disproportionately affect Indigenous students.

Carly Phillips, a high school teacher and Australian Education Union (AEU) delegate in Alice Springs, told Red Flag, “There’s been a debate about whether or not this is a blackfella issue, but it is. Indigenous students make up 70 per cent of the students at my school. Indigenous students go to public schools, and the government is attacking public schools.”

As well as showing contempt for Indigenous education, the Giles government also has little regard for teachers. The government is offering a paltry 3 percent pay increase. Considering the extra work teachers will take on as a result of the job cuts, it is actually a pay cut of about 25 percent.

Phillips describes the current climate in NT education: “There’s so much uncertainty. It’s coming up to Christmas and teachers still don’t know their staffing allocation for next year, whether they’ll be relocated. The government has been ambiguous about what’s going on.”

But despite the negative climate the government has attempted to create, teachers are fighting back.

In the last months of the school year, teachers have gone on strike, rallied outside parliament and enforced work bans on specific tasks – such as refusing to hand in attendance rolls and working only their agreed hours. Phillips says that the AEU industrial action will continue into 2014.

As Red Flag goes to print, the teachers will be voting on the government’s proposed agreement. However, Phillips is confident that teachers will reject the offer.

She also says that despite the media war the government is waging, the public is on the teachers’ side: “We’re winning the publicity war. The people are behind us.”