An in-principle agreement reached between the Australian Education Union (AEU) and the Victorian state government is a betrayal of Victorian teachers and their legitimate demands for above-inflation pay rises and improved conditions. The agreement must be rejected and further strikes called to force the government to pay school staff what they deserve and provide public school students with the quality education they are entitled to.
Last year, teachers and education support members spent months putting together a detailed list of the urgent demands we need to make this job, and the education system itself, viable. Among these was the demand for less face-to-face teaching and meeting time so that teachers can plan high-quality and effective lessons, higher wages to catch up and pull ahead of inflation, smaller class sizes, more ES to support vulnerable and high-needs students, and the necessary government funding to each school to make it all happen.
The proposed agreement fails to meet any of these demands. It offers nothing of substance to address our crushing workloads. It has nothing at all on school-level funding guarantees. And the wages offer most likely won’t even keep up with inflation for most staff, let alone deliver real wage rises.
On pay, for example, the proposed agreement would give most teachers a pay rise of 28.2 percent over four years, well short of the 35 percent over three years teachers are demanding. It is also unlikely to keep up with inflation and therefore not be a real wage rise. This is important, because the 2022 teachers’ agreement cut the real wages of teachers by 11 percent, relative to inflation.
So, given inflation is currently around 5 percent, teachers need 16 percent this year, just to get back to where they were before the disastrous 2022 agreement. But if the union has its way, they are likely to fall further behind. The pay rise on offer to other school staff is not much different. So all the fanfare about teachers earning $150,000 hides the reality of most teachers continuing to go backwards on pay.
Many of the teachers’ other demands are not being addressed at all. These include the demand for increased support staff, which would make a very significant difference in many classes, and to many students. With one in seven children aged between 4 and 17 having a mental health disorder and approximately 12.1 percent having a disability, having extra classroom assistants and allied health staff would make a profound difference to children’s wellbeing and learning. But the current proposed agreement offers nothing on this front.
Nor does it address the issue of funding to ensure that whatever agreement is reached is actually adhered to. Currently, local leadership at many schools tell staff that they don’t have the money to meet key obligations under the agreement, such as enough relief teachers to cover all vacancies, or enough teachers to comply with class size limits, or for educational support to actually have a lunch break. This means existing teachers have to pick up the slack, exacerbating already heavy workloads, and it means students in public schools aren’t getting the quality of teaching they should.
Crushing workloads are driving teachers out of the profession—research conducted by Monash University in partnership with the AEU in 2024 confirmed that just three in ten teachers intend to stay in the profession until retirement, with excessive workloads (83 percent) and poor salary (60 percent) the primary reasons for wanting to leave. This proposed agreement fails to address this disastrous situation.
The union’s sellout comes as no surprise. School staff saw it coming when the union cancelled the planned regional half-day strikes a few days before the in-principle agreement was announced. But they didn’t take it lying down: at least 25 schools and six regions, representing hundreds of primary and secondary schools across inner and outer Melbourne, voted to condemn the leaders’ decision to cancel the strike action. Many more schools voted to demand further 24-hour statewide strikes.
One teacher at the recent LaTrobe/Plenty regional meeting reported that her workmates, who usually don’t attend these events, decided to attend this time. Seeing union officials “talking down to teachers for having opinions on industrial strategy”, she recalled, “my workmates just started scoffing every time they spoke”.
Another teacher at the Werribee regional meeting similarly described how refreshing it was to see an alternative proposal to the conciliatory strategy advocated by the AEU leaders, one based on solidarity between all school staff. “An education support worker was crying afterwards, telling me they had never felt so supported by members who don’t want anyone to be left behind”, she recalled.
It’s this spirit that can help defeat the proposed agreement.
Teachers and school staff have had a sense of their power—they know it was only after 40,000 teachers and school staff took to the streets and shut down many schools across the state on 24 March that the government saw fit to offer them more than the disgraceful 17 and 13 percent pay increases it had originally slated for teachers and support staff. More strikes, not capitulation, are the way to win.
A Vote No campaign is possible: in 2024, Victorian nurses voted down an agreement and won a much better deal a month later. In 2022, there was the highest vote against a proposed agreement in AEU history, with 39 percent voting to reject the deal. This was achieved with a limited campaign from a small number of members. Today, Socialists in Schools, one of the many industry networks within Victorian Socialists, is going all out to make sure Vote No is far more organised and even more widespread.
The Labor government is under enormous pressure to deliver a deal in the lead-up to the state election in November—if we vote against the proposal and keep striking there is the potential to win the breakthrough agreement school staff need.
Teachers and school staff have demonstrated they want to keep fighting. It’s time to organise together against a Labor government and union leadership intent on denying workers the wages, conditions and quality public schools we all deserve.
Socialists in Schools is holding an in-person campaign meeting at 1pm on Sunday 24 May at the Victorian Socialists volunteer centre at 83 Sydney Road, Brunswick.
