Top Sydney principal criticises ‘odd’ teacher salary plan

The principal of one of Sydney’s highest-fee private schools has criticised a plan to pay one in 10 state school teachers super salaries, saying the number of excellent teachers in the sector should not be capped.

Leaders across the education sector questioned plans to offer top-performing teachers a $152,000 salary, a $40,000 pay rise from current rates, at The Sydney Morning Herald’s Schools Summit on Tuesday.

SCEGGS Darlinghurst head of school Jenny Allum (centre) on the panel with (from left) the Herald’s education editor Lucy Carroll, Associate Professor Rachel Wilson from the University of Sydney, Catholic Schools NSW boss Dallas McInerney and NSW Teachers Federation president Angelo Gavrielatos.Credit: Brook Mitchell

The long-time principal of independent girls school SCEGGS Darlinghurst, Jenny Allum, told the summit she found it “odd” and “questionable” that the government would seek to pay 10 per cent of public school teachers significantly more than their peers.

She said SCEGGS’ “top of the scale” teachers were paid $135,000. The school will charge $45,044 for year 12 tuition in 2023.

“I don’t think there should be a limit on the number of excellent teachers that we have in the system,” Allum said.

Eight hundred public school teachers will become eligible for salaries of up to $152,000 within four years under the $100 million scheme. Two hundred teachers from 52 schools will be eligible this year.

Labor education spokesperson Prue Car said a Minns government would not pursue the Coalition’s performance-based scheme.Credit: Brook Mitchell

Salaries for NSW public school teachers start at $75,791, but currently hit a maximum of $113,042.

Labor education spokesperson Prue Car said, if elected, the opposition would not pursue the Coalition’s performance-based scheme. Instead, it would seek to scrap the legislative wages cap which limits annual pay rises in the public sector.

However, she declined to guarantee that change would result in higher wages for teachers, saying it would be impossible to undertake negotiations with the Fair Work Commission in opposition.

Both Car and Education Minister Sarah Mitchell agreed the system needs to retain more teachers, and expressed concern about media reports criticising teachers amid declining student learning outcomes.

However, Mitchell said Labor’s education policy lacked detail. “There’s a lot of talk about pay, but no detail on what teachers will be offered,” she said.

The centrepiece of the government’s education election pitch is a universal pre-kindergarten year by 2030, which will be trialled at 71 locations including Mount Druitt in western Sydney, and the regional communities of Wagga Wagga, Kempsey, Nambucca, Bourke, Cobar and Coonamble from next month.

Asked if Labor would also commit to the extra year, Car said it would instead establish 100 additional preschools linked to state primary schools and support 50 new preschools within the Catholic and independent sectors, arguing this would be a quicker approach than that of the Coalition.

Advice on NSW teacher salary reforms has been led by the University of Melbourne’s John Hattie, who told the summit the state needed to pay educators based on expertise, rather than age and experience.

“There’s a lot of talk about pay, but no detail”: Education Minister Sarah Mitchell criticised Labor’s plans for the sector.Credit: Brook Mitchell

He acknowledged the push to pay some teachers high salaries was “walking on the graves of 1000 failures”.

“But if we wish to solve our supply and demand problem I think we need to recast it as an attraction and retention problem,” he said, expressing optimism 10 per cent of teachers could be paid under the scheme within two or three years.

Mitchell could not provide a concrete timeline for when 10 per cent of teachers would be receiving the higher wages, saying this would be determined after the trial.

She denied the scheme would make teachers less likely to pursue pathways to become principals, saying people could move between high-pay teaching positions and leadership roles. Hattie agreed excellent teachers should not have to leave the classroom to receive higher salaries.

However, NSW Teachers Federation president Angelo Gavrielatos said with state sector modelling showing the need for an extra 11,000 teachers by the end of the decade, the plan to offer only a tiny fraction of teachers the higher salaries “added insult to injury” after wage-focused strike action last year.

University of Sydney education academic Associate Professor Rachel Wilson said while fingers were pointed at teachers for declining outcomes, the real issue was how funding was spent in the school system. She noted NSW state schools were only being funded to 95 per cent of their determined Schooling Resources Standard, a measure introduced following the Gonski reforms.

CEO of Catholic Schools NSW Dallas McInerney said the role of decreasing class sizes in increasing teacher demand could not be discounted.

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