By Lucy Carroll
Salaries of almost $150,000 are on the table for top-performing teachers as eight in 10 educators say new roles with higher pay are needed to keep them from leaving the classroom.
Under a policy proposal released by the state government on Tuesday, educators who are assessed as “expert teachers” would earn bigger salaries “in recognition of their skills and impact” in public school classrooms across the state.
Educators who are assessed as “expert teachers” would earn bigger salaries “in recognition of their skills and impact”.Credit: iStock
A NSW Department of Education survey of 1350 public school teachers found more than two-thirds would be interested in taking on one of the proposed roles, and 79 per cent agreed it was necessary to create new teaching jobs to stop educators abandoning classrooms for deputy principal roles with better remuneration.
About half of respondents said creating the new positions would make teaching a more attractive profession.
NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said the survey response showed three out of four teachers would be interested in “putting themselves forward for such a role”.
Pay packets ranging from $117,000 to $147,000 were being considered. Such salaries would be dependent on how much “mentoring and collaboration time” the teacher undertook.
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell at an announcement on school infrastructure on Monday. Credit: Brook Mitchell
“This is about recognising and rewarding the great teachers we have in our public schools, with the aim of keeping them in the classroom where they do their magic,” Mitchell said.
University of Melbourne education expert John Hattie, who is leading advice on the changes, will visit more than 100 public schools with policy experts in the next month to consult teachers and principals about the salary overhaul.
Teachers and principals will be asked about the best way to identify, select and allocate these roles.
Under the proposal, which is open for consultation until the end of November, teachers who qualify for the roles could take on extra responsibilities such as opening their classroom for observation, supervising teaching students and early career teachers, developing lesson plans and doing class observations.
NSW Secondary Principals’ Council head Craig Petersen said the detail of how the expert teachers would be identified was critical, and any application process must scrap the onerous and expensive process educators need to go through to become a “highly accomplished” or “lead” teacher (HALTs).
The HALT program has been running for a decade but only about 275 teachers have been accredited.
Petersen questioned what incentives there would be for the majority of NSW public school teachers if roughly 10 per cent were eligible for the high paid roles.
“We need our most capable teachers to support the needs of our most complex schools,” he said.
The proposal reform said teachers “either nominate themselves to apply or be nominated by their principal” and teachers would need to show they would be suitable to a selection panel.
Petersen said he was concerned higher paid teacher jobs risk diminishing the pool of people interested in taking on leadership roles. Teacher salaries start at about $73,000 and reach a maximum of $117,060.
“We need to understand how teachers will still be inspired to take on the heavy workload of a deputy principal position. We are already having difficulty getting people to apply for those roles.”
“If we are going to close the achievement gap in schools with low socio-economic backgrounds, we need excellent teachers in the schools where those pupils are.”
The paper proposes that “ultimately all schools should benefit from the skills of teachers in the roles”.
The NSW Teachers Federation is locked in a pay dispute with the government after negotiations over an enterprise agreement reached a stalemate. The federation is calling for a pay rise of 5 per cent a year with an extra 2.5 per cent to recognise extra experience, as well as two more hours of planning time a week.
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