Students left to sweat as teachers strike during exams
Robyn Wuth and Andrew Stafford |
End-of-year exams have been left in limbo at more than 100 schools after teachers walked off the job over a bitter pay dispute.
Tens of thousands of state school students were impacted on Tuesday when teachers abandoned classrooms and took to the streets, holding rallies across Queensland.
It marked the state’s second major 24-hour teacher strike in months after wage negotiations with the government broke down.
Year 10 and 11 student exams at 109 state schools were disrupted, with parents urged to keep their children at home.
The teachers’ union has rejected a government offer which included an eight per cent pay rise over three years, sparking the state-wide industrial action.
More than 50,000 teachers attended rallies around Queensland calling for better pay and conditions, with hundreds converging on Brisbane’s CBD.
The union and education minister traded barbs as state schools scrambled to reschedule exams, including year 11 assessments worth 25 per cent of the final mark.
Premier David Crisafulli had refused to engage with issues being raised by educators, the Queensland Teachers Union claimed.
State school teachers were retiring early due to burnout caused by excessive workloads and occupational violence, fuelling a vicious cycle of shortages, the union said.
“How are we going to attract young people and other people into the profession? How are we going to retain the ones that we have?” union president Cresta Richardson said.
She called for violence against teachers committed by students to be made a criminal offence.
The strike comes a month after Queensland’s public nurses and midwives accepted a $1.8 billion pay deal from the state government, double their initial offer.
The teachers’ union earlier voted down a pay deal the state government said would make them the nation’s highest paid, earning in excess of $100,000 by the end of the proposed package.
The union claimed the government had persisted with the rejected deal over more than 20 meetings and a period of conciliation in the Industrial Commission.
Pay negotiations are set to head to arbitration, a process that could take two years.
Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek criticised the strike action, saying the issues should have been dealt with by the commission.
“It is of concern that the Queensland teachers’ union is taking this to another level with another industrial action today,” he said.
“The offer was the offer. The offer was put to the union members – 30 per cent voted yes for it, and 40 per cent didn’t participate at all.
“This is on the union to explain to their members.”
The minister said some schools were battling to reschedule exams.
“Unfortunately, school finishes this Friday for those years 10 and 11 and for a lot of those schools, there’s no opportunity for them to reschedule those exams,” he said.
“Students are the ones caught in the middle, and that’s something that we are obviously concerned about.”
AAP
