Teachers stop work

Teachers on the north coast will join their counterparts across the state in a two-hour stop-work meeting from 9am to 11am this morning.

Most schools will have limited supervision during the meeting.

Teachers across the state will be considering a new award but a special point of interest for local teachers will be the proposal to reclassify principals in some small schools as ‘leading teachers’.

Federation president Maurie Mulheron said the new award ‘preserves all existing working conditions, maintains high teaching standards, protects professional qualifications and provides salary increases. However, the increases are modest due to the unfair NSW public sector wages policy.

‘Consequently, by endorsing the executive recommendation, members will be also authorising the federation to initiate a campaign against the public sector wages policy throughout 2014 in collaboration with other public sector workers.

‘If endorsed, the settlement means that school teachers will start receiving the salary increases from the first pay period in January.’

The controversial issue of whether the role of principals in small schools would be downgraded to ‘leading teachers’ has been modified, with the proposal now to look at the issue on a case-by-case basis.

In the original ‘hub and spokes’ proposal, all existing small-school principals would become leading teachers, with the role of principal and funding control for the school taken over by the principal of a larger nearby school.

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