AEU News, Issue 8, 2009

v o l u m e 15 I i s s u e 8 I d e c e m b e r 2 0 0 9

League tables campaign launch| Koorie educators’ key role | Summer reading special

&Have a happy safe holiday

AEU

NEWS

v i c t o r i a n b r a n c h

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Why we must stop school

league tables

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features

regulars

contactseditorial enquiries Nic Barnard tel (03) 9418 4841 fax (03) 9415 8975 email [email protected] enquiries Lyn Baird tel (03) 9418 4879 fax (03) 9415 8975 email [email protected]

AEU News is produced by the AEU Publications Unit: editor Nic Barnard | designers Lyn Baird, Peter Lambropoulos, Kim Flemingjournalist Rachel Power | editorial assistant Helen PrytherchPrintPost Approved: 349181/00616 ISSN: 1442—1321. Printed in Australia by GEON on Re Art Matt 100% Recycled Paper. Free to AEU members. Subscription rate: $60 per annum. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the AEU News are those of the authors/members and are not necessarily the official policy of the AEU (Victorian Branch). Contents © AEU Victorian Branch. Contributed articles, photographs and illustrations are © their respective authors. No reproduction without permission.

Contentscover story

AEU Victorian BranchBranch president: Mary BluettBranch secretary: Brian Henderson

AEU VIC head office address 112 Trenerry Crescent, Abbotsford, 3067 postal address PO Box 363, Abbotsford, 3067 tel (03) 9417 2822, 1800 013 379 fax 1300 658 078 web www.aeuvic.asn.au email [email protected]

country offices Ballarat (03) 5331 1155 | Benalla (03) 5762 2714 Bendigo (03) 5442 2666 | Gippsland (03) 5134 8844 Geelong (03) 5222 6633

COVER IMAGE: Lyn Baird

AEU

NEWS

Against league tables, for fair fundingAEU’s campaigns will be critical to the future of public education — and we need your help.

Respect and recognitionKoorie educators are key to the success of the Wannik strategy and their work is finally being rewarded with higher pay and greater autonomy.

State stifling educationThe biggest review of primary education in England for 40 years rings alarm bells for Australia.

The parent trapGeelong HS teacher Ubaldino Mantelli is on a personal campaign to bring nervous parents back from the lure of private schools.

3 president’s report 27 safety matters

4 letters 28 classifieds

11 christina adams 29 international

23 women’s focus 30 culture

25 on the phones 31 giveaways

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Enjoy the break!After a year of campaigning, agreements and record recruitment it’s time for a well-earned rest.

16

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21Banks, MECU & Building Societies

VTCU, Credit Cards

28 January 14 January

25 February 11 February

25 March 11 March

22 April 8 April

20 May 6 May

17 June 3 June

15 July 1 July

12 August 29 July

9 September 26 August

7 October 23 September

4 November 21 October

2 December 18 November

30 December 16 December

DIRECT DEBIT PAYMENT DATES 2010

MEMBERSHIP REFUNDSAre you retiring or resigning from teaching? AEU policy on refunding fees is that notice must be submitted by members in writing. Resignations take effect from the date of the letter.

Responsibility lies with members to give timely notification of changes of circum-stance that affect subscription rates. The Education Department does not inform us of retirements or changes of status. You are ineligible to claim a refund on fees for which you have already claimed tax relief. ◆

Office closure — Summer 2009-10DECEMBER 18 will be the last day of full office opening for 2009. The office will be closed from December 23 and reopen on January 4.

On December 21-22 and from January 4-15 the office will operate with reduced staff from 10am to 2pm.

Normal office hours will resume on January 18.

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2 aeu news | december 2009

THIS has been another year of campaigning, new agreements and

continued strong membership growth.It is also the year when the tragic

bushfires left a legacy that devastated communities and touched us all.

The bushfires which swept through so much of our beautiful state also brought out the best in our members, our students and our communities.

AEU members and many of their students and parents were among those who lost their lives in the fires. Hundreds of others were left homeless. The March edition of AEU News reflected on the scale of the losses but also the fantastic efforts and achievements of schools and communities.

The AEU Emergency Bushfire relief fund provided over $500,000 to affected members, their families and devastated schools.

Support also flowed from other AEU branches across the nation, including a student fundraising drive which contributed more than $150,000 to the State Schools Relief Committee Bushfire Appeal.

Sadly, the legacy of the bushfires continues. As we head into another hot, dry summer, those members, school communities and families will again be reminded of those tragic days. We hope that they know they have our continued support.

New agreementsAfter a long campaign that saw TAFE teachers strike for the first time in 13 years, an historic agreement was achieved. It delivered pay increases of between 17% and 26% over the life of the agreement. Improvements in conversion from casual to more secure employment were central to the outcome.

This was followed by an agreement for our Adult Migrant Education Services (AMES) members — which also delivered significant pay increases of between 28% and 31%.

Preschool teachers and assistants were next. Their agreements were negotiated at a time when the Global Financial Crisis was sending shock-waves through governments.

Despite this, preschool teachers

at both the beginning and top of the incremental scale achieved pay parity. Teacher assistants (our newest AEU members) were included for the first time in this historic agreement.

Your union growsWhile many unions decline in member-ship, our membership has grown over 50% in the past decade.

As I write, we have added 5000 members this year. This further strengthens our union and its influence. As we face state and federal elections next year, the strength and activism of our membership positions us well for the campaigns ahead.

The TAFE4All campaign remains a major focus for AEU action. The government changes undermine public TAFE as well as putting voca-tional education and training out of reach for many Victorians, particularly those most in need.

Make an early New Year’s resolu-tion to get informed and involved. Visit tafe4all.org.au.

Happy holidaysAs 2010, with its elections, shapes up to be another momentous year, we at the AEU wish all our members a safe and happy Christmas and New Year break.

Celebrate your achievements — you make a difference every day. ◆

SEMINARS RV will hold retirement seminars at the AEU Building (112 Trenerry Cres, Abbotsford ) on the following dates:

Thursday 7 January 2010 at 10am (Holidays) Tuesday 19 January 2010 at 10am (Holidays)

Bookings: Call Rhonda Webley on (03) 9418 4844

Our seminars provide an insight into the development of a successful financial strategy for retirement. If you are unable to attend a seminar you are welcome to arrange a personal, complementary first appointment by telephoning (03)9820 8088.

AEU Vic branch president

Welcome to our new teachers

This AEU News is being sent to all final year AEU student members. We now have the highest number of student members on record.

Let me take this opportunity to welcome you to this most wonderful profession and

to our union.

A year to rememberOur highest-ever membership and a raft of new agreements have made this a year to remember. But what showed the best of our union was your response to February’s bushfires.

Alan Cooper, Geoff Allen & Staff

Level 3/432 St Kilda Road, Melbourne 3004

Visit us at www.retirevic.com.au

Alan Cooper, Geoff Allen & Staff are Authorised Representatives of Retirement Victoria and are the AEU’s preferred providers of retirement planning and services to AEU members.

Retirement Victoria Partnership ABN 13 409 340 986 AFSL 273316.

AEU PREFERRED PROVIDERS

APPOINTMENTS (03) 9820 8088

Alan Cooper, Geoff Allen & Staff

Level 3/432 St Kilda Road, Melbourne 3004

Visit us at www.retirevic.com.au

AEU PREFERRED PROVIDERS

TO RETIRE SUCCESSFULLY YOU NEED THE BEST ADVICE

Retirement Victoria advisers are acknowledged experts in State Super and have assisted hundreds of AEU members

and social security systems.

APPOINTMENTS (03) 9820 8088Alan Cooper, Geoff Allen & Staff are Authorised Representatives of Retirement Victoria and are the AEU’s preferred providers of retirement planning

and services to AEU members. Retirement Victoria Partnership ABN 13 409 340 986 AFSL 273316.

www.aeuvic.asn.au 3

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Letters from members are welcome. Send to: AEU News, PO Box 363, Abbotsford, 3067, fax (03) 9415 8975 or email [email protected]. Letters should be no more than 250 words and must supply name, workplace and contact details of the writer. Letters may be edited for space and clarity. Next deadline: February 1, 2010.

I WANT to pass on my thanks directly to the AEU for the wonderful support provided to members after the bushfires earlier this year.

My wife Cathy received a $5000 grant from the AEU Members Fund. I can’t tell you how important it was for our family to have that level of support, not just in monetary terms, but simply in the willingness to support a member in need.

It was everything that I define a union to be. That is why I have been a union member all my working life.

Cath and the kids had evacuated earlier in the day and I had planned only to run the pumps and sprinklers in case of embers. I got caught and was trapped in the house. We are still not sure how or why, but I managed to get out, only after the house collapsed around me. We lost our family dog (who was with me) along

with precious items from both our parents’ homes, but in the end, we have decided it is only “stuff”, and we have each other.

At the time, I was the CEO of the Central Ranges Local Learning and Employment Network, and the fires destroyed two-thirds of the area I worked across, including Clonbinane, Kinglake, Marysville and parts of Yea and Whittlesea.

The impact on the communities remains deep and ongoing.Cathy lost her (our) home, her possessions, all her professional materials and had to deal with the fact that I had been on fire for a short period! She prepared work while away and then returned to teaching full time about 10 days after the fires.

She received incredible support from the school and colleagues, but nevertheless, it is still a very tough

gig. She had some students who had lost family and friends in the fires. This is really tough. There are many teachers in a similar situation. She is supporting others while she too is going through the same issues.

We also received amazing support from Broadford Primary School and our kids settled back in to some normality and have remained happy and trouble-free for the year.

I have seen some incredible efforts by many teachers and prins, who themselves were directly involved in the fires. It is hard to put in to terms that others would understand.

I think it is really important for people to understand that the fires began on February 7, but for many they continued until April. This meant that many families, students and teachers were not only dealing with the traumas of February 7 but also

with a state of constant alert and fear, often for weeks at a time.

This has been incredibly disruptive, draining and challenging for schools and their communities, yet they have kept going.

We need to ensure that we continue to look out for and support those involved because energy levels and resilience are low at a time of year that now requires extra efforts.

For many, the rebuild has yet to begin and I think many in the workforce will struggle with their energy levels as the fire season comes around again.

Thanks again for the wonderful assistance and support your organisation afforded to my family. It has meant a great deal to us and is something that we will always remember.

— Bill Coppinger, Clonbinane

Bushfire support made us proud to be union

Number crunchingA RECENT email from Mary Merkenich, defeated presidential candidate, and a letter from Peter Curtis, defeated branch vice president primary candidate, to primary sector members in North West 1 make several factually incorrect statements.

First, both claim that Teachers Alliance received one third of the votes cast. The fact is that in the four statewide union leadership positions, Teachers Alliance candidates received one quarter of all votes cast.

Secondly, Mary Merkenich claims that there was a “greater return of ballots”. The facts are that in this election 24% of ballot papers were returned to the number issued. In 2006 it was 26% and in 1997 when the current leadership were first elected it was 34%.

Both Mary Merkenich and Peter Curtis claim that the election results place them in a good position to demand that the leadership imple-ments the wishes of the members.

On the basis of the election result, the overwhelming majority of AEU members need have no fear that the current leadership will be entertaining any of the policies of the Teachers Alliance.

The AEU leadership remains committed to delivering for all members in all sectors of our union and to continuing to grow the union membership, which now stands at 42,125 members.

— Brian Henderson AEU branch secretary

Psychotic reactionPM KEVIN Rudd’s projected popula-tion growth for Australia (35 million by 2049) has raised a few eyebrows and set tongues wagging.

The debate created by the PM’s statement should be extended into every school staffroom across our nation.

In a letter related to mental illness (The Age, November 10), Professor David Copolov of Monash

University wrote:“For a state that is expected to

grow by 3m by 2050, with an increase of more than 80,000 people with psychotic disorders…”

If teachers consider both Mr Rudd’s vision and Prof Copolov’s prediction of the “brave new world”, then it is not hard to imagine the

pressures besetting schools in the years ahead.

The AEU needs to highlight the rough ride that some schools, teachers and students will face in this new twist on an old theme — “populate or perish”.

— Roger SpaullPeninsula Region

HALF PRICE OFFER TO LIBRARIES AND HISTORICAL SOCIETIES

BILL HANNAN’s The Best of Times gives an insider’s account of Victorian secondary schools' most turbulent years, the 1960s, when the state system opened to all comers, and teachers transformed themselves into a profession.

The reforms and battles of those times remain at the heart of the education debate today: school resources, teachers’ qualifications, student assessment, tertiary entrance.

The Best of Times sells for $40 (plus postage) to AEU members. Now, to mark 2010's centenary of state secondary education in Victoria, it is available to libraries and historical societies for $20 plus $8 packing and postage.

To order The Best of Times from the AEU: Phone (03) 9417 2822 or email [email protected]

CELEBRATING 100 YEARS of state secondary schooling in Victoria


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Nic Barnard AEU News

SLEDGING has begun in the battle over league tables, with Education

Minister Julia Gillard accusing opponents of wanting “happy, illit-erate, innumerate students”.

The AEU this month launched a national Stop League Tables website, as Minister Gillard unveiled her new school reporting website — complete with colour-coded test results which effectively put a red flag by schools where test results are below the national average, regardless of student background.

It was followed up with a letter from an unprecedented coalition of education unions, principals, parents and school council organisations, urging the Minister to think again on league tables.

The AEU site — found at www.aeufederal.org.au — sets out clearly the arguments against tables, and includes a protest letter to email to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Minister Gillard.

It also features resources to download, and a video on the impact that name-and-shame news stories have had on teachers in Sydney and

Tasmania (as reported in October’s AEU News).

The government website — www.myschool.edu.au — has yet to go live, but the draft version launched as a fait accompli to media at the Minister’s self-styled “conversation” with 160 school principals set off immediate warning bells.

Minister Gillard batted away concerns, saying: “To those who say we aren’t measuring the whole of a child’s character development, I say I agree. But I don’t believe our aim is to have schools full of happy, illiterate, innumerate children.”

The comments were immediately condemned by the AEU. Branch president Mary Bluett said: “It is the most enormous insult and slap in the face to the teaching profession who are out there every day ensuring that students are being educated.”

The My School launch came despite an embarrassing admission by the head of the Government’s new national testing agency that there is no solid evidence that publishing test results leads to higher standards.

The pro-tables Daily Telegraph in Sydney on its website summed up comments by Peter Hill, the

newly-appointed chief executive of the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, at an education forum thus: “In short he said there is not much evidence at all really.”

Hill later clarified his comments on the site, writing: “Simply making information available about a school’s performance is not likely to lead directly to big improvements … But the crucial point is that better information is always the starting point for improving teaching.”

The full report can be found at tiny.cc/z52Lj. ◆More reports: p13-15

Why we must stop school

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Defensive Gillard lashes TABLES CAMPAIGNNew AEU website takes fight against league tables to public as new testing chief admits little evidence that reporting lifts results.

Payment-by-results trial condemnedA DECISION to introduce school test

results into a performance pay trial has been condemned by the AEU as divisive and nonsensical.

The State Government has announced that year-on-year improvement in NAPLAN test results will be one factor in deciding which schools receive a staff bonus in one of its two merit pay trials.

In one trial, the top 30% of

schools in a network will get the bonus to share between staff.

AEU branch president Mary Bluett said it would set school against school just as the Government was trying to encourage collaboration and sharing of good practice.

But the decision also made no sense educationally given students were tested in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 — meaning different students take

the tests each year.“The NAPLAN test’s validity has

been questioned by experts across the land. Even leaving that aside, schools will be judged on how they perform on the basis of test results for two completely different sets of students. It’s totally inappropriate.”

The move also set a worrying precedent for the roll out of perform-ance pay programs for teachers. ◆

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MARY Bluett has welcomed the AEU’s election results as offering

generational change while providing a united voice for next year’s crucial federal and state campaigns.

The ballot saw the leadership group led by branch president Bluett and branch secretary Brian Henderson returned in full, with some members stepping up and four new faces coming in.

Serving sector vice presidents Meredith Peace and Gillian Robertson took cross-sectoral roles as deputy president and deputy secretary.

TAFE teachers Jo Fogarty and

Mark Hyde come in as the new TAFE vice president and deputy VP; while AEU graduates organiser James Rankin was elected as primary sector deputy VP, and Membership Services Unit officer Erin Aulich elected as secondary deputy VP.

Ms Bluett said: “With next year being both state and federal elections, having a strong and unified leader-ship was particularly important and we’re now in a position to develop key policy demands on government.”

She added: “Just like in many of our workplaces, we are looking for generational change and I’m excited

that we’ve got a significant number of new people coming into the leader-ship team.”

The group was first elected to the 12-strong leadership in 1997. For the first time, a non-schools sector is represented in a cross-sectoral position, in former TAFE teacher Robertson.

Ms Bluett said that continuing membership growth would be a priority for the new term. Membership has now topped 42,000.

The full results, including council election results, can be found on the AEU website under About Us. ◆

Change and no change

Rallies for REFUGEE and HUMAN RIGHTSTHE AEU is backing a protest and march in support of rights for refugees

at the State Library, Swanston Street at 2pm on Saturday, December 5.The rally will call for refugee boats to be allowed to land, for Australia to

take its fair share of refugees, and for asylum seekers to be processed in Australia, not on Christmas Island. More details at www.rac-vic.org.

Unions, Aboriginal rights groups and community groups will rally at 5.30pm on Thursday, December 10 on the steps of the State Parliament to mark the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

Protesters are asked to wear black to mourn the loss of workers’, Aboriginal and human rights under the Howard and Rudd Governments. They will then march to Trades Hall for a reception. ◆

Be a climate championCLIMATE Connectors is the union movement’s campaign to raise awareness

and spread action around global warming.The AEU is asking members to join a network of thousands of unionists

around the country taking action at home, at work and in the community.The program is a partnership between unions and the Australian

Conservation Foundation.Each month, our climate connectors are given a task in their workplace,

home and community to build awareness and understanding about climate change. The activities are themed to coincide with community events, such as Walk to Work Day and National Recycling Week.

You will receive action kits by post or email, and phone calls to follow up each kit and provide support. Face-to-face “connector trainings” are also being run by the ACF and ACTU.

To sign up visit www.climateconnectors.org. ◆

Now you can read AEU News onlineYOU can now read your AEU News online, or download it as a PDF. This members’ only service is part of the

AEU’s drive to cut its carbon footprint. The online version uses the latest page-turning software for an easy on-screen experience.If you’d like to read the AEU News online instead of receiving a paper copy, email [email protected].

SAFETY LAWS spark concern

VICTORIAN unions are urging state and federal ministers to pull back

from changes that would weaken our occupational health and safety laws.

Model laws proposed to bring Australia’s different OHS regula-tions into line would potentially give employers a role in running elections for Health and Safety Reps, compro-mise reps’ access to training and remove the right to see inspectors’ reports.

Reps’ rights to seek assistance and to issue provisional improvement notices would also be compromised. More on the Second Rate Safety campaign at www.vthc.org.au. ◆


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Rachel Power AEU News

TEACHER David Norman says he has seen a “clear and observable” change

in attitude among boys at Northcote High School since they helped establish a program to raise awareness of domestic violence.

The boys played a central role in developing Be the Hero! — a program initiated by the Victorian Women’s Trust and funded by VicHealth.

“The girls have been really pleased with the absolute shift in relations, and the boys feel really good about being recog-nised as literate and informed,” says Norman, who along with fellow teacher Paul Gilby co-ordinated the school’s involvement in the program.

“The boys were initially shocked by the stats. They saw that we weren’t just talking about these grim things that happen out there in the world; they realised that schoolyard talk like ‘she’s a slut’ has potency. Before, they just thought that was normal behaviour.”

The Victorian Women’s Trust approached the

school two years ago, seeking the participation of Year 10 boys to develop a violence preven-tion program aimed at young men. A group of 15 students put up their hands to do the preliminary workshops.

“There’s lots of organisations outside of the school environment that approach you to do stuff, but this was different,” says Norman. “They wanted the students’ role to be full and not token.”

The boys decided on a website and worked directly with the Trust for over a year to come up

with the content and design. A trial phase preceded the official launch in October, which was attended by high-profile male sportspeople and print and television media.

“With this program, there was a great connection with their everyday experience and their own values,” says Norman. “Now these boys understand that matters of domestic violence are not just a women’s issue.”

He says a concrete teacher package supports the web-based program, which requires a male leader to facilitate small groups of young

men across four or five 50-minute sessions, with extra time for debriefing.

Student responses to questions posed over the course of the program allow the teacher to measure attitude change, he says.

The VWT is now planning to launch Be the Hero! nationally.

For more information, see www.bethehero.com.au or contact the Victorian Women’s Trust on (03) 9642 0422. ◆

Heroic effort changes views on violenceA new program has helped boys realise that violence against women has its roots in sexist playground banter.

Teacher David Norman with students.PHOTO: PONCH HAWKES

www.aeuvic.asn.au 7

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WWIWIT ITWWWWWWIWIT TTTH ITCLCCLLSMS your name to

0447 100 275 and we’llsend you a reminder.Or visit www.waw.org.au

Join the WALK AGAINST WARMING and help us form a massive HUMAN SIGN.A sign so big they’ll get our message all the way over in Copenhagen.

This December, our world leaders are gathering to decide how much they’re prepared to do about climate change.

Shocking reportIT WASN’T the best choice of words but it did prove that sometimes even spin doctors tell the truth. It came from an unnamed spokeswoman for Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard, in response to a withering “report card” from Brian Caldwell on the education revolution. The education don called its new tests “flawed” and said many education policies were “missing in action”.

PressWatch laughed like a drain at the hapless spinner’s retort: “A simplistic report card is never going to accurately portray the funda-mental reforms being undertaken.”

Given the plans to give every school an A–F report card, we couldn’t have put it better ourselves.

Unexpected plugMIND you, more silliness was to come from Gillard’s own mouth, defending the new My School website. Some parents went “to hell and back” to get information about schools she said (The Australian, Nov 18). “We want to make that easier.”

In Julia’s world, parents no longer need to visit schools to see for themselves the facilities, meet the teachers, understand the ethos or talk to the children. They can just look at a page of numbers.

Thanks though to The Oz in the same article for plugging our new Stop League Tables website — reported pleasingly without spin by that trenchant supporter of tables. ◆

Rachel Power AEU News

THE kids might know him as Captain Snooze, but comedian Rod Quantock hasn’t been sleeping on the job.Instead, he has been brushing up on his science,

speaking to experts around Australia to get a full under-standing of the causes of climate change.

The result is Bugger the Polar Bears, This is Serious, a new show aimed at Years 7–12, which “brings the science to the fore, in a comic way,” he says.

Quantock believes that people will not really be motivated to change unless they have a full understanding of the

scientific causes of global warming.“I explain how carbon can change

the atmosphere, and give audiences the confidence to make the arguments for why climate change is real.”

Taking students on a “complete history of the universe” in 60 minutes, Rod’s hilarious show uses humour to get across a serious message. He is happy to talk to school communities and provides resources for teachers to use in follow-up discussions.

To find out more or make a booking, contact Rod at [email protected]. ◆

THIS year 33 schools collected around 20,000 unwanted and reusable shoes for the In Your

Shoes Recycling program, diverting them from landfill and redistributing them to those in need.

Program founder Fran Davide partnered with Kids Off The Kerb, a charity which supports at-risk young people by linking them up with education, training and employment programs, many of them in recycling or environmental industries.

Kids Off The Kerb collect the shoes and deliver them to Waste Diversion Enterprises which employs some of these young people to sort and process the shoes at its Thomastown warehouse, ready to distribute to local Melbourne charities or to overseas communities as far flung as Ghana and Iraq.

Kids Off The Kerb founder, lawyer Nathan Stirling,

says In Your Shoes has had a fantastic response from students, particularly among primary schools, where it can provide “a very simple lesson in promoting both sustainability and social awareness”.

Clothes and shoes make up approximately 8% of landfill worldwide.

Rachel Harvey, a teaching student at Melbourne University and In Your Shoes team member, said most participants so far have been public schools.

The In Your Shoes website provides schools with resources to organise a collection, including posters and school newsletter notices. The team is also in the process of creating teacher resources and student activities.

Schools wishing to participate in future collections should email [email protected]. ◆

— Rachel PowerBella, from Kew Primary School, where students collected 500 pairs — one for every student.

SOLE POWER

Rod’s WARM-UP ACT


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Does your school or workplace AEU Rep deserve special recognition? Email [email protected] telling us who you’re nominating and why. The Rep of the Month receives a limited edition AEU leather briefcase.

Nominate your REP!

Lucy WebbBerwick Fields PS

WHEN Lucy Webb put her hand up for AEU rep, in only her second year of teaching, just a handful of

teachers — and no ES staff — were in the union at Berwick Fields Primary School.

In a new school with a young staff, it was just a matter of building the union’s profile, Lucy says. “We talked about it a lot and put posters on the back of the toilet doors. We also have open meetings and a very supportive principal who’s a big advocate of the AEU.”

Lucy, this month’s AEU Rep of the Month, invited ES organiser Kathryn Lewis and Sarah Kupsch from Teachers Federation Health to speak at the school.

“Once they realised that membership dues were relative to your earnings and that there were other benefits, it really turned them around.”

She says the annual AEU sub-branch breakfast and the fun had at the rallies have also contributed to morale.

Organiser Helen Stanley says Lucy’s ability to “draw so much support, enthusiasm and commitment from other sub-branch members” shows what a good leader she is.

Lucy says the positive collaborative approach means consultation meetings can focus on the important stuff. “Because people feel they’ve got a voice and they’re listened to, there are rarely major problems.” ◆

TAFE changes hit 68% of studentsMinister admits closures are inevitable in the new market in VET, shirks responsibility — and offers a stark choice over TAFE fees.


ONLY 4% of TAFE students will benefit from the Victorian

Government’s changes to the system, despite ministers’ claims that most would be better off.

The skills reforms are looking increasingly threadbare after the collapse of more private training colleges also exposed the dangers of opening funding up to for-profit providers — a key plank of the policy.

Nearly 3000 international students, many only days from completing their courses, were left stranded by the decision of Global Campus Management Group to close nine colleges overnight.

Administrators are understood to have ignored teachers’ pleas to keep the colleges open while students finished their studies — even offering to work for free to let them complete.

Skills Minister Jacinta Allan, charged with steering through the reforms, was forced into a damaging admission that such closures were part and parcel of a privatised system.

“Unfortunately … this is like a number of other circumstances that happen in the commercial world where investors make decisions and leave consumers, and in this case it’s students, facing a range of

issues,” she told ABC Melbourne’s Jon Faine.

AEU TAFE vice president Gillian Robertson said the incident high-lighted that TAFE was the only provider that guaranteed that students would get a high-quality education — and finish the course they started.

“It seems incredible that as we hear almost weekly of private providers going to the wall, the Skills Minister wants to channel funding away from our high-quality, well-estab-lished TAFE system and into these fly-by-night operators.”

Nine providers have now closed since July with at least two — including the Leer Institute in Geelong — taking local students.

The closures come as new figures give the lie to Minister Allan’s claims that 59% of students would be better off under the new system.

In fact, 96% of TAFE

students will be worse off or face no benefit under the reforms, according to an analysis of 2008 enrolment figures from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). The figures confirm the Government’s cost shift to students.

The only cuts to fees are for Foundation-level students — most of whom are on concession rates and will save only $5 per year — and those undertaking full-time Certificate I and II qualifications. Nine out of 10 Cert I and II students take these courses part time — where the hourly fee has gone up. Together, they make up less than 5% of the entire VET population.

Fees for Certificate III and IV courses and for diplomas and advance diplomas have all gone up and will rise again by 2012; and for those still eligible for concession rates (abolished for diplomas and above), the rate has doubled to $100. ◆

Minister’s BAD DAYFIRST she took a mauling from

the ABC’s Jon Faine. Then Skills Minister Jacinta Allan had to face a room of angry TAFE students.

Faine, interviewing Minister Allan in the wake of the latest college closures, was merciless, accusing her of being “asleep at the wheel”.

But most of the damage was self-inflicted. First Allan admitted she didn’t know who was behind the closed colleges (a Cayman Islands-registered outfit) or whether they’d recently passed a Government audit (they had).

Then she made a fatal mistake for a politician — blamed her staff.

“Where does the buck stop?” Faine asked. “Well certainly the buck stops with the state regulator having oversight of this sector,” was her reply.

Just hours later, Allan honoured a commitment to meet 10 students from the TAFE 4 All campaign, to hear first hand their concerns.

Bendigo student Amanda Mann said the Minister listened “respect-fully”, but seemed unable to give answers.

“I was flabbergasted by her continual words (that) you have a personal choice. The only choices I could see were to pay up front, take on the debt or not study.” ◆Students rally at Jacinta Allan’s office.

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Nice work, chuckBendigo TAFE wins WorkSafe award for safety solution


A NASTY accident prompted Bendigo Regional Institute of

TAFE teachers and technicians to find a foolproof solution to a common workshop risk.

A VET student suffered a fractured skull after leaving a key in the chuck of his lathe in the institute’s engi-neering workshop. The chuck key flew out, hitting him on the head.

The accident prompted staff to find a foolproof way of preventing future injuries. Their answer was a chuck lathe guard which not only cannot be lowered until the key is removed but cuts power to the equipment until it is in place.

A chuck key is used to tighten the chuck which holds the blade or drill bit in place on a drill or lathe. The lathe can spin at up to 1000rpm.

Fitting and machining teacher and AEU member Les Yates was part of the BRIT team hailed as Workplace Safety Heroes for the device.

BRIT received the award for Best Solution to a Health and Safety Risk at the 2009 WorkSafe Victoria Awards last month.

“We’d been concerned about it for years as teachers because we’ve had a lot of close calls,” Les told AEU News.

“We needed something that was foolproof. There are plenty of guards on the market but they rely on the

person (to put in place). This one cuts the power to the machine so without pulling the guard down it’s impossible to turn the machine on.”

The guard was designed by main-tenance man Colin Hendrick. Worksafe said it helps create a safe environ-ment in the TAFE workshop and could be adapted across industries.

“The lathe chuck guard is a simple, cheap yet effective way of reducing the risk of projectile keys. It will benefit a range of other educational facilities and the wider manufacturing industry,” the citation said. ◆

Our excellent membersCONGRATULATIONS to AEU

members Ruby Toombs and Anne Mirtschin who were recog-nised in the Australian Awards for Teaching Excellence.

Anne, of Hawkesdale P12 College, was highly commended for excellence by a teacher for her work at the rural school, using online tools to allow students to “explore, create and collaborate with experts in a variety of fields such as visual arts, music and science” from around the globe.

Ruby, from Springvale South Primary School, was highly commended for excellence by a principal, for her “outstanding” work with the school’s culturally and linguistically diverse community. Her initiatives have included cutting class sizes and introducing English as an Additional Language training for every teacher, as well as strengthening the school’s ties with parents.

The awards, which are overseen by Teaching Australia, were presented in Canberra by Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard on World Teachers’ Day. ◆

Above: Les Yates (at rear) with student Luke Roney and technician Colin Hendrick.PHOTO: WORKSAFE

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New South WalesTEACHERS from NSW TAFE colleges have been holding stopworks outside local ministers’ offices to protest changes to their working conditions, including an increase in required attendance time of five hours per week, after an extraordinary decision by the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC).

The new laws require TAFE teachers to be available for face-to-face teaching for 35 hours or more per week without right to refusal, any time between 6am and 10pm, Monday to Saturday.

The extra hours supposedly fund part of TAFE teachers’ recent pay rise. The IRC accepted the Education Department’s claim that each addi-tional hour of attendance was valued at less than $3.

TasmaniaALMOST 80% of Tasmanian schools participated in stopwork action in November, demanding Premier Bartlett reverse his decision to force Hobart’s Elizabeth College into the Tasmania Tomorrow experiment.

Some 93% of teachers in attend-ance voted for immediate industrial action should Bartlett fail to respect the decision of AEU members at the college.

Under the Tasmania Tomorrow reorganisation of post-compulsory education, the Government is proposing to force teachers to choose whether or not they want to stay in the Education Department, move to the primary and high school sectors or accept the move into Tasmania Tomorrow next year.

Western AustraliaThe Barnett Government has announced the first 34 schools to operate as “independent public schools” (IPS) from 2010, with plans to expand the program.

The SSTUWA is concerned about equity and access issues arising about of a “system within a public education system”, and the potential erosion of teachers’ conditions. ◆

Party animalsSCHOOL has once again hit

the crazy time of year. Senior students are in the throes of exams, and juniors stare longingly out of stuffy classrooms to the bright sunlight of the playground.

As the year draws closer and closer to an end, and reports slowly get under control, a festive air settles on the school.

“Can we have a class party, Miss?”

“Yeah. That would be heaps good, Miss. We should definitely do it.”

“Come on, Miss. You love 9B. We’re, like, your favourite class.”

“Um, well, I suppose…”A chorus of “yes-s”

rebounds around the room.“I’ll bring chips.”“I’ll get soft drink.”“I’ll get heaps of lollies and stuff.”“I can DJ and we can fully decorate

the room so it looks really awesome.”And so it is settled. 9B are having

a class party.The day arrives. Driving into the

staff carpark in the morning, I see 9B student after 9B student being dropped off, clutching plastic bags bulging with party food.

“Can’t wait for Period Two, Miss.”“I bought three different flavours

of chips, Miss. How cool’s that?”“Can we get into the classroom at

recess, Miss? We have to decorate the room. Shane has heaps of streamers and balloons that didn’t

get used at his sister’s 21st that we’re going to put everywhere.”

“Yeah, but you can’t see it till it’s done, because it’s a surprise.”

Carrying plastic cups and bags of chips around the corner, I hear 9B.

“Ssh. She’s coming. Stick the purple balloon down.”

And there they are. The bane of my life for most of the year, in front of the portable classroom, beaming.

Inside, an array of chips, lollies and soft drinks are scattered across tables. The grand centrepiece is a lopsided homemade chocolate cake

with bright blue icing and orange letters that read “9B Rock”.

“Have some of my chips, Miss.”“Can you cut the cake, Miss?”It’s official. The party is

underway. Students cluster in small groups and, after 10 minutes, the novelty of having food in class wears off.

“Would we be the best class you’ve ever had, Miss?”

“Yeah, are we, Miss?”“Well, you have been an

interesting class…”“How funny was that time

you cracked it at us, Miss? Like, when we wouldn’t be quiet and then Michelle’s mobile started ringing. That was heaps funny.”

“Mmm.”“And that day you were,

like, really tired and forgot to take us to assembly and Mr Patterson had to call us over

the loudspeaker.”The nostalgia continues until it’s

time to pack up the party.“Have a fantastic holiday, 9B.

Take care of yourselves. I’ve really enjoyed teaching you all this year…”

“Even me, Miss?”“Yes, even you, Jarrod.”“Do we have you next year, Miss?”“Yes, yes you do.”And suddenly, the holidays don’t

seem long enough. ◆

Christina Adams is entering a witness protection program for the holidays.

THE new Professional Voice, the AEU’s professional journal, is out now. The theme of the Spring edition is

Beyond Edu-babble.With education increasing paralysed by management

speak and business clichés, this issue presents writers who cut through the cant and provide fresh thinking on the challenges around learning.

Guy Claxton writes on how an obsession with exams is leaving students unprepared for life, and Howard Gardner describes the new thinking skills today’s students will need.

Neil Hooley sets out a narrative curriculum for Indigenous students, while Andrew Douch outlines how podcasts and social media can revolutionise classroom practice.

PV is your entry to the debate on current educational thinking, and comes free to AEU members. Email [email protected], or read it online at www.aeuvic.asn.au/professional. Back issues are also available. ◆

Professional Voice — out now

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Our campaigns need your actionAEU campaigns against league tables and for fair funding will be critical to the future of public education in Australia. Nic Barnard on the need for members to get involved.

1. We need members next year who are willing to:• Lobby their MP as part of a group• Letterbox targeted seats or your local areaEmail [email protected] if you want to get involved.

2. Go to the Stop League Tables website at www.aeufederal.org.au and send an online letter to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard urging them to think again.

3. Sign up for campaign updates at For Our Future at www.aeufederal.org.au.

Three ways to helpTWO campaigns will dominate the national education agenda over the coming months and

year — the fight for fair funding, and the battle against school league tables.

Here at the end of 2009, the campaign against league tables is the most pressing. Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard is preparing to launch the My Schools website — a site which, unless we can persuade her to change her mind — will facilitate the publication of league tables.

But within months of the start of 2010, the Government will also launch its promised review of federal schools funding. This is a once-in-a-gener-ation chance to put right over a decade of unfair funding for public schools.

Below, AEU federal research officer Jenni Devereux sets out why this review is so critical, and charts the background to today’s situation where two thirds of Australian students receive barely a third of federal schools funding.

We need to raise public awareness about this issue and about league tables.

This term has seen the start of a federal campaign to persuade Minister Gillard of the damaging effects of allowing schools’ NAPLAN

data to be turned into simplistic league tables.A coalition of parents, teachers, principals and

education workers wrote an open letter to the PM and Minister Gillard on November 17 setting out our concerns — you can read the letter on page 15.

The template for the My Schools website has already been launched — you can see what it will

look like overleaf.The AEU’s belief is that league tables are

misleading, inaccurate, damaging, demoralising — and unnecessary. International experience shows they don’t raise standards. Minister Gillard herself has said she doesn’t support them; our challenge is to make her act on her words. ◆

THE promised 2010 review of schools funding arrangements represents an opportunity to end

the Howard Government’s flawed and inequitable funding arrangements.

Speaking of the review, the Deputy Prime Minister and Federal Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, said that Australia’s system of school funding is one of the most complex, opaque and confusing in the world. The review, she said, “needs to be as transparent and comprehensive as possible, to maximise the engagement of the public and wider community and to give every stakeholder full opportunities to contribute and get their point across.”

That the current system is complex and confusing is undoubtedly true. What is not so difficult to understand is just what that funding

system has delivered to public and private schools across Australia.

There is no doubt that it is the mechanism by which the Federal Government delivers a major funding advantage to private schools.

In August 2008, Dr Jim McMorrow, a prominent expert on schools funding, undertook a review of the system. His research found that private schools benefited by almost $3 billion in real terms, a funding advantage of around $2.5bn over the increased money provided for public schools.

Meanwhile, the public school share of Commonwealth funding declined from 43% to 35% over the Howard years, and the 2008 Rudd Government Budget Papers showed that this share was projected to fall further to just under 34% by 2011-12.

By 2007, the Howard Government’s last year in office, the two-thirds of students in public schools received $1.8bn in recurrent funding from the Federal Government. The one-third of students in private schools received three times as much — $5.1bn.

The public rationale for this massive increase in private school funding was that enrolments had risen. True, they had — but only by 21.5%, nothing like the 137% increase in their funding.

Commonwealth funding for public schools was projected to fall further in real terms to 33.8% by 2011-12, based on the 2008 budget, Dr McMorrow found. His report recommended the allocation of an additional $1.6bn per year to restore recurrent

Voices must call for a fair dealThe promised federal funding review is a once-in-a-generation chance to redress 15 years of unfair funding for public schools. Federal research officer Jenni Devereux says members must make their voices heard.

» continued on page 14


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funding to the same proportion that applied when Labor was last in federal government in 1996.The election of the Rudd Government in 2007 gave us some hope that the funding disadvantage suffered by public schools might be overcome. The ALP’s education platform was quite explicit that the Government’s primary obligation was the provision of high-quality public schooling that is accessible to all children and young people.

Kevin Rudd himself said: “The Commonwealth has a prime obligation to adequately and appropri-ately fund government schools.”

However, other election commitments were more ominous, such as a pledge that the ALP in government would not disturb the levels of private school funding during the 2009-2012 funding quadrennium.

This was despite an internal departmental review which found that almost half the non-government school sector was funded above the levels they should receive under the Government’s own funding formula, which allocates funding according to

socio-economic status.The cost of this to the public purse was $2bn

over the previous four years.Even in the face of this research — commis-

sioned by the Howard Government but suppressed under Rudd until its leak to the Sydney Morning Herald in January 2008 — the Rudd Government remained resolute to maintain Howard’s old discredited arrangements.

The November 2008 announcement by the Commonwealth of Australian Governments of addi-tional funding for schools — including $2.8bn over five years for public schools — was welcome.

Subsequent research by Dr McMorrow found that the measures would turn around the projected cut in real terms and that the public school share of total Commonwealth schools funding would now rise to 37.1% by 2011-12.

However, public schools would still require an additional $1.4bn to return their share of federal schools funding to 43.1%, the level it enjoyed when the ALP was last in office.

Nothing short of a new funding system which ends the private school advantage built into the Howard Government’s funding arrangements will give real meaning to the ALP’s commitment to the primary obligation of governments to fully fund high-quality public schooling.

All members are urged to take up the Deputy Prime Minister’s promise that a comprehensive review of schools funding will be “fully engaged in by all stakeholders” and ensure that the views of public school teachers and parents are fully heard.

As Dr McMorrow told the AEU-convened National Public Education Forum in March:

“[This] is an opportunity to put in place ... [a] comprehensive, national policy review. Let us hope that this is an opportunity that is taken.

“Acknowledging the central, and moral, respon-sibility of government — Commonwealth and State — for providing public schooling of such a quality that the principle of universal access to quality education can be delivered would be a proper starting point.” ◆

» continued from page 13

The wrong profileBILLED as a “conversation”

with invited principals, Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard’s mini-summit in Canberra was in truth a media launch for the prototype of her school reporting website.

We can now see what kind of data the Government is planning to publish and in what form — and it gives cause for concern even before third parties in the media and elsewhere use it to rank schools in league tables.

The most glaring omission is the lack of funding information. Parents will not be able to tell how much the more apparently successful schools are spending per pupil to get their results.

But other data that could be critical to explaining results is also missing: numbers of students with specified learning difficulties; the numbers who speak English as a second language; the numbers who joined the school only weeks before the test, for example.

Working out pupil-teacher ratios — another factor which might help explain results — will require parents to reach for the calculator to divide student rolls by staffing.

Other information is simply opaque. The Government promises to illuminate each school’s social context by assigning it a score against an “index of community socio-educational advantage” of its own devising. The figure is buried on the page, and the official explanation of this index amounts to a reassuring pat on the head: Trust us, we’re the experts.

But most worrying is the colour-coding of results. Each school’s NAPLAN results are flagged against results for 60 “stastically

similar” schools — but also against the national average. Green shows above average results, red shows below average.

What this means for schools achieving good results in challenging circumstances is predictable — a table flagged with as much red as green that sets off alarm bells among prospective parents without telling the full story.

And that’s even before the schools are ranked in the local paper. ◆— Nic Barnard


Peter Garrigan, PresidentAustralian Council of State School Organisations

Angelo Gavrielatos, Federal PresidentAustralian Education Union

Norm Hart, PresidentAustralian Government Primary Principals Association

Ian Dalton, Executive Director, Australian Parents Council

Andrew Blair, PresidentAustralian Secondary Principals Association

Chris Watt, Federal SecretaryIndependent Education Union of Australia

17 November 2009The Hon. Julia Gillard MP,Minister for EducationPO Box 6022Parliament HouseCanberra ACT 2600

Dear MinisterAs parents, teachers and principals we welcome the Australian Government’s commitment to lift the achievement of all our students

through the provision of quality education in schools.In striving to meet that commitment, we all recognise that it requires strong evidence-based policy decisions around quality teacher

training, skilled teachers in all schools, the provision of a curriculum which meets the needs of all students, and support for school

communities as they work to provide the very best education for their children. Any change must be managed with care and driven

by sound evidence.We are writing to you because of our shared concern that one aspect of your program threatens to harm the future opportunities of

Australian students. There is, we believe, a serious risk to school communities — students, staff and parents — through the

publication of school data by ACARA.NAPLAN testing provides a snapshot of academic achievement in a small, yet significant, part of the curriculum. Parents receive a

picture of their child’s skill development in literacy and numeracy and it gives teachers and principals a reference point for evaluating

professional practice in their school.Important as NAPLAN may be, its limitations are considerable and include the following.• NAPLAN was not designed for the purpose of measuring school performance and certainly is not able to reliably measure overall

year-to-year student improvement.• There are large margins of statistical error evident in tests such as NAPLAN.Combining individual student results into a school

average does not provide a sound basis for comparing schools.• The complexities found within a school population – social, economic, etc – do not allow reasonable comparative data to be gained

through the administration of one or two brief tests covering a very limited part of the curriculum.There is considerable evidence that the inappropriate use of data to compare schools can have serious negative impacts, both on

the testing itself and on the very schools and children it was intended to help. Allowing student data to be inappropriately or mischie-

vously used for the creation and publication of league tables could exacerbate the difficulties of the communities concerned, narrow

the school curriculum and risk the testing process itself becoming corrupted.The United States and United Kingdom experiences of league tables offer a clear and definable warning to the Australian Government

and to all education decision makers. Whether it be the narrowing of curriculum, a deepening inequity across schools and school

systems, an unhealthy segregation of schools, or all of these, the research and evidence is clear and well documented. Minister, you recently stated that the ability of “governments to look at comparable schools and their results ... will allow extra

resources and efforts to be targeted to where they are most needed so that schools are supported.” The publication of school

comparisons and rankings is not necessary to identify schools in need of additional support. The information needed is

readily available.In order to address our collective concerns we seek the following.1. What is the conclusive evidence by which the Government decided that the publication of comparative school data will assist,

rather than impair, school education in Australia?2. As the Minister responsible for ACARA, what steps will you take to ensure that simplistic league tables or other inappropriate

comparisons of schools will not be published?3. What risk management processes will be in place to ensure that national testing and reporting will not have unintended negative

consequences for our schools?Minister, it is within your power to stop the damage that would be done through invalid school comparisons and the creation and

publication of league tables.Yours sincerely


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ON ALL measures, Indigenous Australians lag behind other Australians in educational

achievement.Koorie students make up only 0.9% of the

student population in Victoria, the lowest propor-tion of any state or territory. Nine out of 10 are in government schools.

However, their numbers are widely dispersed, with pockets of high concentration. In 2007,

two-thirds of schools had at least one Koorie student, but only 72 schools had 20 or more. These 72 schools account for 35% of all Koorie students.

The challenges posed by this pattern of enrolment led the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development to conduct a comprehensive review of education for Indigenous students, including the role of the Koorie support staff.

This led to the development of the Wannik program of reforms.

Wannik project director Tim Fitzgerald says the aim is to create a culture of high expectations for Koorie students, with individualised learning plans and explicit accountability mechanisms.

Intensive literacy and numeracy programs are being introduced for students achieving below expected levels, as well as additional support and incentives for top students.

There is also a focus on creating an environment that respects, recognises and celebrates cultural identity through practice and curriculum. ◆

SAM Kirby, Koorie educator at Thornbury Primary School, has

entered the sector at a time of unprecedented change in Indigenous education — change he sees as necessary and long overdue.

“That’s the step they needed to take,” he says. “There needs to be a lot more onus on educators in terms of professionalism and providing a service to kids.”

Sam is one of the newest members of Victoria’s Koorie support workforce — a workforce that is integral to Wannik: Learning Together — Journey to Our Future, the Victorian Government’s education strategy for Koorie students launched in February 2008.

The roles and responsibilities of Koorie educators (KEs) have been completely redesigned, in light of the Wannik agenda to radically improve outcomes for Indigenous students.

Rebadged as Koorie Education

Support Officers (KESOs), the focus of their work is shifting dramatically from inside the classroom to outside, and from acting as de facto teaching assistants, to becoming “engagement officers” — helping to re-engage those students who feel marginalised, and their families.

The shift is accompanied by higher salaries, greater job security, improved professional development and training — and a new sense of autonomy.

“I like in my job that I have the freedom to move around the school where I’m needed,” Sam says. “If I see boys who are feeling really angry or upset, I can focus on them. We can play basketball, use up some energy, or they can help me set up a lesson.

“If there’s too much structure, we’ll just be seen as another teacher, but you want to be seen as a friend or an uncle, someone they trust they can turn to.

For Darryl Andy, Koorie educator at Bairnsdale Secondary College in East Gippsland, the new Koorie Workforce Plan is recognition that the position is a “24/7 gig”.

“You’re not just in the classroom. You’re at the football games, down the street after school, at the shops.”

It used to be a dead-end job in terms of promotion, he says. Now he is excited by the potential for financial and professional gain. “My expertise and leadership qualities have been soaring higher and higher in this job.” Tertiary study and teacher-training are the logical next step in his career.

“A huge win”For Wannik project director Tim Fitzgerald, the Koorie workforce plan is a “major action” within the Wannik reforms.

Its impetus came from Peter Buckskin’s review of Koorie educators, one of a number of

studies conducted as groundwork for the reforms.

“Basically, (it) told us that Koorie educators were underpaid, under-resourced and required an expanded repertoire of skills,” Fitzgerald says. “This is what has led to the new positions and significant upgrading. It’s unprecedented.”

But the mechanism for the restructure has been last year’s Education Support Agreement. That was “a huge win for the AEU,” says Fitzgerald, an AEU member. The union was a strong advocate for Koorie educators throughout negotiations.

The AEU’s Carolyn Clancy believes that Wannik could become the model for the rest of Australia.

She says the strategy, devised by the Education Department and the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association Incorporated (VAEAI), is already creating far greater awareness of Indigenous issues throughout the education sector, and has lifted the profile of the dedicated Koorie workforce.

Some department negotiators had little understanding of what KEs did in schools, she says, and didn’t realise that many were undergoing training at their own expense.

“It’s great to see a pathway to ongoing employment for the dedicated Koorie workforce, and to really value what they bring to the job,” she says.

Why Wannik

Sam Kirby, Thornbury Primary SchoolPHOTOGRAPHER: THOM RIGNEY

Koorie educators play a key role in the Wannik strategy to raise Indigenous achievement and their work is at last being recognised with higher pay, greater autonomy and support. Rachel Power charts progress.

Koories turn the key


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Fitzgerald also describes as “groundbreaking” the profes-sional learning package for Koorie educators, involving individual PD plans and case management to build on strengths and weaknesses while acknowledging what staff have already done.

He understands that there may be some angst in the education sector, particularly over the decision to bring KESOs under the auspices of their region, instead of their school. Regions will decide where KESOs are based, but principals have been reassured that long-standing relation-ships will be recognised, he says.

At Thornbury, Sam Kirby says it’s logical to move staff to where the demand is, but that it “wouldn’t make any sense” to transfer those who have established long-term relation-ships with kids, teachers and the local community.

His principal, Kathleen Noonan, says her Koorie educators already work out in the community, with students in nearby schools.

“I do see that we need to support all Indigenous kids across the region, especially those in schools with small numbers of Koorie students, where their identity is not being celebrated.”

Lionel Bamblett, general manager of VAEAI, says the regional deploy-ment of workers is necessary to address the spread of the Indigenous student population (see box, left).

“We need to look at how we can support students and families, and a static base won’t do that. So we need a regional network arrangement.”

Carolyn Clancy says the main challenge for schools will be to look at different ways of utilising the Koorie workforce.

“In the past, it’s all been very ad hoc. KEs have often been used as a kind of integration aide in the classroom. Now their role will have much more scope, liaising with the community and building the

responsibility and awareness of all staff.”

A way forwardThe response so far among prin-cipals with well-established Koorie workforces has been positive — with some reservations.

Northland Secondary College principal Raffaela Galata-Brown says she is “delighted” to see a proper career structure and adequate funding for Koorie educators after years of paying her long-term KE a higher wage out of her own budget.

“It’s high time,” she says. “They have been undervalued and underpaid for way too long. It’s appalling the amount of work they’ve had to do on such a low wage.”

Noonan, at Thornbury PS, agrees that a properly organised career path is long overdue. Despite her efforts to pay higher duties allowances where possible, she has had a consistently high turnover of Indigenous staff because “the pay was so bad and the

job had little PD and no progression”.“It is such a complex role and

the poor educator is often the meat in the sandwich,” she says. “They are dealing with attendance issues, student welfare, home visits, looking at why kids might not be succeeding.

“Indigenous kids in schools come from lots of different mobs. The KE might not be seen as having any authority, but is still expected to provide the panacea. There’s a lot of mediation involved, and that does require a lot of sensitivity and skill.”

From next year, schools will be expected to work with regional Koorie Education Teams on all aspects of Indigenous education, and Wannik specifically.

Fitzgerald says every region is currently developing its plan. But despite early consultation, Noonan says she has since been left in the dark as to how the new arrangements will operate next year.

“We’re preparing for 2010 and I still don’t know the position of some of my staff members,” she says.

She believes consistency of practice across the state will be necessary to develop Wannik as a strong strategy.

“The reason the roll out of the Early Years Literacy Program was such a success was that every school was working with the same materials, we had access to professional development for the early years

co-ordinator, we knew what our objec-tives were, and we had the resources to do it.”

She says she is still waiting to see the Koorie Education Learning Plans (KELP) proposed for Term 1, 2009.

“It’s nearly two years and we still haven’t seen KELP. We went ahead and designed a plan to meet that part of Wannik, using our own money and CRT time, because we see it as important.”

Wayne Harradine, a Koorie Educator for more than 17 years, says Wannik is a “great initiative; a structured way forward that is based on community partnership.”

He is currently working with Koorie literacy coach Pamela Dowling to implement the Koorie Literacy Initiative at Warrnambool East Primary School. The intensive coaching program supports teachers to create change in classroom practice and improve student outcomes.

“Through Wannik, all staff must be cross-culturally trained. It’s really opened the eyes of classroom teachers, and is helping them to build a relationship with students.”

Dowling has been training teachers in Koorie English, so they recognise that certain words are being consciously used by students and don’t treat this as incorrect usage.

She has also organised a Bush Tucker Day at the school, when

» continued on page 18

Pamela Dowling and Wayne Harradine with students

Sam Morris and Hayley Eldridge at Warrnambool East Primary School

PHOTOGRAPHER: VICKY HUGHSON

Koorie educators play a key role in the Wannik strategy to raise Indigenous achievement and their work is at last being recognised with higher pay, greater autonomy and support. Rachel Power charts progress.

Koories turn the key


feature

Koorie Workforce PLANAS EDUCATION support staff, Koorie

educators (KEs) are employed under the ES Agreement. But until now, almost all were employed in Range 1 — the lowest, least autonomous rung on the ladder — and most were in fixed-term or casual positions.

All those in the Koorie education workforce are now eligible to translate to the new Koorie Engagement Support Officer (KESO) classification.

Those who meet the criteria immediately will be offered ongoing employment, without advertisement, at ES Range 4 — which pays up to 65% more and recognises significantly greater autonomy. At the top of the range, pay is $81,653.

Others will enter a transition process to gain the required skills and qualifica-tions on a three-year contract, during which they will be placed in Range 2 or 3, depending on experience. After this transition, if successful, they too will be given ongoing positions. By 2012, all should be on the Range 4 pay scale.

All current and new staff will be eligible for department-funded professional development.

So far, all bar two KEs have signed up to the new role. An additional 27 positions have been created under the reforms. ◆

WHEN Koorie educator Darryl Andy arrived at Bairnsdale Secondary

College “five short years” ago, he had serious doubts he’d made the right move.

“There was a classroom full of Indigenous kids and they were segre-gated. I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he says. There was no clear plan or strategy to improve outcomes for the students, who make up 5% of the college’s 1,100 roll.

Andy was being treated as an integration aide, with teachers calling on him to contact parents, outfit kids with materials and play an advocacy role for Indigenous students being disciplined.

“That’s not what I signed up for,” says Andy, who spent 20 years in the building industry before deciding to put his people skills to a different use. “I wanted more time working with kids in the classroom and out in the community.”

He began “asking questions that needed answers” and so started a dialogue with then new campus principal Graham Blackley, who had also recognised the need for change.

In 2004–05, Blackley and Andy attended professional development seminars with the Dare to Lead initia-tive and with Dr Chris Sarra’s Stronger Smarter Institute in Queensland, and “things just started to click”.

“We got different things out of it, but when we came back we were both really excited, knowing that change was possible,” Andy says. “Here was a totally different discussion around Koorie education.”

Blackley recognised Andy’s capacity to lead change, with the support of a team ready to tackle the issues head on. The first step was to challenge some deeply ingrained values and attitudes among staff that Aboriginal kids dropping out of school was “a normal thing”.

“We ran a survey asking staff whether they think Aboriginal kids are equally capable of learning alongside everybody else,” Andy says. “The fact that most said yes was a victory right there.”

In 2007 the school launched its own Koorie Education Plan, which made the success of Koorie students a responsibility shared by all employees of the college.

“It’s a very simple plan,” says Andy. “We took the focus right off the kids and onto staff. It’s about having high expectations of every student, from wearing the uniform to perform-ance in the classroom. Most of the things in our plan are what we’re seeing in Wannik now.”

The plan states: “If teachers believe the child will learn, then the child will learn. ... For some students, the classroom may be the one place that is demanding, challenging and supporting, where the children are believed in.”

The college has built “acknowl-edgement of country” into all formal events and displays informa-tion on each campus about the area’s Indigenous history, land and language. It has also strengthened its partnership with the Local Aboriginal Educational Consultative Group.

“Relationship-building is central to the plan,” Andy says. “Aboriginal people learn best through relation-ship; it’s cultural practice for our kids and it’s an opportunity for teachers to become better teachers.”

Students are kept well-informed about what to expect. Andy also promotes the plan out in the community and says parents support it 100%.

“Our interactions with families are not hostile anymore,” he says.

As a result, attendance rates have leapt from 21% to 80%, and suspen-sions and class exits have plummeted.

“We’ve had a great response from staff, which is why we’ve had such a good result,” he says. “There’s still room for improvement, but the gap has almost closed.” ◆

— Rachel Power

Hard questions, good answersKoorie kids were effectively segregated at one Gippsland college — until respect and recognition helped turn things around.

Darryl Andy, Bairnsdale SCPHOTO: MARK NEWMAN,

STRONGER SMARTER INSTITUTE

Koories turn the key» continued from page 17

parents are invited in to work with the Koorie educator to prepare food for staff and students. The day coincides with their regular Attendance Day Awards, which honour even small improvements in attendance.

In Koorie education, it’s usually the simplest programs that work best, says Harradine. “But it’s not just one-way traffic. A school’s Koorie education officer has got to work in with the principal and other staff, so that there is real integration going on among the students.”

He is excited about the workforce reforms. “It’s about actually paying us

a rate that matches our expertise and changing the role so it’s more about broader engagement.”

Bamblett says the VAEAI will be closely monitoring the rollout of Wannik, including the support programs for KESOs.

“We need high expectations in the classroom and we need to match that with high aspirations for our kids on our side,” he says.

“We’ve been talking about this for years — people wanting to move to a higher salaried position and take more responsibility — so we want it to work.” ◆


feat

ure

NOVEMBER 30, 2006 — the banks of AEU red in the MCG as

Victorians rallied against WorkChoices are Ann Taylor’s proudest and most abiding memory of decades as an AEU activist.

“It was so fantastic to see the strong presence of teachers and nurses there,” she recalls.

“The sea of red — (ACTU president) Sharan Burrow rang us from the other side of the stadium to say how impressive we looked.”

The AEU deputy branch president is one of four long-serving leadership officers to retire at the end of 2009.

Taylor, deputy secretary Christine Stewart and primary sector vice president Peter Steele were all elected as part of Mary Bluett’s New Direction team that came to power in 1997. Rob Stewart is the relative newcomer with just six years as deputy vice president of TAFE and adult provision.

The Kennett era was the backdrop to the 1997 elections. In the five years since he became premier in 1992, Kennett had closed 350 public schools and forced out more than 9000 teachers.

Taylor, a union councillor since 1977, said the fight back compelled

the newly-formed AEU to use modern campaigning methods — techniques other unions have since adopted.

“We used the media, polling, TV ads. These were new things for unions — not just activating members but getting the community involved. The AEU was at the forefront of these

strategies as a campaigning union.”Steele says: “We thought the

previous leadership had let Jeff Kennett walk all over us and we were well-prepared to take the Government on. There was a feeling that our team was really going to make a difference in helping teachers to fight for their causes.”

Getting all sectors of the union to work together in moving forward was also central to the new leadership team’s approach, Christine Stewart says.

“Even though we had different ways of getting there, we could overcome that and we had the same goal,” she says.

Since then, the union has put education firmly at the centre of the public policy debate — most strikingly winning a commitment from the State Government in 2006 to rebuild or upgrade every government school.

Taylor has also loved being part of the broader union movement through her role at Victorian Trades Hall Council, starting with the MUA dispute and culminating with her election as president from 2007-09.

“I was the first education union president that the Hall’s ever had. Nowadays unionists recognise that

educators are real unionists too, and that they bring strong campaigning skills and large amounts of active people into the union movement.”

Christine Stewart cites progress on health and safety issues and flexible work arrangements as gains she has been proudest of, as well as the shift

to involve members in developing agreement log of claims. “They know they will be listened to,” she says.

For Rob Stewart, elected in 2003 after serving as sub-branch president at NMIT, the high points have been negotiating three TAFE and AMES agreements, and winning individual grievances.

“The last agreement for TAFE was pretty outstanding at a time when people were saying we’d never get it,” he says. “It just proves that you should never give up.”

He has also been proud to stand up for Victoria’s “world class” public TAFE system which he fears is in danger of shifting its focus from educational outcomes to business and profit under the government reforms.

The former TV sound and produc-tion teacher says the role has been challenging.

“Nothing prepares you for this role,” he says. “You’ll sink or swim very quickly. You have to be so careful in everything you say or do because people’s careers are involved.”

Steele says he has been proud of promoting the union — “getting the colour and the logo out there” — through his role in developing merchandise for the branch. (Just

don’t call him Poncho Pete.)But for all four, it is the campaigns

that have energised them the most.“Being part of those big

campaigns has been exciting,” Steele says. Taylor says her big regret is not in the past but the future — that she won’t be part of the ongoing league tables and federal funding campaigns. But she adds: “Don’t worry, you’ll see me at rallies. I haven’t given away my poncho and my red T-shirt yet.”

Looking back, all four were active in the workplace before seeking elected office and each had their own spur for getting more involved. For Christine Stewart it was the Kennett closures, for Rob Stewart the sense that “there were certain rules for some and better rules for others.”

For Peter Steele it was being called up for army service as a teacher in Warrnambool in the 1970s — and realising the NSW union made up the salary of drafted members, but that the Victorian union didn’t.

“That’s the reason I became an activist,” he says. “I decided the best way to get Victorian teachers looked after was to get in there myself.

“If you aren’t happy with your union, you don’t walk away; you get in there and make it better.” ◆

Old hands take new directionWith 42 years of leadership service between them — and decades more as union activists — four stalwarts of the AEU say farewell this summer. Rachel Power meets them.

❛ I haven’t given away my poncho and my red T-shirt yet. ❜

L-R: Christine Stewart, Peter Steele, Ann Taylor and Rob Stewart


feature

HOW THE STATEstifles educationAs Australia adopts the UK agenda of standards, testing and tables, the biggest review of primary education in England for 40 years rings serious alarm bells. Research officer John Graham reports.

labelled it as “woolly and unclear”, “a backward step” and “not up to speed”.

The Cambridge Review has been described as the first comprehensive review of English primary education for 40 years. It sought to identify the purposes of primary education, the values it should espouse, the curriculum and learning environment it should provide, and the conditions necessary to ensure the highest and most consistent quality possible.

The review distances its own call for reform from the regular political and media attacks on the quality of teachers and schools. It describes such critics as “either careless with the facts or knowingly fostering a calumny”. Its research shows that primary schools are presently doing “a good job”, that the condition of the system is sound and that “primary schools may be the one point of stability and positive values in a world where everything else is changing and uncertain.”

The problem for primary education is “two decades of continuous yet piecemeal reform” where new policies have been imposed on teachers “at a rate which has made their assimilation and implementation nearly impos-sible”. The review found, for example, that between 1996 and 2004, govern-ment and national agencies issued 459 documents on literacy teaching alone.

Despite this tsunami of official improvement strategies there is little evidence that outcomes from schooling have actually improved, and much evidence that the quality of students’ educational experience has gone backwards. The so-called accountability agenda has in fact

compromised children’s entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum.

Instead of trying to raise the overall quality of education, accountability was limited to raising literacy and numeracy test scores “as measured by a set of relatively narrow indicators laid down more or less unilaterally by ministers”. The consequence has been more and more time devoted to literacy and numeracy (and test-related strate-gies) and less and less time to the rest of the curriculum.

The review recommends the re-integration of literacy and numeracy with the rest of the curric-ulum and a new emphasis on breadth, depth and balance. It calls for a guarantee that 30% of the curriculum be determined locally to give schools the flexibility to meet local needs and encourage innovation.

A major concern was the increasing encroachment of formal schooling on childhood. Teachers under pressure from the account-ability agenda have prioritised literacy and numeracy with 4 and 5-year-olds who are learning increasingly from lessons rather than from play.

More broadly the review identified the effect of a creeping “scholarisa-tion” on children’s wellbeing. Children spend longer in schools and school-related settings than they did 10 years ago, and when they get home they face more school work.

The review calls for an extension

of active play-based learning up until age 6, a greater emphasis on the development of personal qualities rather than on test results, a greater use of non-disruptive sample testing and teacher assessment, and an inquiry into raising the school starting age from 5 to 6, in line with most other European countries.

It also addresses the complex issues surrounding the model of the generalist classroom teacher. Research indicates that a broad and balanced primary curriculum is hampered by teacher subject knowledge limita-tions. The solution, according to the review, lies in training more teachers as specialists or semi-specialists and providing more resources.

Australia’s education system origi-nated in “the mother country”. The policies of both the Howard and Rudd Governments show that nothing much has changed. Reading the Cambridge Review findings makes you think as much about our system as theirs.

Its recommendations, therefore, are well worth a second glance. ◆

Robin Alexander writes on the Cambridge Primary Review in the latest Professional Voice, available free to AEU members from [email protected]. A 42-page summary and other material can be found at www.primaryreview.org.uk. The review (Routledge, 608pp) can be ordered from the publisher online at tiny.cc/VsxTx.

THREE years in the making, the final report of the Cambridge Review of

Primary Education in England believes that government policies have effec-tively taken control of pedagogy out of the hands of teachers.

It warns that the combination of prescribed pedagogy, high-stakes testing and the country’s national curriculum amounts to a “state theory of learning”.

To counter this situation, the review recommends a reduction in the amount and status of external testing, more locally-determined curriculum, a new emphasis in teacher education on critical engagement rather than compliance, and support for the funda-mental principle that governments and their agencies should not tell teachers how to teach.

Crucially, the review was inde-pendent of both the government and the education bureaucracy. Its team of 14 authors was led by Robin Alexander at Cambridge University and funded by an independent foundation.

This independence meant it could develop proposals which contradicted existing government policy, and were critical of the processes used to make that policy.

In fact it categorised those processes in ways which will resonate with most Australian teachers — “the empty rituals of consultation”, a prevailing secrecy and “quiet authoritarianism” and the impossibility of debating ideas or evidence which were not “on message” or which were “not invented here” (that is, within government).

Independence, however, comes with its own price-tag. When the final report was published in late October, the Brown Labour Government immediately


study


pro

file

“YOU will take your orders from us” — it’s a great line to use on an audience, but perhaps

not the best if your aim is to capture hearts and minds.

2009 has been a busy year for Geelong High School teacher Ubaldino Mantelli, who’s been highly visible in his local community, practising the arts of persuasion.

In July, he organised a forum to address parents’ fears about public education. He enlisted Chris Bonnor and Jane Caro, authors of The Stupid Country: How Australia is Dismantling Public Education, to help convince parents that they are doing the right thing by their kids by not sending them to private schools.

Mantelli also performed in three theatrical productions with the Geelong Repertory Theatre Company. Playing an Austrian Nazi in The Sound of Music, his other memorable line — apart from issuing those orders — was, “When will Captain von Trapp be returning?”

When it comes to defending public education, Mantelli’s diplomacy is softer than that of his onstage persona, but still passionate.

“The impetus for me was to realise there were like-minded people — friends of ours who I wanted to convince not to abandon the system when their kids got to high school,” he says.

“Geelong has a couple of very expensive schools and some cheaper privates that are being looked at by everyone we like, the people who are into music and art, who want a well-rounded education for their kids.

“If you remove those kids and, more impor-tantly, remove the parents, you’re residualising the system.”

As a father of three, and married to a profes-sional musician who benefited greatly from her scholarship-funded private education, Mantelli is

well aware of the pressure on parents to go private.He says although many parents disapproved

of the tactics used by the Howard Government to run down public education, on an individual level they feel they may jeopardise their children’s future

by remaining in a system that has clearly been neglected for a decade.

Mantelli emailed Jane Caro cold after hearing a radio interview with her. She agreed immediately to address his first forum in 2008 (which was

also addressed by AEU federal president Angelo Gavrielatos) and came back with Bonner this year as well.

At the time, Mantelli was grappling with his own doubts as he whittled down a shortlist of high schools for his children, and hearing gossip that one school had a drug problem. His faith in the public system prevailed.

“Jane told me, ‘Congratulations on having the conscience as parents to do it, because ultimately it’s not about the school, it’s about you’ — meaning a community of keen parents who are active in supporting the school make all the difference.”

Among the audience of parents, Mantelli was to find this was a common experience.

“We had one woman say, ‘I’m so glad that I’m not alone’. She felt that pressure; all her fellow parents were saying, ‘We want to send our kids to public schools, but we’re too afraid to’.”

Although Mantelli was ecstatic at the 2007 election result, he is dismayed that Labor will continue the controversial SES funding model, which sees $4.50 go to private schools for every federal dollar spent on public education.

“I’d like to see the government fund public schools properly. I think the recent model of funding for private schools with little account-ability needs to be looked at. For example, private schools should be opened up to Freedom of Information requests.”

He says he plans to keep working to raise the profile of public education. Unlike Captain von Trapp, Ubaldino Mantelli will be returning. ◆

Ubaldino Mantelli recognises the lure of private schools for nervous parents but has set out on a personal campaign to bring them back. Elisabeth Lopez meets a passionate promoter of public education.

The most important thing I take into work every day is … My sense of humour (and a few stories).

My best trick for coping with staff meetings is …To get involved (if possible) — and have a bus to catch at the scheduled finishing time.

My advice to a beginning teacher is ... Join the union.

The most important thing about the AEU is … The AEU is its members.

In my other life, I am ... A husband, a father, a son, a brother, a singer and ukulele player in the family band, an amateur actor, a would-be artist and writer, a sourdough breadmaker, an unashamed bandwagon Cats supporter (since 2007!), a basketball coach, a public education (services) advocate, a table tennis fiend and general ball chaser, a lazy gardener, a closet English teacher ...

The book that changed my life was ... A decade after I received it as a gift, I’m still waiting for How To Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui to take effect.

My favourite teacher at school was ... My Year 12 English teacher because she encouraged me and allowed me to be who I was at the time, and the deputy principal, who always had a sense of what it was like to be young and always carried himself with dignity.

If I had a private meeting with Education Minister Bronwyn Pike I’d tell her ... To listen to the teachers and spend more time and money on teachers’ and students’ real needs, so our comprehensive schools can be the first choice for parents.

show& tell

TRAPThe parent

DisabilityKerry Maher disability services organiser

Tackling occupational violence

ON MY recent workplace visits, members have given me numerous examples of occupational violence at work. Some have clients who are unpredictable

and violent, and incidents may occur on a daily basis.An AEU booklet entitled Your Rights to a Safe Workplace gives detailed

information on risk management and the powers that your elected Health and Safety Rep (HSR) has under the OHS Act.

Every workplace should have a copy — if you don’t, you can download it from our website www.aeuvic.asn.au under OHS, or call our HSR support officer Janet Marshall on (03) 9417 2822.

Your employer is required to respond to reported health and safety risks. Proper steps need to be taken to minimise and control risks. It is not part of your job to be assaulted or to suffer physical or psychological injury. Any worker injured in the course of work is also entitled to put in a WorkCover claim.

The AEU booklet includes an incident report form which can be photocopied — this can also be found on our website. We encourage our HSRs to forward completed forms to the AEU so we can identify workplaces where members are at risk and offer support. The forms also provide documentation for WorkSafe.

Janet Marshall can advise your sub-branch on how to initiate discussions with management around health and safety issues, and what to do if these discussions do not resolve your concerns.

Next year, we will be running information sessions on occupational violence, and organisers are available to visit centres to talk about OHS procedures and issues. Contact me or Meaghan Flack or your regional organiser if you need further help. ◆

Early ChildhoodShayne Quinn vice president, early childhood

Vote now for your community preschool agreement

Education SupportKathryn Lewis ES organiser

Let's be proactive

I AM continually taken aback by the lack of understanding of ES entitlements, in particular around redeployment, recall and time in lieu — all hot topics at

this time of year.I cannot impress enough how important it is to be proactive in these areas.

If you have encountered difficulties this term, you must discuss them with your sub-branch and start working on a local agreement that locks these entitle-ments in and improves your worklife.

ES members need to have input into the sub-branch to ensure all staff — teachers, office staff, integration aides, technicians and others — can raise and discuss their issues.

Our teacher members are often unaware that ES staff are sometimes denied basic entitlements, but when they find out, they are keen to work with ES members to make amends. So be active in your sub-branch. Our strength lies in working together.

Twelve months on2009 has been a good year for ES members. Our new ES Agreement is not so new any more — it is almost 12 months old (and before too long we will be gearing up for the next one).

Via the agreement, many members have won improvements in their working environments — most notably the number of successful range reviews from Range 1 to Range 2. Numerous members have benefited from the changes around contract employment and been offered either an ongoing position or a further contract without advertising — what a relief not to face interviews!

Our ES membership growth has been very pleasing with more than 1,600 new members since the agreement. That gives you a louder, stronger and more confident voice in 2010. ◆

THE ballot for the proposed Victorian Early Childhood and Assistants Agreement 2009 (VECTAA) opens on November 30 and closes at

5pm, Monday December 7.Fair Work Australia gave the go-ahead on November 11 for community

preschool employers to bargain together for a new agreement. Given we had reached an in principle agreement in May, this did not take long.

It is imperative that a majority of eligible voters vote in favour of this long-anticipated agreement, which will deliver significant pay rises and better working conditions. The AEU urges all eligible members to deliver a resounding YES vote.

Ballot papers can be downloaded at www.aeuvic.asn.au/campaigns/EC and must be posted to KPV at PO Box 1246, Collingwood 3066 or faxed to (03)9486 4226 by close of ballot.

This will be an historical agreement for a number of reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, it covers both teachers and education assistants; secondly, it embeds the principle of salary parity with school teachers; and finally, it is the largest of a very select few single-interest agreements to date under the new Fair Work Act.

Make it happen — VOTE YES.

Local government agreementThe Local Government Early Childhood Education Employees’ Agreement 2009 was overwhelmingly endorsed in October’s ballot of teachers, assistants, preschool field officers and activity group leaders employed by the 24 councils which opted to become party to it.

An application for approval was lodged with Fair Work Australia on November 6.

This agreement will represent a significant change to the nature of enterprise bargaining in local government for these employees and the AEU. It was negotiated in the context of the MECA 2005, the 1999 assistants’ award, various council agreements, and the Heads of Agreement reached in May by the AEU, Municipal Association of Victoria, LHMU and KPV.

The Heads of Agreement also underpin VECTAA (above), meaning staff across the two sectors enjoy the same key provisions. Consistent with the Heads of Agreement, the principle of no overall disadvantage has been applied.

Where councils have elected not to be party to the agreement, existing agreements continue to apply and the AEU will continue to negotiate any successor. ◆

AMESGillian Robertson vice president, TAP

Call us with your PD review concerns

AT THE time of writing, AMES teachers are awaiting the outcome of the new performance development process. Upon successful completion of the process, teachers will progress to the

new teaching classification level 7. The process has not been without concerns and the union has taken up issues with AMES management.

Individual members should contact the AEU membership services unit (MSU) for advice if they have any issues with the outcome of the process, or in fact if they have any issues in relation to their employment.

Call the MSU on 1800 013 379 or (03) 9417 2822 or email [email protected]. ◆


insi

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AEU

Women’sFOCUSCatherine Davis federal women’s officer

insid

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EU

Finally, girls get a toolkit tooA new AEU kit helps teachers to help girls know what to expect as they plan their careers — and what to do about it.

THE AEU has long been concerned that gender stereotyping in the Australian labour market, and a lack of gender in careers counselling material, is

contributing to the broadly traditional career pathways for young women.The effect of this has been lower paid, more precarious and certainly less

well valued occupations for women.The AEU Girls’ Toolkit, launched at the Federal Women’s Conference in

October, aims to provide website links for female students to help them make decisions about their education and employment futures.

Addressing factors such as gender wage gaps, the gender segregation of the Australian workforce, availability of workplace flexibilities and traditional careers advice models, the toolkit aims to build girls’ and educators’ awareness of the impact their education and career choices may have.

The girls’ toolkit also aims to highlight that these matters are still of concern and that educators and careers advisors in particular should be equipped with resources and an understanding of how gender is still relevant when assisting students’ decision making.

The AEU Girls’ Toolkit can be found on the AEU Federal website at tiny.cc/VrBFs.

It includes a paper which forms the backbone of a set of resources for educators, and web-based materials for female students, which will assist in careers advice and choices.

Girls’ lives and potential can be negatively affected by:• An unstable home life• Health concerns• Financial concerns• Sexuality issues• Body image issues• Grief and loss.

In making career and life decisions, students should be aware of:• Pay differentials between men and women• Likely gender breakdowns in occupations• The possibility — or not — of flexible and family-friendly conditions• The likelihood of secure full-time or part-time employment, as opposed

to casual employment• Where to go for support, such as the relevant union, when things go

wrong in their working life• Which emerging occupations and industries might offer fantastic

opportunities• How important superannuation and retirement savings are for women• What sexual harassment and discrimination look like and what to do

about them if they happen, and• Fundamentally, that you can chose a career that you will love and are

good at, but that these choices may have consequences.Educators are encouraged to become familiar with the AEU Girls’ Toolkit

website, and recommend the information in it, and in the various website links, to their female students as they travel on the journey to adulthood. You should also use the toolkit with students, as appropriate, and share the careers resources with colleagues. ◆

THE Anna Stewart Memorial Program gave us the opportunity to meet women from a wide variety of unions working in the community. Our different

backgrounds — in TAFE, primary and as a secondary school ES respectively — gave us an insight into each other’s workplaces we otherwise would not have had.

Over the two weeks we were exposed to the inner sanctum of Trades Hall where women’s officer Jennifer O’Donnell-Pirisi facilitated sessions on racial and sexual discrimination, activism, pay equity, maternity, women’s rights and the Indigenous intervention.

At the AEU we shadowed dynamic Mary Bluett, Gillian Robertson, Barb Jennings, Kathryn Lewis and other AEU organisers. We travelled across the state, including to Bendigo where we attended the TAFE 4 All rally at Jacinta Allan’s office.

Our journey exposed us to the whole gamut of members’ issues — from the challenges of the P-2 Online testing to paid maternity leave.

The stand-out however was seeing the enormous collective effort involved in the fight for members’ rights, to enable our students and communities to have access and equity in education.

This also highlighted the responsibility we have as members to take action and to educate and inform our community. Members can take a more active role within their sub-branch to make effective change. The TAFE 4 All campaign needs your full support, so go to www.tafe4all.org.au to sign the petition and write to your local member.

We encourage other women members to take the chance to apply for the Anna Stewart Program. For us it has been a rewarding opportunity to under-stand and appreciate our union at work. The work our AEU staff accomplish every day is indispensable to our success in all our future working conditions. ◆

— Anne D’Angelo, Anastasia Foster-Brady and Donna Shell

Our ANNA STEWART fortnight

Anna Stewart turns 25THE ANNA Stewart Memorial Program for women unionists has celebrated

its 25th anniversary with a party at Trades Hall.The twice-yearly Victorian Trades Hall Council program, launched in memory

of the journalist and unionist who died in 1983, sees women from a range of unions spend two weeks at Trades Hall and with their own and other unions.

Dozens of AEU women have gone through the program over the years, some now holding senior positions in the union.

At the celebrations, AEU deputy president Ann Taylor recalled how few women held senior union positions at the program’s inception — and how much that had changed.

She said: “To be relevant, unions must be able to represent all workers and often need to be a voice for the community. We can only do that if our membership and activist base is inclusive of all groups, including women.”

She concluded: “There is still a lot of work for women and unions together. We need more wonderful, strong, fighting graduates of the ASMP in years to come.” ◆

Donna, Anne and Anastasia during their time at the AEU


AEU TRAINING Rowena Matcott and Kim Daly training officers

A GREAT start to 2010 There’s just one more thing to do before the holidays — plan an AEU training or social event for January’s three PD days.

MAKE sure your sub-branch gets off to a great start in 2010 by

setting aside time during the first three PD days for an AEU meeting.

Encourage new staff to attend and ask them to join the AEU if they are not already a member. It could be a formal meeting or the first of many social events — morning tea, icy poles or drinks can be a good way to encourage ES and teachers to attend.

Set up a laptop so newcomers can join online.

Don’t forget to update us with contact details for members and sub-branch officials. Having the correct details (including email addresses) means we can inform you of other training opportunities.

PD days — let us run your workshopJanuary’s three pupil-free days are also a perfect opportunity to invite us in to run a PD workshop. We can tailor these for teachers, ES staff or both, primary or secondary — just let us know what you need. Topics include:

• VIT registration processes for new teachers

• Organisational wellbeing — occupational health and safety, managing change, managing stress, bullying

• Performance and development reviews

• Application and interview skills, including Recruitment Online

• Consultation — Know Your Agreement

• How to make a local agreement• Legal liability.

For more information, or to book a

session, call Kim Daly on (03) 9417 2822 or email [email protected]. Our 2010 calendar can be viewed in full at www.aeuvic.asn.au. ◆

TERM 1 COURSES DATE LOCATION

AEU ACTIVE (Education Support) 24-25 FEBRUARY AEU Abbotsford

AEU ACTIVE 24-25 FEBRUARY Karingal/Altona

AEU ACTIVE 2-3 MARCH AEU Abbotsford

PCA FORUM: Understand your Agreement 9 MARCH (1pm) AEU Abbotsford

ES MEMBER FORUM: Know Your Agreement 9 MARCH (4.30pm) AEU Abbotsford

NEW REPS ONE-DAY WORKSHOP 11 MARCH AEU Abbotsford

MEMBER FORUM 11 MARCH (4.30pm) AEU Abbotsford

YOUNG MEMBER ACTIVIST PROGRAM 16–20 MARCH AEU Abbotsford

AEU ACTIVE 16–17 MARCH Dandenong Club

AEU ACTIVE 17–18 MARCH Leongatha

ES CONFERENCE 23 MARCH Geelong


Victoria Teachers Credit Union is committed to fostering growth in the Education Community by providing a wide variety of sponsorships and donations, as well as supporting education projects.

Our very own Teaching Initiatives Program provides funding to Schools and Preschools to allow educators to implement innovative teaching ideas and programs. Since the program’s inception in 1993, Victoria Teachers Credit Union has donated over $325,000 to 297 Schools and Preschools throughout the state.

This year, twenty-one Victorian Schools have been given the opportunity to bring their innovative teaching ideas to life with funding through the Teaching Initiatives Program.

Victoria Teachers Credit Union recognises the wide reaching benefits and contribution that learning and education bring to society. That’s why we are proud to support Schools and Preschools striving for excellence within the Victorian Education Community.

For further information about the Teaching Initiatives Program, please call a friendly Relationship Officer on 1300 654 822 or visit www.victeach.com.au.

teaching initiatives program 2009

School/Preschool Name Proposal

The Grange P-12 College Implementing a two day Health and Wellbeing workshop to provide students with information to assist them in leading a healthy lifestyle.

Gordon Primary School To create ‘Family Fun Bags’ full of books, games and puzzles which will encourage families to spend time together and develop a love for literacy.

Oakleigh South Primary School The ‘Let’s Play’ program, run by parents, helps develop play-based learning opportunities for Preschoolers.

Sebastopol Primary School To help students develop a thought provoking approach to guided reading to improve their critical thinking, comprehension and reflection practices.

Epping Views Primary School Students will contribute to the creation of an annual ‘eBook’ that highlights and celebrates the School’s achievements.

Maldon Primary School Students will document the relationships they’ve built with the elderly residents of Maldon Hospital to celebrate its 150th Anniversary.

Research Pre-School To purchase bridge climbing equipment to improve their children’s motor skills confidence.

Marnebek School To engage, inspire and empower students through the formation of a School Rock Band.

Ascot Vale Primary School A joint project between Ascot Vale Primary School and Ascot Kindergarten to create learning communities that share resources and skills.

Maple Street Primary School Children will visit the local Elderly Citizens Residence and local Preschools to strengthen community links and develop supportive relationships.

Moonee Ponds Central School The School will purchase a worm farm and from this, the worm castings will be sold to generate funds for future environmental projects.

Warragul & District Specialist School To implement a series of ‘city adventures’ that are educational, provide new experiences and allow students to engage with the community.

Emerson School To construct a mud trials car though the Automotive Program which will foster teamwork, personal development and literacy and numeracy skills in students.

Oxley Primary School To implement a functioning kitchen garden program involving regular food preparation and cooking classes.

Redesdale Mia Mia Primary School The School wishes to re-establish its community wetlands garden to enhance student’s personal learning and encourage community engagement.

Lancefield Kindergarten To develop a raised vegetable garden and digging patch which will help students develop new skills, learn about how things grow and promote this practice at home.

Yarra Junction Primary School To use the skills and fitness elements of boxing to engage students while building self discipline, trust and a belief in themselves.

Kensington Primary School The Program will teach Prep – Year 2 students how to ride a bike in a safe manner and promote cycling as a form of ‘active’ transport and recreation.

Benalla West Primary School The project will incorporate a fitness walking/cycling program within the Schools Integrated Studies Continuum to create a collaborative educational project with other Schools.

Burwood East Primary School The program will encourage students to reuse food waste to produce compost for their vegetable gardens by maintaining a healthy worm farm and compost area.

Warracknabeal Secondary College Students will assist in the creation of a training course which will provide students with an incentive to improve their fitness.


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David Bunn membership services unit

THE vast majority of managers and employers with whom the AEU deals worked in a reason-

able and humane way through the 2009 bushfires, and the union also had success in representing a number of cases of special hardship.

This piece briefly sets out the major considera-tions in terms of employment conditions in the case of a repetition of the fires. Here’s hoping that no AEU member needs this advice in the coming months.

If your employer decides to close a workplace because of the threat of fire, that does not neces-sarily mean you can go home. The employer has the right to direct you to an alternative worksite.

This alternative must be a safe one, and the travel distance cannot be unreasonably more than normal. The duties you can be asked to do should relate to the normal duties for which you are employed.

Other situations arise where the workplace is safe and functioning but the member’s home is at

risk, or it is impossible to reach work from home.In the first instance, the employee will generally

be able to access carer’s leave if they are involved in looking after immediate family or members of their household.

If the situation is not covered by carer’s leave, or if the member has already exhausted their entitlement, they should first ask for paid leave on compassionate or hardship grounds. If that request were to be refused then the member should contact the union.

Where the workplace is inaccessible from home, the employee would be expected to cover the absence from work by leave of some kind (such as long service leave or annual leave) — which should readily be given.

Members of the emergency services can access extra leave when they are called upon to fight fires or assist victims. For school-based employees this is a codified right, but in other cases it will be a matter of reasonable custom and practice; the union can assist members as they discuss the matter with employers.

The 2009 fires continue to have a traumatising impact on the lives of individual members, students and communities. Most employers provide access to counselling through employee assistance schemes. If you need such support and cannot locate it through your employer, you should consult your GP about access to bulk-billed counselling assistance. ◆

What are your rights in a bushfire?

MSU closureTHE six officers in the Membership Services

Unit answer your calls eight-and-a-half hours a day, five days a week.

On Wednesday December 16, we are having a professional development day to review 2009 and plan for 2010. Officers will not be available until 3pm. We apologise for any inconvenience but this day is essential for us to plan how best to serve our members. ◆


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In Victoria and throughout Australia there is a growing teacher

shortage, most severely seen in challenging secondary schools.

Awareness of this has led the Australian Government to seek new ways to increase teacher numbers. One solution they think they have found is Teach for Australia, using Teach for America as a model.

Doubling as an interven-tion strategy for disadvantaged schools, the program is essentially a “boutique” system for teacher training, to attract “high-performing” graduates away from corporate careers.

Trainees receive only six weeks pre-employment training and then teach a 0.8 teaching allotment for two years. During that time they undertake an accredited teacher qualification.

The underlying leap of faith is that a high-achieving graduate will make a good teacher. But regardless of how impressive they are in their chosen field, a six-week preparation for the classroom is simply inadequate.

Imagine the outcry if doctors or

lawyers — or even motor mechanics — were let loose to practise after only six weeks. But apparently it’s good enough for our most disadvantaged students.

A study of Teach for America by Linda Darling-Hammond concluded that teachers in Houston who entered the profession without an approved level of training and certification were initially less effective than tradition-ally qualified teachers and left the profession at higher rates. Their students also achieved significantly poorer results.

If we are genuinely to address the teacher shortage and the educational outcomes of disadvantaged young people, we need more than gimmicks.

We need to make teaching a more attractive profession in terms of wages, conditions and workload.

We also need to facilitate and better resource some of the outstanding work being done by some university courses in matching theory with supported practice in disadvantaged environments.

We need to look seriously at financial support for teaching students and at secure ongoing work when they graduate.

The Federal Government’s plan sets a worrying precedent in the training of our future educators. We should be aiming for the highest possible standards in teacher training, not for the quick fix. ◆

No way to tackle a shortageTeach for Australia represents a worrying trend in teacher training.

James Rankin graduate teacher organiser

VALE Bill Maxwell

Feb 9, 1934 — July 2, 2009

BILL Maxwell, an outstanding principal and educational

innovator, died aged 75 after a short illness.

Bill graduated from the Ballarat School of Mines as an electrical and mechanical engineer. After briefly working in industry he answered an ad for maths/science teachers which led to a lifelong dedication to education and Victorian technical schools.

An early appointment was at Prahran Technical School where Bill taught (and coached) Kevin Sheedy. He became principal of Preston East Technical School (PETS) in 1976 and immediately banned the strap, a stance which became law in Victoria a few years later.

Bill was a member of the Technical Teachers Union of Victoria (TTUV) at the time and remained a union member, actively supporting union causes. His unionism and leadership style were both informed by a strong sense of fair play, educational equity and community ownership.

PETS gave second and third chances to many students after other schools had given up. He also welcomed active unionists as teachers, some seen as trouble-makers by their previous schools.

He involved parents, teachers, the TTUV and students in the school’s activities and processes, an approach which coincidentally attracted Aboriginal students and their communities. He introduced pastoral care and mini-schools, motorcycle pre-driver education, a hands-on aeronautical course and built Namaste House, a community house and child care centre.

He developed a Preston East Network of schools, with the community health centre and a community education officer as key elements. As a senior education department official recently mused, “We will never see the likes of Bill Maxwell again.” ◆

— Bill Sheridan

“An insult to student teachers” TEACH for Australia is a lazy approach to tackling the shortage of teachers and is not a

viable long-term solution.Undergraduate education students feel short-changed; they chose teaching because of

their passion for working with young people and making a difference in society. The Teach for Australia design encourages applicants to fall back on education if they’re unsuccessful in their respective fields.

In my experience, fellow students and peers in the Bachelor of Education course struggle with classroom management. Many pre-service teachers comment on the difficulty of effective teaching when managing the modern classroom.

Teach for Australia graduates might be able to inspire those who are already academically inclined, but the substan-tial issues around classroom management require more than a six-week summer school.

Students will take advantage of their under-qualified teacher’s inexperience and miss out on vital learning opportunities.Education students are already pleading with course designers to incorporate more classroom management theory

and practice into the BEd. This is a short cut that’s not going to work. ◆— Craig Kenner student teacher at Victoria University

PD in the pub IS BACK

MARCH 2010 sees the return of our popular professional develop-ment sessions, PD in the Pub. Glen Pearsall will be delivering the

behaviour management course across the state with sessions in Mildura, Warrnambool, Melbourne, Caroline Springs, Bendigo, Morang, Frankston, Croydon, Geelong, Wodonga, Traralgon and Ballarat.

Check out the AEU website at tinyurl.com/yfltuwc for further details.


Safety MATTERSChristine Stewart deputy branch secretary

Farewell to armsWe’re a long way from enjoying a safe working environment for every teacher and educator. But sometimes it’s good to reflect on how far we’ve come.

THIS will be my last “Safety Matters” column.After 12 years, I am stepping down from the AEU and as I reflect on my

time here, I can see that there’s still a lot to be done, but we have made some progress in the fight for safer workplaces.

There have been two key improvements — on workplace violence and on stress.

When I first started at the union I was horrified to hear that assaulted members in disability settings or special schools were regularly told: “It’s part of your job — if you can’t take it, get out.”

This was so common that one of the first things I did was call a meeting of disability members with a WorkSafe officer. Watching the relief on members’ faces on hearing her say: “This is not part of your job, and it is not acceptable” was fantastic. And her advice was practical as well as uplifting.

Today, challenging or violent behaviour from students and clients is consid-ered a risk factor in the vast majority of workplaces, and several special schools and disability centres have procedures that have been effective in reducing the number of violent incidents.

There is now a recognition that a safe workplace is a right, not an added extra. Unfortunately this principle is not always implemented, so our challenge now is to make it happen. The war is ongoing to prevent all such injuries but we have made progress.

The second area of improvement is stress. I can hear you all yelling at me that stress is still a major risk factor. I agree — in fact I believe the level of stress is greater now than it ever was and is the biggest challenge we face in OHS in education.

But when I started, the first battle was getting any stress-related claim treated as a work-related injury and getting the causes of that stress recog-nised as a risk to workers’ health. Stressors were not a widely recognised area of concern for health and safety reps.

Yes, most Workcover stress claims are still knocked back — but no longer because they are not a recognised injury. The 2004 Act changed that.

WorkSafe now trains its inspectors to consider risks to psychological health as well as physical injuries. There are still many barriers to having stress dealt with effectively — one of the biggest risks to my stress levels has been the slow pace of change. But change is happening.

So who made the difference? We did! Yes, I know it’s a cliché but it is true — the union movement united has had some major victories.

I’m not saying everything is fixed — far from it. And even if that nirvana existed we would still need to be vigilant to ensure things did not slip backwards.

But by standing up for what is right, we do make a difference and sometimes instead of looking at how far we have to go, we should look at how far we have come. It will give us the impetus to keep fighting. ◆

Simone Ball & Jobbin John Holding Redlich

Can you be libelled by students on Facebook?

WITH the advent of social networking sites, what is and is not acceptable to post online is a hot topic in many countries.

Instances of students posting defamatory comments about their teachers or school are becoming widespread. But how does the law of defamation apply here?

Australian courts have stated that everyone who “takes part” in communicating defamatory material is a publisher, and therefore liable for its publication. In the context of the internet, this may not be clear cut. It can become even more complex when children are involved.

A person’s reputation depends upon how that person is viewed by others. Consequently, for the action of defamation to be established, defamatory material must have been communicated to someone other than the victim; this is known as “publication”.

Publication has a much wider meaning in defamation law than its colloquial meaning, which is usually confined to printed material, such as magazines, newspapers or books.

The internet takes publication a giant leap further, as it can make defama-tory content available to a broader audience on a global scale, particularly through applications such as forums and news feeds.

Note that it is not just the original author of material who may be found liable for defamation — it is not a defence to argue that one is merely a conduit and that another party was the content provider. The position varies somewhat where the reproduction of the offending statement(s) is by a party that can qualify as a “host” or “provider” (ie, where that party has no editorial control). In these cases the Defamation Act provides protection where the host neither knew nor ought reasonably to have known that the material was defamatory and that lack of knowledge was not due to their negligence.

Therefore, if the operator of a website hosting defamatory content becomes aware of it, a failure to remove that offensive conduct exposes the operator to the risk of liability and defamation law. There is no obligation for the operator to constantly moderate the content on their site, but a failure to monitor the site and at least respond to notification of problematic content may affect their ability to rely on defences to defamation.

It is advisable that any material be removed promptly when potentially defamatory statements are highlighted to the host or provider.

Cyber-bullying as defamationThe Federal Government’s initiative, NetAlert, defines cyber-bullying as “bullying that is carried out through an internet service, such as email, chat room, discussion group or instant messaging. It can also include bullying through mobile phone technologies such as short messaging service (SMS).”

In Victoria, the Crimes Act 1958 contains provisions for stalking which could be extended to catch cyber-bullies who publish information on a victim on the internet or other electronic communication, with the intention to cause mental harm or to cause the victim to fear for his or her own safety.

Sending messages that are simply defamatory however, is less likely to attract the operation of this legislation. ◆

DEFAMATION online


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WILSONS PROM/WARATAH BAYCosy 3 bdrm SC cottage. Wood fire; verandas; sunsets; myriad native birds, fauna & flora; scenic walks, beaches. www.promclose.com

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FRANCEStone houses in tranquil village surrounded by vineyards, near Carcassonne. Sleep 4 and 8. From $550 p/w. Website: www.frenchrentalhouses.bigpondhosting.com email [email protected] phone 0414 968 397.

FRANCE — PROVENCERestored 17th-century house in mediaeval fortified village of Entrevaux. Spectacular location, close to Côte d’Azur and Italy. Contact owners (03) 5258 2798 or (02) 9948 2980. www.provencehousestay.com.

FRANCE — SOUTH WESTRenov 17thC 2 bdrm apart in elegant Figeac,“centre ville”, or cottage in Lauzerte, 12thC hilltop village. Low cost. www.flickr.com/photos/clermont-figeac/ www.flickr.com/photos/les-chouettes/ Ph teacher owner (03) 9877 7513 or email [email protected] for brochure.

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ITALY — UMBRIAApartment. Beautiful sunny 2 bdrm. Historic Centre Citta Di Castello €625pw 2p, €675 3-4p. 0414 562 659 [email protected]

PROVENCE — LANGUEDOCLarge village house. Luxury plus location. Suitable for up to eight adults. (03) 5444 1023 www.houserentalfrance.com.au.

ROMEStudio apartment, Piazza Bologna, beautifully appointed, sleeps 2, opens onto garden courtyard, $1100 pw, telephone 0419 488 865 or www.ninoapartmentrome.com.

SOUTH OF FRANCE — LANGUEDOCTwo charming newly renovated traditional stone houses with outside terraces. Sleeps 4 or 6. Market town, Capital of Minervois, wine growing region, close to lake, Canal Midi, Mediterranean beaches, historic towns. From $460 per week. Visit, Web: www.languedocgites.com Email: [email protected].

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VILLA TUSCANYThree bdm classic tuscan country house, stone construction, external shutters, terracotta floors, fully equipped kitchen, lge outdoor terrace, panoramic views, complete privacy, 5 mins to shops/services, direct bus service to Florence $1500AUD/week www.italyallover.com [email protected]

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We run day trips, tours, retreats, even in school holidays, or let us arrange your next social club event. Contact us at email: [email protected] or call Liz on 0417 366 841. www.holidaywiththegirls.com.au

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AIREY’S INLET HOLIDAY RENTALHoliday rental, 3 bdrms, 2 living, large decks, 1 acre garden, bbq, woodfire. Phone 0416 234 808.

AIREY’S INLETSATIS BEACH HOUSE

Stylish and comfortable 3 bdrm house for six on the beach side of Great Ocean Road. Paddle our canoe on the inlet, walk to the lighthouse, cliff walk and beaches. Phone (03) 5380 8228 or email [email protected].

APOLLO BAYThree bdrm holiday house, sleeps 8. Short walk to beach, shops. Available weekends, weekly, all year.Phone (03) 5826 9445.

BEACH HOUSE AIREYS INLETTwo bdrm, very close to beach, shops, pub. Summer rental: $920 per wk (Dec-Jan). Off-season: $570 per week or $135 per night (2 night min.) Kate: [email protected] or (03) 9486 2222.

HOLIDAY HOUSE PHILLIP ISLAND, VENTNOR

Two bdrm sleeps 6, available weekends and holidays. Jane (03) 9387 9397 or 0431 471 611 or Louise (03) 9343 6030 or 0413 040 237.

LAKE HOUSE HEALESVILLEIs the perfect place to relax and revi-talise. Boutique-styled home, suitable for one or two couples. Nestled in a very quiet location and is blessed with picturesque rural views and overlooks a beautiful lake with abundant birdlife. Contact Joan 0427 960 738www.lakehousehealesville.com

LORNE COTTAGESleeps 4, panoramic views, 5 mins beach and shops. Available December and January. Phone (03) 9387 4329.

OCEAN GROVEA lovely modern 3 bedroom holiday home for six, immaculately furnished and fitted out. Beautiful beaches, pelican landings, boat ramps, one of Ocean Grove’s best views. Handy to shops, golf club, restaurant, coffee shop & 5 minutes walk to surf beach. Stunning location, good proximity to all the Bellarine Peninsula has to offer. Relax on the front verandah soaking in the beauty of the river 50 metres away, enjoy a glass of wine while watching sensational sunsets.Phone (03) 5254 3263 for bookings.

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RETIRING SOON?Volunteers for Isolated Students’ Education recruits retired teachers to assist families with their Distance Education Program. Travel and accommodation provided in return for six weeks teaching. Register at www.vise.org.au or George Murdoch (03) 9017 5439 Ken Weeks (03) 9876 2680.

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THIS festive season you can support a long-term solution to

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APHEDA's projects give people in developing countries the skills and knowledge to gain independence and fair and decent work.

You can choose from one of four new designs for 2009 and pay only $12 for a pack of 10 or choose from mixed packs of past designs for only $9. Download an order form from APHEDA at www.unionaidabroad.org.au.

Gifts that Change LivesThe Gifts that Change Lives card range turns a tax-deductible donation into a gift you can give to family and friends, with benefits going to APHEDA’s overseas projects. When you make a donation to one of the following projects you will receive a gift card showing how the donation will change the lives of those who need it most:

• $20 provides fabric and materials to support the training of 20 women in making traditional Lao skirts

• $30 will assist skills training programs run by the Women’s Unions in Vietnam

• $40 allows two women from rural East Timor to attend a literacy training course

• $50 helps unions in southern

Africa to meet the challenge of HIV for workers and their families

• $75* provides materials and supplies for two women, following a four-week training

course in Aceh, to earn an income and lift themselves and their families out of poverty

• $100* can provide 1000 fingerlings (young fish) each for 30 Cambodian families to grow in their household pond, providing both nutrition and a source of income

• $200* provides textbooks for young refugee Palestinian

women studying in Lebanon with the support of our partner, the Women’s Humanitarian Organisation

• $500* provides medical care for Burmese refugee children

with serious illnesses through the Mae Tao Clinic on the Thai-Burma border.

*APHEDA lets you contribute part donations toward any of their larger Gifts That Change Lives. For example, if you wish to contribute to the project working with Palestinian refugees (normally a $200 donation), you have the option of nominating a smaller denomination (minimum $20) to the project instead. You will still receive a Gifts That Change Lives gift card as recognition of your contribution. A truly life-changing gift to give to friends and family. ◆

Send a gift of change & hope

For more information about ordering your cards contact

[email protected] or call (02) 9264 9343/1800 888 674 (toll free) or download order form from www.unionaidabroad.org.au.


intern

ational

It’s that time of year — six long weeks ahead and a chance to forget work books and

delve into something you really want to read. So kick off your shoes, grab a cool drink and settle down with Rachel Power’s pick of the

best of summer reading.

PIANO LESSONSAnna Goldsworthy (Black Inc.) A RICH, eloquent and funny memoir from an internationally successful concert pianist about the lessons of her youth, only some of which involved a piano.

LOVESONG Alex Miller (Allen & Unwin) AN AGEING writer meets a man with a story to tell; one that began when he was a young teacher backpacking through Europe. Essential reading from one of Australia’s best authors.

BROTHERS & SISTERS Charlotte Wood (ed)(Allen & Unwin) STORIES from a stellar line-up including Christos Tsiolkas, Robert Drewe, Cate Kennedy and Nam Le. A gift for the sibling you get on best with — or perhaps the one you don’t.

THE 10 RULES OF ROCK AND ROLLRobert Forster (Black Inc)GO-BETWEEN’S songwriter turned acclaimed music critic combines his writings for The Monthly with some new reflections to create this treat for music lovers.

THE DANGER GAME Kalinda Ashton (Sleepers) A VIGOROUS and poignant debut novel about familial bonds that isn’t scared of making a political statement about everything from state education and unions to welfare and economic rationalism.

LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN Colum McCann (Bloomsbury/Allen & Unwin) SET against the sweeping changes of the 1970s, Philippe Petit’s real-life Twin Towers tightrope walk is the touchstone between 10 varied and intense lives in this novel of great culumative power.

THE GOOD SOLDIERS David Finkel (Scribe) EMBEDDED with Batallion 2-16 in Baghdad, this riveting and profoundly moving report gives a grunt-eye view of life on the frontline and beyond, to the impact on the returned.

HOW TO MAKE TROUBLE AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, Iain McIntyre (Breakdown Press) FASCINATING interviews with Australia’s best troublemakers, including John Safran and The Chasers, and pics galore, make for a riotous scrapbook covering our radical history of revolts and resistance.

PARLOUR GAMES FOR MODERN FAMILIES Myfanwy Jones and Spiri Tsintziras (Scribe)AS Catherine Deveny says: “Who knew you could have so much fun without power cords?” Revive family togetherness (and escape the heat) with this comprehensive guide to indoor games.

FABULOUS FOOD, MINUS THE BOOMBAH Jane Kennedy (Hardie Grant) ’TIS the season for stuffing your face. Kennedy, comedian and mother of five (yep: “taking her commitment to comedy too far”), can help you keep the flavour, but lose the boombah (her word for food that makes your bum big). Simple recipes, great for those nights when you’re tempted to get takeaway — again.

ONE MAGIC SQUARE Lolo Houbein, (Wakefield Press)NO MORE excuses! This book shows how, with a 10-minute effort, you can start your own food garden in a single square metre.

VAN DIEMEN’S LAND James Boyce (Black Inc.) A GROUNDBREAKING history of the settlement of Tasmania, this dazzling book has passion and scholarship in equal doses. Combining environmental insights with an unrivalled grasp of the politics of the frontier, it will change the way you view Australian colonial history.

FOOTY PASSIONS John Cash and Joy Damousi(UNSW Press)FOOTY tragics can get all the back-up they need with this book arguing why perfectly intelligent people find genuine meaning in football.

THE AUSTRALIAN LONG STORYMandy Sayer (ed) (Penguin) A DIVERSE selection of a neglected genre in Australian fiction, these tales combine the intensity of the short story with the complexity of a novel from some of our best-loved authors, including Tim Winton and Helen Garner.

THE TALL MAN Chloe Hooper (Penguin)IF YOU haven’t read it yet, you should. A thrilling piece of true-crime reportage and a fine work of literature that is already being

hailed as an Australian classic.

THE FUTURE BY US: VISIONS OF AUSTRALIA 2020 AND BEYONDHugh Evans and Tom O’Connor (Hardie Grant)LIKE A beacon through the gloom, this collection of essays by the cream of Australia’s young leaders offers real hope for future change.

TRUTHPeter Temple (Text) AT THE close of a long day, Inspector Stephen Villani stands in the bathroom of a luxury apartment. In the glass bath, a young woman lies dead, a panic button within reach. So begins the gripping follow-up to Temple’s bestseller, The Fatal Shore.

DOWN TO THE CROSSROADS: ON THE TRAIL OF THE 2008 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONGuy Rundle (Penguin)IT MIGHT seem so last year, but this remains one of the most biting takes on any election, let alone one of the most curious and momentous elections of our time, from one of our savviest political wits.

Time to RELAXwith a good BOOK


culture

WIN teaching resourcesSIGN UP TO THE AEU E-NEWSLETTER AT www.aeuvic.asn.au FOR THE CHANCE TO

WIN MORE GIVEAWAYS!AEU NEWS is giving members the opportunity to win a variety of Australian resources for their school libraries from our good friends at ABC Books, black dog books, Text Publishing and Ford Street Publishing.To enter, simply email us at [email protected] by 10am Tuesday, December 8. Include your name and school or workplace. Write “Win Teaching Resources” in the subject line.Prizes will be sent directly to the winner’s school or workplace with a special inscription recognising the winner. Good luck!

Congratulations to our winners from AEU News issue 7: The WotWots — Helen Clifton, Latrobe Special Developmental School; Nitboy x 2 (Lift Off! and Bug Out!) — Caroline Beilby, Laburnum Primary School; The Night We Made the Flag — Luke O’Meara, Kilsyth Primary School; Gamers’ Quest and Pandora in the Congo — Vaya Cross, Warragul Regional College.

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Who's on the Money by Chris MilesA history of Australia told through the lives of the men and women on our bank notes. Stuck on History by Chris MilesThe changing selection and nature of our stamps shows the evolution of how Australians view themselves.My Canberra Project by Rachel Flynn

Gregory's school trip to Canberra results in an entertaining (but fact-filled) insight into our nations's capital. black dog books, RRP $16.95 each.

The Wrong Grave by Kelly LinkThe Wrong Grave tells the story of a sixteen-year-old boy who digs up the grave of his girlfriend in order to rescue the poetry he buried with her. These stories will put goosebumps on your goosebumps. Text Publishing, RRP $22.95.Crime Time – Australians behaving badly by Sue BursztynskiA collection of true Australian crime stories ranging from bushrangers such as Ned Kelly and Mad Dan Morgan through to serial killers, fraudsters and modern celebrity criminals. Ford Street Publishing, RRP $16.95.

A Bush Christmas by CJ Dennis, illustrated by Dee HuxleyWith its wry satire and affection for all things Australian,

A Bush Christmas is a classic Australian story for a new generation of readers. black dog books, RRP $24.99.

A Wiggly Holiday — A Fun Wiggly Activity Book

It's holiday time so get ready to have fun with The Wiggles and

their friends. ABC Books, RRP $12.95.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

by Heath McKenzieChristmas is a time of giving and

some people will do anything to find that perfect gift. A tale of one man, 12

days, 78 gifts with hilarious pullout postcards, photos, letters, flyers, height chart and newspaper clipping. black dog books, RRP $29.99.


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Documents

AEU News, Issue 8, 2009