The world of work

Look, I’ll be up front right from the start. Your humble colleague (i.e. me!) is not really a ‘spooky’ type of guy. By that I don’t mean that I’m not ‘strange’........... some of you have already given me that label. Rather, I don’t really believe in premonitions, parallel universes or the Loch Ness monster. However, events that confronted me over a 24 hour period on last Friday and Saturday have given me some cause to wonder.   It all started when R--- and my good self attended a drug education TAD session on last Friday at Nirimba. I actually ran into someone who was in my same ‘unit’ at Sydney Uni way back in the seventies. We reminisced, swapped hazy undergraduate stories, compared career battle scars and celebrated late middle-age/ early old-age type stuff. I thought nothing more about this until...............   Saturday A.M. The Princess and I decided to make a dash into the city for something to do. Don’t get me wrong.... we’re really exciting people no...

Friends   The life of an assistant principal in a large metropolitan primary school is an exciting and rewarding one. Each day presents new challenges and I, for one, relish the opportunities to assist tomorrow’s leaders in realising their dreams.   Many of you know that Regan Central is located in the A.P.’s Office and an unannounced visit from any of you will often find me arranging paperclips in neat geometric piles or, perhaps, staring out the window at the vista that is suburban Wentworthville in 2008. Plenty of laughs were had all round late last week when a colleague- on her way to the toilet– disturbed your humble writer inspecting his chin in the brasco mirror to ascertain if he had got the morning’s shave lines just right.   An assistant principal in today’s Department of Education and Training also has to do a lot of thinking. I’m constantly pondering stuff like-   1.   If I could do it all over again, would I? 2.   Does Jennif...

I've noticed a lot of media attention over the last few days regarding some research published by the Hunter Institute of Mental Health. Briefly, the institute's studies have found that up to 50% of new teachers (a 'new' teacher being anyone in the first ten years of their service) leave the job within five years and that one important factor is a perceived lack of time for adequate preparation and planning.......in other words, that workload associated with being a teacher.   Now this is where my confusion begins. Firstly, a high attrition rate with new teachers and extended periods of service has always been a feature of the profession. The alluded to 50% was as accurate for the seventies when I commenced teaching as it is now and, further, it has remained remarkably constant for the forty odd years in between. We are definitely NOT talking about a new trend but, rather, an enduring marker.   Secondly, whilst workload may play some role in new teachers ...

The Performance and Development Framework was touted, at the beginning of 2015, as a process and schedule that would not add to a teacher's workload and, even more importantly, not distract him/ her from the core business of teaching and learning within their classroom.   Well, one colleague mustn't have received that memo. In a letter to 'Education' earlier this week (October 26, 2015), Julie Ross writes........   'The issue of workload is raised regularly at both Council and Annual Conference. Teachers are overwhelmed by the reform agenda and its impact on their daily teaching practices: an AEU survey of more than 2000 teachers this year found that 73 per cent believed their workload had significantly increased in the past two years.   The imposition of the Performance and Development Framework, together with the professional development plans and goals, observations and feedback and formal review meetings is adding to the workload of classroom teach...

  UNIONS  It has almost become du rigueur to knock unions in this country over the last thirty years or so. Adjectives such as irrelevant, anachronistic and negative are frequently scaffolded around the noun ‘union’ as if there was some magnetic force pulling them all together. Yet the need for unions in 2017 is just as great as when they were initiated here in Oz in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. Unions, in fact, pre-date even political parties in our fair land but there seem to be increasing numbers of punters who choose to side-step the very real benefits of becoming active union members…..and it’s starting to show. One only has to look at the recent winding back of penalty rates, the virtual stagnation of wage levels for millions of compadres over the last decade and a significant denudation in associated working conditions to realise that all is not well in the lucky country. All of these ‘developments’ have occurred- or are occurring- as the i...