Panel report a mixed bag - PPTA on G3 Report

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Media Release

24 January 2002

Panel report a mixed bag

The ADR Panel’s recommendations on degree equivalent teachers will not ease the crisis in secondary teacher supply, PPTA president Jen McCutcheon said today.

The panel recommended that only those teachers with qualifications equivalent to level 7 on the National Qualifications Framework could access the new G3+ step 14 of the secondary pay scale.

It also recommended that the Ministerial Taskforce on Secondary Teacher Remuneration review the salaries of teachers in specialist areas such as technology, computing and word processing for whom a level 7 qualification may not be relevant or available.

“We now know that teachers with qualifications such as the Diplomas in Fine Arts, PE and Home Science can access the new step,” Mrs McCutcheon said.

“However, teachers with some diplomas, trade certificates and advanced trade certificates in the technology and trades area appear to miss out. These people teach in curriculum areas that are already short-staffed.”

Mrs McCutcheon said she was pleased the panel was able to meet and consider the issues PPTA raised. Both parties are bound by the outcome. However, it seemed the Government’s desire to constrain costs outweighed the equity of honouring the past arrangements it entered into with G3 teachers.

“We still maintain that to say to these teachers that their qualifications are now not good enough is unfair and a breach of past undertakings, and we still believe the best way forward was to apply the level 7 benchmark to new entrants to secondary teaching, not those already in the system.”

Mrs McCutcheon said it was essential the taskforce meet urgently to consider what needed to be done before the recruitment and retention problems in some curriculum areas resulted in curriculum collapse.

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