What the Tasmanian Liberals will do:

Offer Teacher Aides and School Support Staff a better deal and opportunities for further development and training.

What the Liberals will do:
A Hodgman Liberal Government would offer teacher aides and school support staff, such as library technicians, the opportunity to take up an additional 6 weeks work from 1 July 2010, so that their total employment would go from 42 to 48 weeks.

This would put up to an extra $2,400 into staff pay packets each year.

This policy funds up to 50% of teachers aides and library aides who are likely to wish to access the option of employment for 48 weeks, which is generally available to  school support staff and teacher aides in the rest of the country.

Teacher aides and library technicians would undertake other school-based work as negotiated with the schools and their principals.

This could be done before or after school or during school holiday times, and could include a range of after school programs, holiday and homework centre programs, breakfast programs, and school libraries being available during holiday times.

The Tasmanian Liberals, as part of the negotiations over teacher aides to be implemented March 2011, will look at introducing new levels of certification, and accreditation to enable them to work in some new situations such as these without supervision.

The Tasmanian Liberals view professional development for teacher aides as essential to ensure best practice in schools, especially in the areas of best instructional practice, special needs, behaviour management, literacy and numeracy support.

The Tasmanian Liberals would also work to ensure that Teacher Aide/Assistant Certificate III and IV studies are offered in the three regions of Tasmania, and will work to provide a better career structure for teacher aides.

The Tasmanian Liberals believe that Teacher Aides and support staff who are some of the lowest paid Government employees in Tasmania have been neglected for too long.

Teacher aides are vital to the support of teachers and students, and are quite often called upon to work intensively in one to one and small group situations, with students in literacy and numeracy support programs, students with special and additional needs.   Teacher aides are also called upon by the teacher to manage the rest of the class whilst the teacher focuses on individual and small groups needing intensive teaching.

Why this policy is needed
Currently, teacher aides are employed on a permanent part-time arrangement for 42 weeks a year, and are stood down over the holiday period. They are paid for a maximum of 45.5 weeks, because of 3.5 weeks accrued recreation leave, however, many are forced to apply for Centrelink entitlements to try to survive the long summer break.  There is currently a period of six and a half weeks each year when teacher aides are not paid.

This has lead to cases of hardship, and teacher aides struggling to find other part-time work to supplement their income.  Some are happy to have school holidays off, and would not take up further work opportunities. 

Sadly Labor has allowed the Polytechnic to offer Certificate III only ‘subject to funding’, and has ceased to offer Certificate IV, suggesting those wishing to do it should go to the Tasmanian Skills Institute.

However, the Skills Institute have also ceased to offer Certificate IV Teacher Aide/Assistant courses.

The Polytechnic has also declared that it will drop the Certificate III Teacher Aide 69827 course, which was developed over two years in close consultation with all stakeholders, in favour of a general education support certificate.

This will severely limit the opportunity of teacher aides and persons aspiring to a career as a teacher aide, as well as ignoring all the work that went into developing tailor-made Certificate III and IV studies for teacher aides as recently as 2007, which fully meet AQF standards.

After more than 11 years of Labor...
Labor has repeatedly refused to give teacher aides a substantially better deal.  After years of ignoring their pleas, Labor reluctantly offered some teacher aides annualisation, but limited them to a maximum of 42 weeks’ employment a year.

Labor has also presided over the steady downgrading in available in-career training opportunities for teacher aides.

Note: Costing for the 48 week model is based on 50 per cent of eligible teacher aides and support staff electing to take up this opportunity. The figure was based on a costing provided by the Government to the Budget Estimates Committee in 2009.