Education Minister Ben Carroll has declared his intention to give teachers a “proper pay rise” after a Commonwealth-appointed watchdog outed Victoria as the only state failing to meet its minimum funding commitment to government schools.
Carroll’s comments, included in an unreported speech last week to a business forum, were cautiously welcomed by the Australian Education Union, which says teachers in Victorian schools feel “completely abandoned” after 2026 budgets recently provided to principals contained no provision for staff or salary increases.
Education Minister Ben Carroll says Victoria’s government school teachers, the lowest paid in the country, deserve a “proper” rise.Credit: Joe Armao
They come amid ongoing discussions between the state and federal governments on a long-term funding agreement to make good on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s pre-election promise to deliver in full the Gonski reforms. Victoria signed a heads of agreement with the Commonwealth in January but has yet to secure a deal.
All other states have secured agreements with Canberra.
In his speech, Carroll credited Victorian teachers for delivering this year’s nation-leading NAPLAN results and said that with the current enterprise bargaining agreement with teachers due to expire at the end of next month, the best way to recognise them was through a substantial pay boost.
“Our teachers deserve nationally competitive wages – a proper pay rise,” he said. While Carroll did not stipulate what this meant in dollar terms, he described a fair pay deal as being based on “modern wages” that would enable career teachers to financially plan their lives.
AEU Victorian branch president Justin Mullaly said the comments were consistent with those previously made by the minister, but there was nothing in next year’s school budgets to indicate that more resources were on the way for public schools.
The union was angered by this masthead’s revelations earlier this year that the Victorian government had secretly ripped $2.4 billion from state schools and pushed back from 2028 until 2031 its previous timeline to fully fund its share of the long-awaited Gonski reforms designed to address classroom disadvantage.
The union has since organised a series of demonstrations outside the offices of government MPs, to protest against the funding cuts and is preparing to escalate its campaign if the government heads into an election year without a new wage deal.
“We need someone within government advocating for significant pay rises,” Mullaly said. “But what matters is whether they are going to be delivered. You can’t get the pay rises unless you have the bucket of money that will fund them.
“There is no bilateral agreement and I haven’t seen any evidence that we are going to get one that matches what is happening in other states and territories.
“The profession feels abandoned and neglected.”
Australian Education Union president Justin Mullaly addresses teachers protesting outside the office of Education Minister Ben Carroll.Credit: Eddie Jim
The union is pushing for a 35 per cent pay increase over three years to bring Victorian teachers in line with the pay of teachers in NSW. A graduate teacher currently earns $78,801 in Victoria compared with $90,177 in NSW, and the pay gap between experienced classroom teachers is $15,000.
The National School Resourcing Board, an independent watchdog that measures the schools funding of state and territory governments against their agreements with the Commonwealth, last month singled out Victoria as the only state that had failed to meet its minimum requirements in the last reporting period.
The board found that in 2023, the Victorian government provided state schools $9.01 billion, compared with the minimum $9.23 billion it should have under its funding agreement. While the board accepted there were “mitigating factors” to explain the $219 million shortfall, the contrast with NSW is stark.
Over the same reporting period, NSW provided $12.87 billion to its government schools, which was $1.3 billion more than its minimum commitment. In 2023, while NSW funded 80.23 per cent of the School Resource Standard – an estimate of how much money a school needs under the Gonski funding formula to meet the needs of its students – Victoria provided just 68.76 of the standard.
Under a heads of agreement signed in January between Albanese and Premier Jacinta Allan and their respective education ministers, Victoria pledged to lift its funding of government schools to 75 per cent of the School Resource Standard but has not publicly said when this benchmark will be reached. The Commonwealth agreed to provide the remaining 25 per cent but not until Victoria fully funds its share.
The board found that Victoria and the Northern Territory were the only non-compliant jurisdictions.
Carroll, in response to the board’s findings, said an increase in School Resource Standard indexation after Victoria finalised its 2023 budget and “student characteristics beyond what was anticipated” – greater than expected student needs – had led to the funding shortfall.
“The board found that Victoria’s mitigating factors were reasonable,” the report concluded.
NSW dramatically accelerated its commitment to fully fund Gonski after the Minns government was elected in March 2023 on a campaign promise to hire more teachers and improve teacher salaries. The NSW government subsequently delivered an 8 per cent “once in a generation” pay rise in September 2023, which added nearly $10,000 to starting teacher salaries. There has since been a further agreement to increase salaries by 10 per cent over three years.
Teachers in Victorian government schools are, on average, the lowest paid in the country.
Opposition education spokesman Evan Mulholland said the report findings confirmed the Allan government had “walked away” from public school students to meet the escalating cost of major infrastructure projects.
“The decision to not meet minimum funding requirements is deliberate and calculated because the government has no money to provide appropriate wages,” Mulholland said.
“The premier has prioritised hard hats and publicity stunts over our kids’ education. You can’t pay our teachers and educate our kids in a rail tunnel.”
Carroll’s public comments signal that a step jump in teacher pay is needed to address this and restore the commitment of Victoria, Australia’s self-described “education state”, to the Gonski reforms.
The state government through Treasurer Jaclyn Symes is also publicly committed to reducing public sector costs. Symes, Carroll and Allan are all members of the cabinet’s budget and finance committee, which must approve any funding agreement with the Commonwealth and pay deal with teachers.
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