Work is currently underway to finalise an agreement so it can be put to ballot.

We acknowledge the work that has gone into producing a teacher pay deal that is the best in the country and will result in ACT teachers earning considerably more than their interstate counterparts. 

While further detail is to be developed on workload reduction measures, no workload reduction will occur until those measures are agreed and are being implemented.

Enterprise bargaining is the process of negotiation generally between the AEU and the ACT Government, with the goal of making an enterprise agreement. It is how we set the working conditions of teachers and (ultimately) the learning conditions of our students. That’s why enterprise bargaining is so important to our work as teacher-unionists.

At the moment, the ACT Government is finalising the draft agreement for consideration. 

Work is currently underway to finalise an agreement so it can be put to ballot. That agreement, with its improved pay and workload reduction measures, will not be in place until it has been voted on and approved by the Fair Work Commission.

We acknowledge the work that has gone into producing a teacher pay deal that is the best in the country and will result in ACT teachers earning considerably more than their interstate counterparts.

While further detail is to be developed on workload reduction measures, no workload reduction will occur until those measures are agreed and are being implemented.

We have a comprehensive set of claims in relation to workloads, pay and school resourcing that aims to genuinely reform the way our schools work. Some of the main claims we have include:

• Let teachers teach. We need dedicated time outside of the classroom where teachers are free to conduct their own professional duties.
• Reduce the red tape, over-reporting and duplication of work.
• Resource schools properly not just for student learning conditions, but also to ensure that staff can access their workplace rights and entitlements.
• Pay teachers a fair wage that is comparable to similar professions.
• Recognise that all work should be paid work and stop relying on volunteering and goodwill to run our schools.
• Let leaders lead. School leaders need time and resources to be educational leaders. This means that for school leaders we must: reduce the red tape, over-reporting, unnecessary compliance requirements and other responsibilities that have crept into a school leaders workload that should be performed by other agencies or parts of the Education Directorate.
  
  

We’re not just asking for these things because they benefit teachers. Because of the national teacher shortage, thousands of students in the ACT miss out on a dedicated teacher every day because their class is split, collapsed or cancelled. Our students deserve better, but spiralling workloads and unpaid overtime are driving good people out of our profession.

The offer includes improvements to both pay and conditions, with a particular focus on workload reduction measures. It is an offer that will see the ACT extend its lead over other jurisdictions as the best-paid teachers and school leaders in the nation.

Classroom teachers will receive pay increases of between 4.2% and 8.8% annualised, or between 12.6 and 26.5% over three years.

School leaders will receive increases of between 10.5% and 12.7% over three years. 
Note that the ACT is already the highest paid jurisdiction. 

Full pay tables will be made available as soon as a draft agreement is completed.

There are also a series of substantive improvements to working conditions. These include three additional pupil-free days, recognition of release time to complete planning and preparation and the centralisation of functions like building services to take the administrative burden away from schools.

Most importantly, the agreement includes a commitment to continue to identify systemic workload reduction measures over the life of the agreement through a Sustainable Workload Management Committee.

It is a significantly better offer than other employees and their unions have been able to achieve and is particularly outstanding for early-to-mid-career teachers.

For classroom teachers, the offer is for increases of between 4.2% and 8.8% per annum. The Wage Price Index (the average pay increase measure by the ABS) for public sector workers is currently 2.8% per annum. Other teachers who have recently signed on to new enterprise agreements have received average pay increases around the 2.5-3.5% per annum mark.

In comparison to the pay on offer for teachers in other states and territories, we were already the best-paid in the nation. This offer would extend that lead, as we are receiving higher percentage pay increases than have been offered elsewhere.

At the top of the classroom teacher salary scale, a classroom teacher will earn nearly $130,000 a year. This is approximately $11,000 more per year than the next highest-paid teachers. A teacher with Highly Accomplished or Lead Teacher certification will earn $136,601.

Yes, assuming Reserve Bank inflation projections are correct. While inflation is currently higher (running at 7%) it is forecast to drop rapidly over the term of this agreement to less than 3% by mid-2025.

All staff will receive a real-terms increase in their take-home pay. In most cases, they will receive a larger take-home pay increase through a combination of pay increases and tax cuts.

For almost all staff (including top-of-the-scale teachers and school leaders), there will be a real-terms increase to gross salaries.

For example, using Reserve Bank projections, the inflation-adjusted income of a top-of-the-scale teacher in June 2025 will be around $127k against an outcome of over $129k achieved through bargaining.

However, this agreement is also trying to make up for a small real-terms pay loss under the last agreement, particularly in the final 12 months of that agreement where inflation unexpectedly peaked at 7.8%. The new EA would make up for that lost ground: a top-of-the-scale teacher’s inflation-adjusted income from the start of the last agreement (April 2018) to the end of this agreement would be around $128k against an outcome of over $129,000.

While the AEU’s claim was for the same percentage pay increase across the whole workforce, the Government’s offer delivers bigger increases for those on lower rates of pay. This means that, while top-of-the-scale teachers and school leaders are receiving a nation-leading pay increase, these increases look smaller in percentage terms when compared to the increases being made to early-to-mid career teacher pay.

The main reason for this is that the pay offer addresses a competitive disadvantage with Catholic system schools. At present, a teacher stands to earn as much as $50,000 more over their first five years in the Catholic system because they have eliminated pay increments early in the salary scale. To compete with this, it was necessary to eliminate the same salary points in our agreement, resulting in very large pay increases over the lower to middle teaching classifications.

In addition to this factor, the ACT Government’s core pay offer for all public servants deliberately targets those on lower incomes for higher pay increases. They say that this is to provide greater assistance to those on low incomes, who are more heavily-impacted by cost of living increases.

We have been able to achieve a better pay offer than the core offer to all public servants by making changes to classifications for classroom teachers and school leaders B and C, as well as achieving an additional increase in the percentage pay rise for Principals.

The Fair Work Commission has announced increases to the minimum wage and award wages to commence on July 1, 2023. The minimum wage in Australia will be $859.32 for a 38-hour week, before tax.

Award covered employees are typically on much lower wages than those who have a union-negotiated Enterprise Agreement. The only way for us to get a pay increase is through a new enterprise agreement. 

Salaries for ACT Public School teachers greatly exceed the award rate, which is currently set at $82,152 for a teacher who does not have Highly Accomplished or Lead certification. This is nearly $50,000 less than our top teacher salary of $127,276 by the end of the new agreement.