Education cuts: Tasmanian schools, colleges to shed jobs
As many as four full-time jobs will be cut from Tasmanian colleges and two from most state schools between now and June, the Government has said.
Education Minister Jeremy Rockliff also confirmed class sizes could rise, although he promised the average size would stay below 25.
Mr Rockliff said some remote and specialty schools would be exempt from the cuts, which he said were a result of the Australian Education Union's (AEU) refusal to accept the Government's latest pay-freeze offer.
The stand-off is the latest chapter in a protracted dispute between the Government and its workforce.
In April, the Government warned it may have to cut 1,500 jobs from the public sector, and since then a pay freeze has been debated as a means to save jobs.
Public sector unions then took to their case to the Industrial Commission, to no avail.
This week, they rejected the Government's latest offer of a 12-month pay freeze and vowed to take industrial action instead.
The Government said it would now cut more than 800 public service jobs in order to find budget savings, 266 of them from the education sector, which employs 7,600 staff.
In a letter to the Schools Association, Mr Rockliff revealed staff numbers were set to fall in almost all schools and colleges next year.
The Minister said while overall education funding had increased, the failure of the pay freeze deal had forced the Government to seek savings in staff funding.
"It is important to note, that the overall funding for staffing remains the same as it was outlined in the state budget," he said.
"However, because the unions chose to have a pay rise instead of a pay freeze, there is not enough money to fund the existing staffing levels."
He said disability support schools, early childhood intervention services and the state's 16 smallest schools would be exempt from the staff cuts.
Don't blame cuts on pay deal refusal: union
AEU president Terry Polglase rejected claims the union's decision to refuse a pay deal had resulted in fewer teachers in schools and criticised the cuts.
"That'll be three additional students, in the simplest terms, three additional students in every classroom," he said.
"And what will that mean? Teachers won't be able to communicate as much as they usually do with support workers, social workers, guidance offers and so on."
The Tasmanian Greens accused the Government of hiding behind the Gonski school funding deal to cut money from schools and colleges.
At the same time as cutting staff, Greens MP Nick McKim said Mr Rockliff was also talking up a record funding increase to schools of at least 5 per cent, saying it was linked to the Gonski deal.
Mr McKim said the Minister was giving with one hand while taking away with the other.
"Schools are basically provided with a budget that has two line items in it: one is the school resource package - which the school has the flexibility to determine how that's expended - the other is the staffing allocation," he said.
"So what you're seeing is school resource packages being increased, and then the very same minister clawing back potentially more than the increase in school resource packages."
