Federal Education Minister Jason Clare says he hopes the issues motivating teachers to walk off the job in Victoria will be addressed.
“Teachers do the most important job in the world. I want to see them being paid as good as they possibly can be,” Clare told ABC News Breakfast this morning.
“The big pay rise for teachers in NSW has seen vacancies in classroom drop to a 12-year low … the Victorian government’s got a big offer on the table here of a 28 per cent pay rise, which would be even bigger than NSW,” Clare said.
Pressed on whether he thought Victorian teachers had been underpaid compared to other states, Clare said he was not getting involved in individual negotiations.
“But the truth is we need more teachers, and we’ve got a shortage of teachers,” Clare said.
“We’re seeing some really big jumps in the number of people enrolling in teaching, and that’s a good thing. But we also want to make sure that our teachers are paid what they deserve, as well as taking some of that unnecessary admin burden off them, so they get more time to teach,” Clare said.
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