Victorian Government School Agreement

As has been flagged through previous communications, schools have been waiting for the approval of the new enterprise bargaining agreement – the Victorian Government School Agreement (VGSA). This has been an extremely complicated and drawn out process.

After 14 months of negotiation between unions, the DET and recently retired Education Minister, James Merlino, the new EBA has finally been approved by Fairwork Australia.

The new Agreement contains a range of new industrial requirements. One of these is known as Time in Lieu. This requirement is a response to the considerable number of formal after-hours commitments that school staff attend. These include Parent - Teacher Interviews, Camps, Concerts, Graduations, Information Evenings and many more.

These extracurricular events are not formally part of a school’s core work which is the delivery of the Victorian Curriculum. Extracurricular events are additional and have been provided by school staff, usually before or after hours through goodwill and to provide engaging opportunities for our students beyond that required by the curriculum.

Time in Lieu (TiL) for all teachers is now mandatory in all Victorian state schools. TiL must be paid to teachers for any hours worked for any school events after hours.

What about school holidays?

We appreciate the perception that teachers benefit from student school holiday periods; in reality, the ‘additional’ school holidays compensate for the many additional hours each week beyond the 38 hours of paid work, including the growing workload pressures to perform duties that are not to be covered by TiL: corrections, assessment analysis, planning, report writing and other preparation which covers the requirements of our core work. The vast majority of this work occurs outside the 38 hours of ‘paid’ work.

I fully support teachers being paid for work for after-hours events as would be the case in most industries; unfortunately the government has stated that there will be no additional funding provided to schools to pay for TiL.

With a multitude of questions and clarifications required from DET prior to being able to develop an informed response to TiL, I will be attending a number of principal meetings to discuss this matter with my colleagues, our School Leadership Team and our Consultative Committee as we consider the various requirements of the new EBA very carefully during the next month.

Almost certainly, there will be fundamental changes to how, when and if schools continue to provide the current range of extracurricular events. After consultation with staff and as further information becomes available, I will share and discuss our preferred way forward with School Council before providing an update to our school community.

Kind regards

Duncan

Junior School Production