Nearly 17,000 secondary teachers will meet up and down the country over the next fortnight to discuss their pay and conditions.
Their union, the Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA), last week rejected a renewed Government offer - a 10.6 per cent pay increase spread over three years.
The
offer included extra provisions for teachers with responsibilities, such as heads of departments and deans and a review on staffing levels.
PPTA president Robin Duff said yesterday that the offer amounted to "merely a rearrangement of the candles on the same sized cake".
He said the PPTA executive believed the offer fell well short of what was needed to make secondary teaching a first choice profession. "The Government's offer does not keep secondary salaries competitive and fails to address the critical issues of excessively large classes, teacher recruitment and retention, or the need for more time for heads of department to do jobs made increasingly complex and intensive by the NCEA," he said.
The union broke off bargaining six days into a scheduled 12-day negotiation last month and issued a press release and newspaper ads accusing the Government of breaking its promises. The Ministry of Education briefed the media on last week's offer before the PPTA rejected it.
The new offer would have taken the base salary for a graduate teacher from $40,586 now to $44,889 in 2009. The top rate would go from $61,323 to $67,824.
The ministry said that since 2000 the average teacher's salary, including allowances, had risen by 30 per cent to $64,000 and sat in the middle of the market.
- NZPA
