In June the Teacher published information about two agreements between the Department of Education and teachers’ unions that will affect the salaries of teachers and principals.
The response to these articles from you, our readers, has been tremendous.
The Teacher has been inundated with questions about notches, levels, master and senior teachers and other intricacies about teachers’ salary structures.
Clearly only a few experts are fully informed about the ins and outs of your renumeration.
I regret that we had to close correspondence — questions and answers we published in our SMS section — on the matter of salaries. One of the reasons was that the questions tended to be quite repetitive and many of them had been dealt with in previous editions.
However, if we continue to receive queries, we may consider allocating space in a future edition to deal with the matters you have been raising.
What concerns me about the dozens of questions that you have sent to us is that there appears to be a massive lack of information on the ground on teachers’ salaries, increases, who are entitled to what, and so forth.
I would argue that the national Department of Education, as the employer and chief negotiator with unions, has a responsibility to provide employees with information. More importantly, what are your unions, who negotiate on your behalf, actually doing to communicate the details of salary changes to you?
You are paying membership fees to unions. What are you getting in return?
The fact that you are directing your question to the Teacher, is great, because it shows that you are reading the publication and that it is providing you with the kind of information you need and want.
But should you not also be directing your questions to your unions and demand answers from them?
I think the time is long overdue that teachers’ unions become more accountable to their members.
The only way this is going to happen is if you, their members, expect value for your membership money.