The Australian Education Union has frightened teachers away from signing a new enterprise bargaining agreement with a school autonomy scare campaign that has gone ''too far'', a government representative says.
The head of the Education and Training Directorate, Jim Watterston, says the union's arguments against giving principals more hiring and firing powers have pushed beyond the reality of the ACT schooling system.
He was tired of hearing claims that students would suffer when their teachers changed jobs halfway through the year.
''People will not be sacked, we're not trying to curtail tenure, we're not trying to get the cheapest possible teachers into schools,'' he said.
''We are trying to give principals and school executives the opportunity to pick the most appropriate staff.''
School autonomy is the third issue listed by the union as a ''deal breaker'' in what is now the seventh month of teacher EBA negotiations. The other two are pay parity with NSW and leading teacher salaries.
An OECD report (School Accountability, Autonomy, Choice and the Level of Student Achievement) found ''on average, students in schools that have autonomy in hiring decisions outperform students in schools without staffing autonomy'' but only where external exams, such as NAPLAN, were used to hold teachers accountable for results.
This finding has been supported in Sydney, where schools reported that choosing their own staff helped improve academic scores, behaviour and attendance.
But the AEU's ACT branch secretary Penny Gilmour said reports had not been so favourable in Western Australia and Victoria, where schools have operated autonomously for up to 15 years.
She said principals interstate had commented that while a broad range of teachers applied for advertised positions, schools were often unable to hire the most suitable person for the role due to limited staffing budgets.
Highly qualified teachers had also said they found it harder to get a job as they were too expensive.
''There may be some initial benefits in that the cost of staffing may be less than the budget provided, giving us additional base,'' Ms Gilmour said.
''But if schools continue to recruit less experienced teachers, that advantage will disappear every year as teachers move up the incremental scale.''
Ms Gilmour added that schools were expected to take on extra administrative duties in hiring their own staff without extra support.
But Mr Watterston argued that the ACT was a very different system to Victoria and Western Australia and said such arguments undermined the moral obligations of principals.
He said the current system, where five principals were taken out of school in term four each year to interview 800 applicants, at a cost of $1 million, was ineffective both for the system and for schools.
''Up until now, independent and Catholic schools can select high-performing trainee teachers while they're at the school as part of a placement and offer them a job but we have to wait until our annual placement round,'' he said.
''Why would these graduates choose to wait and try to get into the ACT public system if they can't be guaranteed employment?''
Mr Watterston said the current system was too generic and resulted in teachers being placed in schools that might be far from their first choice, which could result in them being dissatisfied and not fully committed to the school's vision.
He said school autonomy was about empowering principals to find the best staff for their students and that improving student outcomes was the key driver behind the initiative.
''Why aren't the AEU talking about falling enrolments in high schools in the government system and what we can do to improve public perception of the brilliant high schools we've got?'' he asked.
''We are not doing anything to convince the public that they are outstanding.''
The union and government met for a further round of negotiations yesterday but Ms Gilmour said no significant progress was made.
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