BY LESLIE RICHMOND
ADELAIDE — For the past two weeks, Craigmore High School in Adelaide's outer northern suburbs has been at the centre of student protests, almost daily news items in the Murdoch-owned Advertiser and threats of industrial action by the Australian Education Union (AEU).
The cause is the sudden and unexplained forcible transfer of five teachers by the Department of Education and Children's Services (DECS) late on August 15. The department's justification was a review of the school, which raised concerns over low retention rates, high absenteeism levels and poor South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE) results. The department has implied that these five teachers are responsible for the condition of an entire school.
This hides a thinly veiled exercise in union busting by DECS, with the wholehearted support of the ALP state government. The teachers involved are all long-term active unionists, and three are contesting union elections at the moment.
Craigmore is situated in the heart of an area beset by significant social problems — unemployment and overstretched health, welfare, and education services — and burdened by government neglect.
The review was initiated by DECS chief executive officer, Steve Marshall, after being approached by Craigmore principal Des Wauchope, and the district superintendent.
It followed industrial conflict at the school, which culminated in the AEU sub-branch at the school serving an occupational health and safety default notice, citing bullying and harassment of staff by management, work overload, and failure to consult as required under the Occupational Health Safety and Welfare Act.
When this did not result in action, the sub-branch initiated a ballot for a stop-work. During the ballot the teachers were served transfer notices.
DECS has since raised the prospect of special reviews of other schools, and the possibility of further forced transfers.
The majority of students and staff at Craigmore have been outraged by the transfers. Students immediately organised daily boycotts of lessons, involving most of the 800-strong school population, demanding that the teachers be reinstated. Regular protests are still being held.
Union members voted to begin a series of rolling stoppages — an action that has been put on hold pending a hearing in the Industrial Relations Commission.
Not surprisingly, given its historic hostility to teachers' campaigns, the Advertiser has devoted most of its coverage to profiling the position of DECS and Wauchope. Implicitly condemning industrial action and union resistance to neoliberal reforms, it has given prime space to any anonymous teacher/principal/departmental worker willing to attack the five teachers or the union.
In a fortnight of intense activity and media attention, no-one has been able to provide any specific reason or show cause for the transfers. No-one has demonstrated any professional failure by any of the five. Instead, Marshall has simply reiterated the findings of the review, and made statements criticising the teachers' inability "to work co-operatively with management in the reform agenda", and claiming their "conduct over a number of years has contributed to a culture that is unable to accept the necessary change".
The "necessary change" Marshall is talking about is Labor's revamp of the Partnerships 21 (P21) self-management scheme introduced by the former Liberal education minister, Malcolm Buckby, and overseen by the previous DECS chief, Geoff Spring.
Before his South Australian appointment, Spring worked as secretary of Victoria's department of education under Premier Jeff Kennett. He presided over the destruction of 8000 jobs in education, and the closure of hundreds of schools, whilst taking home a comfortable $250,000+ per year.
Under the guise of school "autonomy", P21 forces schools to operate to tight budget constraints at the local level, eroding central staff allocation and, eventually, equity between schools. Craigmore, resisting government pressure with strong unionism, has never introduced the scheme.
Premier Mike Rann, education minister Trish Worth and Labor MP Michael O'Brien, whose electorate takes in Craigmore, have weighed in to the argument variously criticising the teachers, supporting the actions of DECS, and dismissing the students' seriousness and intent in protesting.
In discussing a proposal announced last week to develop Craigmore as a centre for IT studies, O'Brien stated, "I selected that high school because I thought it might be the first one we could turn around and it was the most problematic because we had this small circle of hardline trade unionists."
The Liberal opposition's carping over conditions at Craigmore is another example of its deep hypocrisy. Millions of dollars in funding cuts, the abolition of equity programs and the removal of hundreds of staff from the education sector by the Liberal government in the mid 1990s heavily contributed to the current problems.
Given the history of union activity at Craigmore, the department and the government would dearly like to keep these union activists from wider influence. The fight to defend the Craigmore five is a fight to defend unionism. Strong teachers' unions are necessary to defend the quality of education, as evidenced by the level of student support for the transferred teachers.
As one of the protesting students said, "Mike Rann thinks we are playing silly games. This is not a game, this is our education."
From Green Left Weekly, September 3, 2003.
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