State schools are cancelling, deferring and reducing their plans for school camps because increases to time in lieu provisions for teachers will stretch school budgets and make overnight experiences for students less affordable.
A new workplace agreement provides government school teachers with hour-for-hour time in lieu for out-of-hours work on school activities including camps, excursions and information nights.
School principals say they’ll have to cut the length of school camps next year or call them off because of the new teacher pay deal. Credit:iStock
But the deal between the Andrews government and the Australian Education Union provides no extra funding for the time off, forcing principals to choose between cutting camp costs, dipping into school budgets to pay staff for extra hours or hiring casual relief teachers so that teachers can leave or start early.
Australian Principals Federation president Tina King said principals supported paying teachers for work outside a standard 38-hour week but the Department of Education, not schools, should fund time in lieu accrued by teachers.
She said without financial support, some government primary schools might limit camps to year 6s only, and secondary schools might only hold camps for year 7s.
“Some schools which might have done a five-day, four-night camp in Canberra may be offering a revised program; it might just be a two-night, three-day program in Victoria,” King said.
Tina King says government schools might only hold camps for year 6 and 7 students because of the new teacher EBA.Credit:Jason South
Aaron Sykes, principal of Melba College in Croydon, said months of work had gone into planning camps for next year and staff would receive time in lieu.
“In our case, camps and other extracurricular events are estimated to exceed 900 hours of time in lieu. Adding the college production lifts this total to over 1300 hours or over 170 days of time in lieu,” he said.
“Schools with healthy balance sheets have more options available to acquit time in lieu but every dollar where time in lieu is acquitted by replacing a teacher with a casual relief teacher or paying them for their time in lieu is a dollar not spent on students.”
Anthony Hall, managing director of Victorian camp provider Hall’s Outdoor Education, said that since the new agreement had been confirmed, many schools had either deferred booking a camp next year, or cut the duration.
“We would have 20 per cent of schools saying that they cannot book school camps for next year, or they have decreased the amount of time they’ll go on camps because there is no increased funding and any funding for casual relief teachers has to come out of the normal school budget,” Hall said.
Hall said schools that had booked camps every year for a decade were holding off until they had more certainty about how to manage the cost of time in lieu for teachers.
“We’ve got schools that have been going with us for the last 10 or 15 years that are saying, ‘We can’t commit now for term one next year, we can’t put a deposit down because we don’t know how we are going to fund it yet’,” he said.
AEU Victorian branch president Meredith Peace defended the deal and called on the Victorian government to boost funding to public schools to help fund time in lieu payments.
“It’s a significant milestone that, for the first time, the Victorian government has agreed to the provision of time in lieu for school activities that occur outside the paid working week,” Peace said.
Australian Education Union’s Meredith Peace says the new deal addresses unreasonable teacher workloads.
“At a time when we’re witnessing wage theft in many industries, continuing to rely on education staff to work for free is no longer viable or appropriate, and we welcome the state government’s recognition of this.”
A union survey of 10,800 government school staff last year found teachers work an average of 15 hours of unpaid overtime a week.
“It is the Andrews government’s responsibility to deliver the funding and resources public schools need to provide a high-quality education to all students, both within and outside the classroom.”
An Education Department spokeswoman said time in lieu was an “obligation under Fair Work – it should not impact school camps or excursions”.
The spokeswoman said the department would provide guidance and support to schools to ensure students had the same access to camps and excursions in 2023. The cost of employing casual relief teachers comes out of school funding.
A $113 million department program to encourage students to go on camp has been extended in 2023. It provides free camps to students in schools that either did not run camps between 2018 and 2021, had a COVID shutdown of more than five days last year, is regional, or has high disadvantage.
But the program does not include increased funding for schools, and Berwick Lodge Primary principal Henry Grossek said it did nothing to help them meet the increased time-in-lieu costs of offering camps next year.
“This is simply a half measure approach which will do nothing to assist schools in meeting the time in lieu costs of running camps next year,” Grossek said.
Berwick Lodge Primary School principal Henry Grossek during COVID school closures. Credit:Paul Jeffers
Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals president Colin Axup said time-in-lieu provisions significantly add to the cost of a camp.
“For a three-day camp, each staff member would on average accrue two days of time in lieu that has to be acquitted with either two days or the equivalent time off, or two days of salary,” he said.
“While we support the introduction of time in lieu in principle, we have significant concerns about the impact it will have on educational programs such as camps.”
Colin Axup says staff will accrue on average two days of leave on a three-day camp.Credit:Joe Armao
King called on the Department of Education to give schools extra funding to pay teachers for extra hours during camps and overseas trips, like schools receive funding for swimming programs.
“Teachers want payment for time in lieu, that is their preference. They don’t want necessarily be away from their kids or classes,” she said.
The workplace agreement also provides teachers with a 2 per cent annual pay rise over the next four years and less time teaching in classrooms.
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