Saturday 27 April 2013

SCHOOL REFORM (6)

On Thursday, the Government stepped into the middle of the dispute between the teachers and their local authority employers, imposed a settlement that was approved by Parliament yesterday in a speeded-up legislative process, and thereby ensured that children will go back to school on Monday after a forced absence of 4 weeks. That was a bit longer than I had expected, but the Government were keen to try and suggest that they would let "the Danish model" take its course.

The teachers feel that the Government has merely imposed the same settlement that the employers had wanted from the start. The existing rules on non-teaching work hours will be scrapped, decisions on how much preparation is needed for each subject will henceforth lie with the headmaster, and the special rule for 60-year old teachers (who have long been allowed to work four weeks a year less for the same pay until they retired) will be scrapped. The head of the teachers' union called the whole negotiating process a farce.

However, although the employers have won on the issue of principle, they have not got everything their own way. Headmasters will have the power to decide when and how non-teaching work will be carried out; but if it is done at weekends or other unusual times, then teachers will get large overtime payments. And although the special rule for 60-year olds will go, it will be phased out over a long period of time (only teachers who are younger than 50 will not be affected at all) and without any loss of pension rights. And there will be an extra Dkr.1 billion for training. In other words, the settlement will be expensive.

The next couple of months will be taken up with getting through the exams taken in the last year of school (one of the official reasons why the Government stepped in), so there should be a lull in the conflict. However, it is likely to blow up again as the Government begins to tackle the underlying reason for wanting to change teachers' working practices, namely in order to move to a greatly expanded school day similar to that in the U.K. Given teachers' widespread anger at the terms of the imposed settlement, agreement on this will not be easy. Expect more posts on this subject later this year.

Walter Blotscher
Posted by Walter Blotscher at 21:31

2 comments:

  1. Michael28 April 2013 at 09:47

    I agree that 4 weeks is a v long time to allow the thing to drag on in the exam term.
    Although the employers will have lost goodwill, what exactly does that translate into in a school system where as I understand, there is already so little extra curricular activity offered?

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  2. Walter Blotscher28 April 2013 at 12:40

    Hi Michael,

    One of the themes of the proposed reform is to bring extra-curricular activity within the school system. Sports, for example, tend to take place in clubs rather than at school. This is fine for most children, but the Government is worried that the minority who don't play sports in clubs don't play sport at all, thereby contributing to obesity, poor social contact etc etc. It is the same for other non-core activities.

    The teachers accept much of this analysis, but say that if more things are to be done in school time, then someone has to run them. And since (eg) sport in clubs is run mostly by volunteers after work hours, a move to bring it within the school system requires either more teachers, or (they suspect) existing teachers being required to work longer by cutting back on their preparation time. Hence the dispute about non-teaching work arrangements was a precursor to a more fundamental dispute about what exactly schools should do in the future.

    Regards,

    Walter

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