This time it is Matt Nurse who makes an idiot of himself:
Matt Nurse, spokesman for Education Minister Bronwyn Pike, said the Government wanted to lift standards in schools and find better career pathways for teachers.
But giving teachers a 10% wage rise and better working conditions would cost taxpayers $8 billion, he said.
"If we agreed to this claim we would have no money left for new classrooms, new technology or libraries for our students," Mr Nurse said.
"We will continue to discuss a new enterprise bargaining agreement with teachers once they return to the table and many things are up for discussion."
But giving teachers a 10% wage rise and better working conditions would cost taxpayers $8 billion, he said.
"If we agreed to this claim we would have no money left for new classrooms, new technology or libraries for our students," Mr Nurse said.
"We will continue to discuss a new enterprise bargaining agreement with teachers once they return to the table and many things are up for discussion."
The next day Stuart Brearley pointed out that Matt should have gone to school and done some maths.
Number-crunching
I NOTE that Matt Nurse from the Education Department states that giving teachers a 10% pay rise would cost $8 billion (The Age, 12/2).
That figure presupposes that the wage bill for Victorian teachers must be $80 billion. Given that the average teacher wage is $55,000, we must therefore have 14,545,455 teachers in Victoria.
This figure is almost 3.5 times our entire population. It must be untrue.
It would cost $121 million to give teachers a 10% pay rise, to bring them almost level with NSW. This is 66 times less than the figure quoted. Just where does the Education Department get its numbers from?
Stuart Brearley, Box Hill North
That figure presupposes that the wage bill for Victorian teachers must be $80 billion. Given that the average teacher wage is $55,000, we must therefore have 14,545,455 teachers in Victoria.
This figure is almost 3.5 times our entire population. It must be untrue.
It would cost $121 million to give teachers a 10% pay rise, to bring them almost level with NSW. This is 66 times less than the figure quoted. Just where does the Education Department get its numbers from?
Stuart Brearley, Box Hill North
I'll admit all of the $8 billion is going to wages but it would have to be most of it. And Stuart has ignored the extra costs such as superannuation. However, it does show what ministers and their toadies will say if they are desperate. I hope that one of the "many things (that) are up for discussion" is the reduction in the number of wasteful bureaucrats.
No comments:
Post a Comment