Prison teachers protest against job cuts and outsourcing to staff without degrees
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Version 0 of 1. Prison teachers at the Cessnock correctional complex stopped work for an hour on Monday to protest against the loss of their jobs and the outsourcing of New South Wales prison education to staff without formal teaching degrees. A similar unauthorised stop-work action by staff at the Long Bay correctional centre in Sydney took place on Friday. From February, prisoners in NSW will have most of their education delivered by staff from an external training organisation rather than by university qualified teachers, most of whose positions will be made redundant by December. The number of qualified teachers in prisons will be cut from 152 full-time public teaching positions to 20, with the gap to be filled by about 60 external clerical staff who will not be required to have a degree. Those positions will be put out to tender. The corrections minister, David Elliott, announced the plan in May, citing a KPMG review from last year that found the current education model was not meeting demand, or achieving adequate literacy and numeracy outcomes for the prisoners. He said the working hours of the teachers were inflexible, with only 62% of hours available for teaching used in 2015. External staff would be able to work more flexible hours, he said. But prison teachers say they are not adequately resourced or staffed to provide the level of teaching prisoners require, with many suffering from complex social and mental health issues. The Greens MP David Shoebridge has described the job losses as “an attack on prisoners”. In a meeting on Friday of the committee established to inquire into the performance of government departments, Shoebridge asked Elliott about current NSW prisoner numbers. Elliott revealed the NSW prison population was 11,898, a 7% increase since February. Shoebridge said in order to ensure recidivism rates were lowered, the prisoners needed quality education to prepare them for a future outside jail. “This isn’t just an attack on prisoners but on the concept of professional teaching, and the government wants to de-professionalise teaching,” Shoebridge told Guardian Australia on Monday. “They’re not recruiting when current teachers leave, they don’t cover for teachers when they are on leave and they are not resourcing the current teachers to deliver education properly to prisoners, many of whom have special needs.” NSW Teachers Federation organiser Rob Long said it was unclear whether the positions would be privatised. He suspects the Tafe sector will bid when the contract is put out for tender. Among those set to lose their jobs were literacy, numeracy, IT, arts and music teachers, Long said, as well as senior education officer roles, which he said were similar to the position of a school principal. He fears they will be replaced by contracted staff who pass through prisons on high rotation, meaning prisoners would not develop working relationships with their educators. “What our teachers have been offering is continuity,” Long said. “They get to know the students and advocate for them, they organise to try to get them into external tertiary education. “Education in jails reduces recidivism. Other programs, like drug and alcohol programs and psychologists, are important but they deal with problems prisoners have when they come into the system. What education from qualified teachers does is give them hope for a future when they get out.” A spokeswoman for Elliott told Guardian Australia corrective services would remain responsible for oversight, assessment, coordination and case management of inmate education at all prisons and also teaching at the specialist intensive learning centres at Lithgow, Wellington, South Coast and Mid North Coast correctional centres. “A review of the current education model concluded that it does not meet demand, nor achieve the desired outcomes and that specialist education and training organisations would be more effective than corrective services in providing most of these services,” she said. |