Prep Teacher Aide Allocation

Members of the QTU and the LHMU undertook a joint campaign in 2005 to secure additional teacher aide hours for the Prep Year whereas previously preschool teachers enjoyed full-time (30 hour) teacher aides in their classrooms.

Meetings of members were held across the state and pressure was placed on the Department and the Government to improve the number of hours that were going to be offered to support the Prep Year.

Following many months of dispute, an agreement was reached with the government and the Teacher Aide arrangements for the Prep year are now included in the 2008 Teacher Aide Certified Agreement.

All schools are entitled to access general teacher aide hours for the whole school in accordance with the Teacher Aide Indicative Lookup Table.

Whilst some of these hours may be used to support prep classes, there is an additional allocation of teacher aide hours to be used specifically in classes that contain Prep students. These hours are contained in the schedule Prep Year Teacher Aide Indicative Allocation Scale.

For example,

• small schools with only one prep student will receive a minimum of 5 hours per week TA time,
• schools with 15 students receive 10 hours per week;
  and
• schools with 25 students in the one class, will receive a minimum of 15 hours of TA time per week.

Schools that have only 18 Prep students will therefore only attract 11.5 hours of teacher aide time per week.

In addition to hours allocated through the sliding scale, primary schools with 3.5 Full Time Equivalent or more teachers teaching classes from Prep to Year 3 will receive additional teacher-aide hours according to the P-3 Teacher Aide Supplementation Scale.  The P-3 Teacher Aide supplementation scale is so-named as it uses the number of teachers in P-3 to calculate a school’s eligibility for the additional resource.

The theory behind the additional supplementation was that the more Prep classes that you had, the more teacher aide hours a school would need, so the larger the school the more resources that Prep students would be given under this scale.

For example,  if a school has 1 class of Prep, 2 classes of Year 1/2, and 2 classes of Year 2/3, that is a total of 5 FTE teachers teaching in P-3 and therefore, according to the scale, there is an addition of 7 hours of teacher aide time per week that can be added to supplement the Prep sliding scale, so that the extra 7 hours can be shared across the Prep classes.

These hours are used to assist the Prep teacher for teaching and learning in the Prep classroom and should not be used for set up before class, clean-up after class or helping prep students with lunches or other administrative tasks.

At the time of negotiating, the parties agreed that these hours be used exclusively for Prep in 2006 and 2007 to assist in the establishment of the Prep year.

The QTU is aware that some schools are now using the additional TA time from the supplementation scale in Years 1 -3, however the intent of the additional hours that were negotiated in 2005 following intense member action of both QTU and LHMU members, was that those extra hours should be used exclusively in Prep.

Any use of the P-3 Teacher Aide supplementary hours outside of Prep class which are a change to the existing arrangements within the school that are within the resource allocation of the school, should be the subject of consideration at the Local Consultative Committee (LCC) in the context of the consultative arrangements which are outlined in Clause 3,4,10 of the Department of Education and Training Teachers’ Certified Agreement 2010.

Contact the QTU for further assistance if required.

Leah Mertens | Women’s Coordinator Assistant Secretary / Services Welfare Queensland Teachers’ Union

Tel 61 7 3512 9000 | Fax 61 7 3512 9050 Email services@qtu.asn.au |21 Graham Street I PO Box 1750 Milton BC Q 4064