Sixteen years of campaigning – issues continue to resonate
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 130 No 6, 5 September 2025, page no 5.
As this Journal goes to print, the QTU has held its first strike in 16 years, and QTU State Council is about to consider the progress in conciliation and whether future industrial action is warranted.
We face a situation where respective offers from the state government have not delivered salaries that would place us ahead of our interstate counterparts — which we know is important if we are to attract teachers and school leaders from other states. The government has also failed to deliver meaningful initiatives to attract and retain teachers and school leaders — particularly in rural, remote, regional, and emergent communities.
The offers ignore the potential impact of the changes to resourcing on salaries and workload committed to in the previous agreement.
The offers ignore the real crisis of occupational violence and aggression in education — a scourge on our profession as a whole, but when 78 per cent of our members identify as women, it is a real demonstration of the gendered violence that exists in our broader society.
The offers ignore the fact that our profession deserves respect, not only for our qualifications but for our knowledge, our experience, and our commitment to deliver for Queensland kids.
We know that our members don’t choose industrial action lightly. Over the past 16 years, the preparedness of QTU members to take industrial action has been enough for successive governments to negotiate genuinely and deliver.
Prior to the strike, the government referred our negotiations to the Industrial Relations Commission for conciliation. If the issues remain unresolved through conciliation, members will have to weigh up what comes next.
The QTU is ready to continue to work and campaign with members for an outcome that delivers for them.
Reprinted below is a letter from an experienced primary school teacher who was out of the classroom for a decade before doing relief and contracts this year. Her observations outline why these negotiations are about more than salary increases.
- Teachers are incredible. They are skilled, dedicated, caring and incredibly resilient and resourceful.
- Teachers are exhausted. They are being asked to do more than is humanly possible with minimal support and resourcing, and in some intensely pressurised circumstances.
- Teachers are forced to follow the departmental line with parents, even when it means they are basically having to lie about the true circumstances in their classrooms. Teachers are forced to say every student is included, and that they can make adequate modifications and provide adequate levels of support to every student, while the reality is they do not have the time, support, expertise, class-size and resourcing to adequately live up to that. This isn’t about teachers not valuing or believing in inclusion;, their classrooms are not equipped to deliver this reality, no matter how dedicated, experienced, or caring the teacher is.
- Some classrooms are an absolute mess. The children and adults are completely overwhelmed and dysregulated and very little learning is happening, even for the kids who would otherwise be in a good place to learn. This is happening for a whole array of reasons, but it boils down to too many young humans to one completely overwhelmed educator. The ratio is way off, and so every complex social, relational, learning need is amplified and the pressure-cooker builds to boiling. Building relationships and connections is vital to an effective teacher/learner relationship, and with so many students with so many needs and a curriculum that allows no one a second to breathe, it is no surprise that many teachers are just trying to survive the day.
- Teachers feel misunderstood. They don’t feel that their efforts are appreciated by anyone. Why? Because even when they are working to the point of burnout and walking out, it’s never enough. There is always more being demanded of them. Every time they speak up for support, they are basically handing themselves another pile of work to do. They are not the root of the problem, but they bear the burden of dealing with the consequences of a failing system.
- Teachers LOVE teaching and care deeply for their students. It is one heck of a job and one you simply could not do without a passion deep inside you, calling you to keep coming back. Being back in the classroom, the warm buzz of satisfaction from seeing young humans learn and develop has been the most beautiful reminder for me. I LOVE being in the classroom and playing a part in a child’s learning journey. It’s a privilege to witness that growth. It’s all any teacher really wants — to watch their class thrive, grow, and learn in the comfort of a classroom they feel safe and belong in. So, it’s high time we as a society honour that, by setting up education systems that make that possible.
Children growing and learning in the comfort of a classroom they feel safe and belong in = smaller class sizes, adequately resourcing schools, and investing in teachers.