Queanbeyan public school teachers hope a historic pay rise will help stem the number of teachers going to work over the border in the ACT and encourage new teachers to join the profession.
On Tuesday, the NSW government and NSW Teachers Federation reached an in-principal agreement which will boost the starting salary for a teacher from $75,791 to $85,000.
Teachers at the top of the pay scale will earn $122,100 under the new deal, up from $113,042.
Queanbeyan Teachers Association president and Queanbeyan West Public School assistant principal Rebecca Kearns said teachers felt relieved that a deal had been reached after negotiations began in 2020.
"It's giving us some hope because I think the cornerstone of this is providing quality education for students in our region," Mrs Kearns said.
"This is a huge step forward to attracting more teachers to our area. It's a huge step in retaining teachers so that we can just have quality teachers in front of kids every day."
Mrs Kearns said schools in the Queanbeyan region had lost many staff to the ACT public school system because of the significantly better pay on offer for beginning teachers.
She said schools were regularly collapsing classes or only providing minimal supervision because of the shortage of teachers.
"It's actually going to bump us up to be competitive and particularly for Queanbeyan to retain teachers in Queanbeyan [and for them] to not jump across the border," Mrs Kearns said.
The NSW proposal will vary and extend the current award until October 8, 2024. The NSW government and union will negotiate a new three-year award to commence after the varied award expires.
The NSW government withdrew its previous four-year offer which included a 2.5 per cent pay increase in the second, third and fourth year.
The new proposal will be recommended at the union's state council meeting on Saturday where it is likely to be endorsed.
The offer also includes pay rises for school counsellors, psychologists and casual teachers and counsellors.
The new pay scale will put NSW public school teachers slightly ahead of ACT teachers at the beginning of 2024, however ACT teachers have secured pay increases every six months to the end of 2025 in its recent enterprise agreement.
A new educator in ACT public schools will be earning $84,978 as of January 27 while the most experienced teachers will earn $121,038.
By the end of 2025, an ACT beginning teacher will be earning $91,396 and a classroom teacher at the top of the scale will be earning $129,106.
Independent Education Union NSW/ACT branch secretary Mark Northam said Catholic systemic schools in NSW had agreed to match pay increases in the public system.
"It is a groundbreaking moment and it had to happen because the teacher supply crisis reached a point where something serious had to be done," Mr Northam said.
NSW teachers in the public and Catholic systemic schools walked off the job last year as negotiations in both sectors dragged on.
Mrs Kearns said there was more work to be done in improving teacher workloads and boosting funding for NSW public schools.
"This is a big win for us, but the fight's not over yet in terms of making sure that every student has a quality education in NSW," she said.
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