Teachers in New South Wales have been awarded a 6 per cent pay rise over the next two years after a year of protracted negotiations and strikes.
NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said the decision by the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) was a pleasing outcome for the state's 90,000 teachers but the union said it represented a real wage cut and would only worsen the current teaching shortage.
The decision by the IRC means teachers will get a 3 per cent increase this year, which will be backdated and paid in a lump sum on December 22, and another 3 per cent next year.
But the president of the NSW Teachers' Federation Angelo Gavrielatos said the amount was well below inflation and limited by the state government's own capping system.
"The state government's wages cap is at 3 per cent which includes a 0.5 per cent superannuation guarantee. The Industrial Relations Commission has delivered nothing more than the government's salaries cap — a salary cap effectively of 2.53 per cent when inflation is at 7.3 per cent," he said.
"We have a teachers' shortage crisis that has been brought to us by this government, and today's decision by the IRC — consistent with the government regulations it is bound by — will do nothing to turn around the crisis in which we find ourselves."
The union had been calling for a pay rise of 5 per cent year with an additional 2.5 in recognition of extra experience and two more hours of planning time each week.
But Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said the IRC outcome was fair and urged the union to work constructively with the government following this decision.
"We are really pleased they have been awarded a 6 per cent increase over two years, our teachers in NSW are world class and this is a great opportunity for them to see that pay increase which reflects the outstanding effort that they make each and every day," she said.
Minister for Finance Damien Tudehope drew attention to the fact that the pay rise was well above the 2 per cent annual increase recently made by the Victorian Government.
This week a NSW parliamentary inquiry handed down its report on teachers shortages and found teachers needed a "significant pay increase upfront" to improve the status of the profession.
As of October 10, there were 2,458 full-time teaching vacancies across 1,262 public schools in NSW.
The government's people matter employee survey, also released this week, found two thirds of teachers say they feel burnt out.
