……but not another dollar.
One of the major obstacles that I have found in my recovery is that my favoured form of employment, casual relief teaching, has been very hard to find. As an “on demand” profession, schools rely on you being available, at sometimes very short notice, to fill in if a teacher is ill or is away from the school doing professional development courses. As such, they come to rely on your availability and it can be a lucrative means of employment.
However, if you get “out of the loop” so to speak, or let schools know that you are not available, you drop to the bottom of their list and it’s hard to climb back up to the top again. Schools still have to have their casual staff, and, if they can’t get you, they move on until they can fill the vacancy. And such has been my dilemma since the doctor cleared me for a return to work earlier this year. Despite letting schools know that I was now available again, the offers of gainful employment have not been overwhelming. The main factor at work here is the one I just mentioned, but, it seems there is more to it than just that.
I have been hearing from other casual teachers that I know, most of them more mature staff like me, that principals are telling their AP’s to make up their casual needs from newly graduated, young teachers instead of older relief teachers. The reasons for this are two-fold, one that is easy to justify and ensures that they are not accused of discrimination and one that is less easy to justify but makes sense if you are sitting where they are.
The NSW education department currently has a dramatic over-supply of teachers, caused by them having rushed hundreds of school graduates into teacher training several years ago. What they should have anticipated and didn’t was that the increasing shift of children away from the public system into the private system would leave them with worryingly decreasing enrollments in state public schools. That has now come to pass and we now have the situation where graduate teachers are either being employed outside of education altogether because there are no positions available for them within it, or, being employed within the department on long-term temporary postings with no likelihood of ever achieving permanency.
But the graduates keep pouring out of the universities with less and less chance of them ever getting a full-time position in a school. And it is these young teachers who are increasingly being employed on short-term and longer-term casual vacancies, dramatically decreasing the opportunities for “career” casuals like me.
The other, less savoury aspect of this scenario is that, now that schools are being increasingly made responsible for their own budgets, they are looking to save money wherever they can and a graduate teacher’s daily rate of pay as a casual is about half what mine is as an experienced teacher on the highest pay scale possible. So, when the time comes to hire casual staff, many AP’s are being “told” to employ the younger staff if possible. This is easy to justify on the basis of giving them experience that they desperately need, but is discriminatory for the older teachers who depend on casual relief for their income.
Sorry about the rant, but I have been feeling a bit like I’m painted into a corner of late. I have diversified, using my IT skills to secure a computer co-ordinator’s position at a local school one day a fortnight and perhaps I may have to look at farming out these skills to some other schools as well if the teaching side doesn’t pick up.
In the mean time, I have become an accomplished and highly successful house husband though this is an honorary position, of course.
In motorcycling, the Ben Spies saga rolls on and on with door after door closing while he, and the teams with whom he is supposed to be dealing, run out of options. Gresini SEEM to have decided upon Scott Redding to replace Alvaro Bautista and Suzuki have confirmed that, while they are THINKING about a return to MotoGp in 2014 (some pundits even rolling out year-old pictures of the prototype and touting that they will be back NEXT year), they will not be doing any “wild card” events in 2013. Some are suggesting that Spies will go “back” to WSBK for a season with Suzuki (although the aging GSXR1000 is the bottom of the heap at the moment) and then back into MotoGp when Suzuki returns. The danger of this move is the ticking of the clock and the possibility of younger, equally aggressive riders rushing in and filling the vacuum. PRAMAC and the Ducati “Junior” team remains a possibility but Spies is in grave danger of becoming yesterday’s news when the ink on the newsprint is barely dry.
In WSBK, the Althea team is fulminating about leaving the paddock of next year’s regulations don’t help to make the Ducati more competitive. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
And, in road racing, popular Irish rider, Ryan Farquar, has announced his immediate retirement after the death of his uncle in the Manx TT event during the week.
Oh, in case you’d forgotten, here’s that photo from about a year ago of the Suzuki MotoGp prototype in testing. Photo from Cycle World (US)
Oh, and PPS: Watch out tomorrow (Wednesday) for the new Used and Classic Bike Enthusiast magazine with the Shadowfax on the cover.
teza51 says
I understand your frustration with casual employment Phil but i have found out that it seems to be the employeers prefered option in most cases. These days its very hard to secure a permanent job no matter what age and qualifications you have because if casual and the work slows down they can just put you off and as you say be on call, makes it very hard to plan anything
Phil Hall says
Sad to say, I think you’re right.
sanoptic says
Bought the magazine & i must say I’m very impressed by the quality & content !
Even enjoyed reading about that ugly oldish but young at heart guy on page 14…LOL.
I don’t often buy Bike mags mainly cause there full of adds but this one i will subscribe to as it’s really interesting with only a few adds. .
Loved the Shadowfax spread & Croz’s Z1 too & the guy with the immaculate Z1000.
All the content is good actually.Very much worth the time to having a good read.
grae says
The coverage of Shadowfax is entirely well deserved – but even so – I get an incredible giggle and sense of pride seeing your project there, unmolested, in picture and text on the cover of the magazine.
It’s just, damned awesome.
And, let’s be honest, the story of the Shadowfax bike, and the story of its rebirth is hands down far more interesting than its eponymous floury origins.
You dun gud dad – and it’s there in print – for everyone to see. <3
Phil Hall says
Thanks, mate, I really appreciate that. It was truly a satisfying experience. Soon it will be home and you can come and see it in person.