Keeping your job

seems to be more difficult than it once was. People no longer start in one place and stay there until retirement even while working their way up the ladder.

I thought about this when I read a short piece in this morning's paper. It was talking about making the positions of school principals more permanent again. Instead of five year terms with the possibility of another five year term those roles will be made effectively permanent.

When the Senior Cat and my mother began their teaching careers in this state they were, after probation, taken on as permanent teachers. From the start they could be sent anywhere in the state and that never changed. My teaching career and that of my two siblings started under a similar arrangement. Had we stayed in the profession here we could have been sent anywhere.

Teachers can still be sent anywhere but there are no longer any permanent positions. If you want a teaching position in a "good" school in the city you need to apply for it. You won't simply be sent to that school. You will only get the position for a limited period before you need to apply again. Some fortunate individuals might find themselves teaching in the same school for some years, most will be moved on or out altogether.

It is a system intended to weed out poor teachers and make it possible to remove them. Does it work? No, of course it doesn't.  It just places additional pressure on everyone.

The old system had different pressures of course. The Senior Cat's first school, a one teacher school in a remote community, was designed to "make or break" him as a teacher. They only kept him there a year. He went on to another one teacher school in a rural community but it was not quite as remote. There he was expected to hone his teaching skills - and he did. Next came a "nice" rural appointment. He was able to marry. I and two of my siblings were born. Our parents knew the Senior Cat, barring anything going horribly wrong, had a job for life. Our mother could, if child minders were available, be a relief teacher. 

Mum went on doing that until the Black Cat was old enough for her to go back to full time teaching in another remote school. The Senior Cat was sent there not just to teach but to begin the work of preparing the two teacher school for eventual closure. The children would be taken by bus to a school which even now seems to sit in the middle of nowhere. It is located in such a way that all the students need to attend by bus but nobody has to travel more than an hour and a half to get there. (This is Downunder remember. We expect rural distances to be like this.)

The Senior Cat went up the ladder. Our mother followed him. They both ended their careers in very senior positions. They always knew they would have a job. They also knew they would have an income on retirement because they had put money into the state's superannuation scheme. That scheme has also changed now. The Senior Cat was among the last to still be paid a fortnightly income through it. It stopped the day he died.

Now teachers do not have that security either. There is a superannuation scheme but it works in an entirely different way. There is no permanent employment. There is no guarantee that the school will be able to retain a good teacher with specialist skills. Only yesterday someone was, rightly, complaining to me that the teacher who has successfully set up an excellent Italian language program is being moved on. They have been told the incoming teacher next year "might be able to teach Japanese". The parents do not want this. They want the children to continue with Italian. Many of them have Italian speaking relatives. It is that sort of area. 

The children may not be learning much Italian. They rarely do in junior school language classes but surely it would be better to find someone who could continue this or leave an apparently excellent teacher where she is?

I look at my siblings. Brother Cat was always involved in teaching but not always in the classroom. Middle Cat changed careers and followed her first dream after going back as a more mature age student. The Black Cat never had a career as such. She has gone from one short term low level position to another without ever feeling the need for anything else.

It is my niece and nephews where the real change can be seen. My eldest nephew now owns his own business. It is something very different and it filled a gap he saw in the media market. He is doing well but it has been hard work and he held down three different positions before that, always choosing to move on to something else more challenging. His sister taught for a while and was then asked to do something else. It looked different and challenging so she took the offer up because her contract as a teacher was almost at an end. She tells me it is something she does not regret even though the hours are even longer than before.

Another nephew has had three different positions in the same field. He was offered a position in criminal law but turned it down in favour of something that uses both his legal and business skills.  Middle Cat says he works ridiculous hours and he has worked in three places in the last twenty years. They are trying to head hunt him again.

My other nephew is a doctor. I don't think I need to say anything about that sort of career but he has not stayed in one place. 

It seems you can now remain employed but not keep your job, that you won't leave after fifty years in the same place. Is that a good thing? Perhaps it is. It might also be more stressful.