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March 27, 2026 \u2014 7:30pm<\/p>\n
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n Save this article for later<\/p>\n Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime.<\/p>\n Got it<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n In the days leading up to this week\u2019s strike by Victorian government school teachers, the first such action in 13 years, officials from the Australian Education Union (AEU) began to suspect that this was going to be big.<\/p>\n Each day as the strike came closer, teachers, principals and school support workers were signing up for union membership \u2013 and with it legal protection for those taking stop-work action \u2013 in their thousands.<\/p>\n By Tuesday morning, union insiders knew that earlier predictions of 10,000 to 15,000 educators taking to the streets of Melbourne to demand better pay, conditions and government funding of state schools, would be well short of the mark.<\/p>\n They also knew Premier Jacinta Allan had been wasting her breath on the eve of the strike when she called on teachers to cancel the action and consider accepting the 17 per cent pay offer made by Education Minister Ben Carroll a week earlier.<\/p>\n Related Article When 35,000 teachers, principals and school support workers showed up for the protest that brought parts of the CBD to a standstill and dominated the day\u2019s news coverage, it was plain that the rage that has been felt for years by educators towards successive state governments was finding expression on the streets.<\/p>\n But the scenes in the city on Tuesday left observers wondering how a wealthy state that has elected centre-left governments for most of this century ended up with the lowest-funded schools in the nation and the worst-paid teachers.<\/p>\n Pay gaps of up to $15,000 a year that have opened up between Victorian teachers and their NSW counterparts have fuelled resentment, with government schools across the state beset by a serious shortage of teachers and forcing educators to work harder for less while plugging the gaps.<\/p>\n When The Age revealed last year that the Allan government had secretly delayed its commitment to fund the state\u2019s schools to the nationally agreed Schooling Resourcing Standard (SRS) by three years, depriving schools of $2.4 billion, many in the sector were incensed.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Veteran AEU activist Lucy Honan said educators were angry about much more than just the present round of wage talks, and said that the surge in union sign-ups before Tuesday\u2019s industrial action reflected a longstanding desire by many to send a message to the state government by walking off the job.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were keen to strike, absolutely keen, and the chat in the staff room afterwards was that [the strike] hasn\u2019t actually satisfied the depths of rage that people feel,\u201d Honan said.<\/p>\n For many strikers, the issues of school funding and their own pay and conditions are inseparable. Many said they were fed up working in institutions so short of money they were propped up with cash donations, fundraising by parents or teachers using their own pay to cover essentials.<\/p>\n Honan, who led a \u201cstrike against the crisis\u201d ticket at union elections in 2024 that pulled in 37 per cent of the vote, said she believed the \u201ccrummy\u201d deal of annual pay rises worth just 2 per cent that teachers achieved in 2021 had much to do with the present position.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Honan also said she believed former Liberal premier Jeff Kennett set the tone in attitudes towards public institutions when he closed 350 schools, sacked 7000 teachers and introduced a market-driven \u201cdevolved\u201d system of school management in the 1990s that governments of both major parties have followed since.<\/p>\n \u201cVictoria was the very first state where devolution happened, running schools like small businesses,\u201d she said. \u201cIt means that each school is a little fiefdom of its own, and the fight for funding is very internal.<\/p>\n \u201cLabor \u2013 federally and state \u2013 has been interested in education reform towards neoliberalism, not away from it. So things like NAPLAN, My School, that\u2019s all part of the same devolution model and has really cemented the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Appearing in front of a state parliamentary committee examining school funding the day after the strike, Department of Education secretary Tony Bates defended Victoria\u2019s record.<\/p>\n Bates argued the state had spent billions of dollars building schools, constructing 45 of the 91 schools built in Australia between 2018 and 2025.<\/p>\n The secretary also said that on some measures such as face-to-face teaching time or teacher-to-student ratios, Victorian educators enjoyed the best or close to the best conditions in the nation.<\/p>\n Bates said the pay gaps between teachers across the border had emerged because their enterprise bargaining agreements were \u201cout of kilter\u201d with those states\u2019 more recent agreements.<\/p>\n \u201cYou get different timing of new agreements,\u201d Bates said.<\/p>\n Related Article \u201cSo again, if we go back to after the last agreement was implemented, we were the best paid. Our principals are still the best paid in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n Trevor Cobbold, of the campaign group Save Our Schools, has been analysing public school funding around Australia for decades and agrees that the present crisis has deep roots, with successive Labor and Liberal governments sharing the blame.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the last couple of years of the Brumby [Labor] government, funding per student was actually cut in real terms,\u201d Cobbold said on Friday.<\/p>\n \u201cThen the Baillieu and Napthine [Liberal] governments continued to cut funding in real terms to public schools. And to their credit, the new Labor government in 2014 started to increase funding rather than cut funding, but it\u2019s been a very, very slow process. It\u2019s nearly 12 years of the Labor government, and we\u2019re still in the position where Victoria is a national laggard funding education.\u201d<\/p>\n Cobbold also noted Tuesday\u2019s strike should have come as no surprise, saying, \u201cI\u2019m surprised it hasn\u2019t happened earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n With the union\u2019s leadership threatening more strikes and disruptions unless the government offer significantly improves, Honan warned the mood among rank-and-file teachers remained militant.<\/p>\n \u201cI worried that [the strike] would be a one-and-done, but it\u2019s only lifted the lid on the rage,\u201d she said. \u201cThe expectation is that there will be more … people want to do more.\u201d<\/p>\n Get the day\u2019s breaking news, entertainment ideas and a long read to enjoy. Sign up to receive our Evening Edition newsletter.<\/a><\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n![\"On](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2715a30939deb0ac40bce7899484c3a3e5572ced.jpeg\")
On Tuesday, tens of thousands of Victorian educators went on strike. Joe Armao<\/p>\n![\"Protesters](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774609452_933_8c5f2c87c5b0d8374b5a10b97a96305026dd0ae6.jpeg\")
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A young supporter of striking teachers demonstrates in Melbourne\u2019s CBD on Tuesday.Meredith O\u2019Shea<\/p>\n![\"State](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774443251_498_d0c551fb72ffacef8698179b36a7af5fc5dffbba.jpeg\")
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