“Teaching should be treated as a profession and, like other professionals, deserve recognition and reward for effort.” — Education Minister Julie Bishop.

If nothing else, that’s an interesting piece of sentence construction. But let’s focus on the content. Some figures are probably in order.

Salaries for teachers in NSW government schools 2007 figures:

  • Starting salary 4-year trained teacher (eg BEd, BA BTeach) $49,050.
  • Starting salary 5-year trained teacher (eg BA MTeach, BSc MTeach, BEd BA, BEd BSc) $51,574.
  • Top of the normal teacher salary scale: $72,454.

It would seem that performance is already running a fair way ahead of pay.