More than 150 SA public schools to close due to teacher strike

South Australia’s teacher strike is set to go ahead on Friday, resulting in 167 public schools and pre-schools closing for the day, after the government and the union failed to reach agreement at a meeting this afternoon.

An additional 152 public primary, high and pre-schools will be running “modified programs”, when teachers walk off the job on Friday, but 608 of the state’s 927 schools will be operating as normal.

“Parents will have to make alternative arrangements if their school is closed,” education department chief executive Martin Westwell said.

“We’re working site by site to manage our response to that industrial action, and of course it’s going to have an impact on families.

“If there are one or two students who are dropped off unexpectedly there will be someone at every site in South Australia to make sure that … we can care for those or get back in touch with the parents.”

Mr Westwell said the list of schools that will be impacted will be available on the department’s website.

Education minister Blair Boyer said the Australian Education Union (AEU) and the state government remain at loggerheads over a pay and conditions proposal, after Wednesday’s meeting.

“The meeting was a positive one but I do anticipate that the strike action on Friday will still be going ahead at this stage,” Mr Boyer said.

“That is my message to South Australian families — they do need to prepare for industrial action that will cause some disruption to schools.”

The union wants an 8.6 per cent pay rise in the first year of its new agreement and a 5.5 per cent increase in the following two years — amounting to 20 per cent over three years — as well as a support officer in every classroom and more time for teachers to complete admin work. 

But the state government responded with an offer of 3 per cent per year over three years.

At a ballot of union members which closed last Friday, 80 per cent voted to walk off the job on September 1.

Eleventh-hour deal ‘unlikely’, minister says

AEU SA branch president Andrew Gohl said today’s discussions were “useful”, and that there was “understanding from the government about the pressures that the workforce is facing”.

But he said key sticking points remain unresolved and that the union would hold an executive meeting tonight to consider its next steps.

“At this point, unless advised otherwise, parents should continue with their plans for Friday,” he said.

“It’s unfortunate that unions have to apply this sort of pressure in order to get this level of discourse between the union and the government.”

Mr Boyer said the possibility of an eleventh-hour deal to prevent the strike was unlikely, adding that the 167 is a “much smaller number of schools than we thought”.

“It’s not muskets at dawn or anything like that – we are talking to each other and negotiating in good faith,” he said.

“There is a higher number of schools that are remaining open than we’ve seen in previous industrial action, the last being in 2019, but nonetheless there will be disruption.”

The department said the number of teachers expected to be involved in the strike was not known at this point.

Mr Boyer said he remained committed to delivering a pay rise, but said it had to be within the bounds of what the government can afford.

“[Teachers] are on the bottom of the rung because the deal was signed in 2019 but your job as a minister … is to deliver workload reductions that are real, meaningful and sustainable and to deliver a pay rise that we can afford while not diminishing the quality of education,” he said.

Despite his insistence that the meeting was positive, Mr Boyer said the impact on parents was “in the union’s hands” — a suggestion rejected by Mr Gohl.

“At the moment, there’s still an issue around workloads and there’s still an issue around pay and a number of other matters,” he said.

“We’ve been negotiating for eight months, we’ve been working really hard to bring parties closer together.”