Teachers are claiming the local community is behind their opposition to changed staffing arrangements after attracting more than 1200 signatures to a protest petition.

Representatives of the Dubbo Teachers’ Association yesterday presented Member for Dubbo Dawn Fardell with a petition that showed it was “not just teachers who were concerned”.

The petition was to show the lower house “their serious concern for the staffing of public schools in rural NSW” and asked the house to “immediately negotiate a legal staffing award with the NSW Teachers’ Federation which reaffirms and secures for all children of NSW, regardless of location, their right to quality public education”.

The Department of Education and Training (DET) rejected the association’s claims and reaffirmed the value of the new staffing procedures introduced in Term 2.

Dubbo Teachers’ Association member and petition instigator Margaret McDonald said the signatures on the petition had been collected on two consecutive Saturdays last month at Macquarie and Tamworth street locations.

“It is showing the community of Dubbo and the region are unhappy about the Department of Education’s new staffing arrangements which takes away incentives for new teachers to come to rural schools,” she said.

“We’re hoping it will complement the campaign our union has been working on this year - stopwork meetings and strikes.

“It also shows the community of rural NSW is very aware and concerned about how it affects their public schools.”

Mrs Fardell said she would be tabling the petition in the NSW Parliament on Tuesday or Wednesday.

“The lines of communication need to stay open so the education of our young people does not suffer,” she said.

The new staffing arrangements had increased opportunities for schools, students and teachers, including remote and rural schools in the Dubbo area, a spokeswoman for the DET said yesterday.

“The most recent information published on the department’s website shows that incentive transfers remain,” she said.

“In fact in the first two terms of the operation of the new staffing system 186 teachers have been appointed through priority transfers, including 28 through incentive transfers.

“The department has committed to a fully independent review of the new staffing procedures once they have been in operation for 12 months.”

faye.wheeler@ruralpress.com