SAS Staff News – November 18

STUDENT ENROLMENT FORM

The Association contacted the Department many months ago to arrange a meeting to discuss the fact that the Department had not produced a current enrolment form for schools.

At that stage, the major problem for the PSA was the inclusion of a parental consent form for students to obtain and use an email account. The PSA's position was that the consent form should be part of the enrolment form and not a separate document, which would mean double handling for SAS staff.

The Department arranged another meeting for the PSA to discuss this issue with appropriate departmental staff. At this meeting the Department further advised that they were designing a new enrolment form to capture information required by national agreements. The PSA agreed with the inclusion of Web Services, but we were not shown the final form before it went out.

Problems encountered are:

• Information on parental level of education and occupation, for example, raises privacy and other issues. These questions have angered many parents. It is not made clear that the section is optional. The PSA questions the reasons for including the questions on an enrolment form when it is available from census information.

• Additional documentation is being requested for Year 7 students as well as kindergarten students. Parents often don't have this information available at this stage (eg immunisation certificate). This is causing anger and delay. Does this mean that a student cannot be enrolled in high school until the documents are produced?

• Principals are interpreting the information differently.

• There is an additional "patch" needed on OASIS to enter the data.

• The time spent with parents explaining the form has greatly increased and SAS Staff are suffering abuse from parents. Also there is additional data entry time for the form.

We do not consider that the relevant Departmental Officer would be ignorant of the problems. We further do not consider that the problems can be fixed overnight.

SAS Staff are not census collectors. Therefore the PSA is advising members as follows:

1. If you have already sent out the old form for parents to complete, do not send out the new form.

2. If you did send out the new form and have problems with certain fields omit them in the data entry.

3. Any student moving from one school to another within the NSW Department of Education and Training does not need to provide the documentation on page 1 of the new form. Do not chase the documentation up for these students.

REPORT ON AWARD IMPLEMENTATION

1. Finalise the Crown Employees (School Administrative and Support Staff) Award.
2. Establish a long term temporary placement process to fill vacancies for all school administrative staff.
3. Finalise a new establishment for Administrative Managers and Administrative Officers, incorporating GST, Data Entry and additional staff hours into permanent positions.
4. Determine the allocation of Grade 1 classification.
5. Identify and implement the Grade 2 classifications.
6. Re-identify and re-examine competency levels for all grades.
7. Establish levels within gradings.

The Department opposed the points 2, 6 and 7, saying that these were not included in the Agreement. The Association wrote to the Department saying that our understanding was that the Implementation Committee was to continue work on the outcomes of the SAS Staff Review. After the Department responded in the negative and after further discussions the PSA again wrote saying that the PSA was happy to proceed with a separate dedicated committee to consider the outcomes.

The formula for conversion of additional casual staffing hours to permanent hours has been finalised and agreed by the Schools Departmental Committee.

The new formula means that full time Administrative Managers will have the GST allocation added to their hours of work. This increases their normal hours of work from 31 hours 15 minutes per week to 33 hours and 20 minutes per week (ie 25 minutes per day extra). Full-time hours for all other classifications will remain at 31 1/4 hours per week. Schools Administrative Officer formula will be increased by the current flexible SAS Staff allocation and the corporate data allocation. Part time Administrative Managers will have their hours increased to include the flexible SAS Staff allocation, corporate data and GST.

The Department consistently opposed the Association's arguments that a process for internally advertising positions to long term temporary employees be established promptly. A dispute was lodged in the Industrial Relations Commission and after a number of hearings the Department proposed a process to implement this. It also accepted the Association's criteria of long term temporary as continuous work for four school terms.

The time frame proposed by the Department would see schools and SAS Staff advised of their new staffing formulas by 28 January. The actual entitlements for 2005 would be established using the new increased staffing formula by 16 February. Any additional hours would be offered to permanent part time staff. Vacant SAS Staff positions (including TA Special positions) would be advertised by 23 March and staff would be appointed at commencement of term 3 2005.

The arrangements arise from an agreement between the PSA and DET and they ensure that the additional hours the PSA fought for will remain with schools permanently.

As in the past, to allow for the internal advertising of long term temporary positions, external advertising has been halted. This will maximise the opportunity for long term temporary staff to gain a permanent position. It also involves holding service (requested) transfer applications already received. Nominated and service transfer applications will be considered at the beginning of March 2005 before the internal advertising of positions. SAS Staff have reported being advised that current nominated and compassionate transfers are frozen. The PSA did not agree to this and has asked the Department to activate these transfers.

The Association considers the time frame to be lengthy, but given the time taken to negotiate the process, it was accepted.

Sue Walsh, PSA President
Fran Collins, Principal Industrial Officer

Contact Details
Fran Collins
Ph:  02 9290 1555
Fax: 02 9262 1623
fcollins@psa.asn.au

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