The pay offer is the first in eight months by the Government, described by the union as “the employer of the nation’s lowest paid public schools teachers and underpaid education support staff and school leaders”.
AEU members working in Victorian public schools will still strike for 24-hours on Tuesday, March 24, after a Fair Work Commission endorsed ballot saw 98 per cent of members vote ‘yes’ to take stop-work action.
With November’s state election looming, the government was hoping to avoid the industrial action by making what Education Minister Ben Carroll had described as a “significant and genuine” offer.
Carroll had publicly vowed to deliver teachers a “proper pay rise” and provide nationally competitive wages across the government school sector and said the planned industrial action would disrupt families.
The Government pay offer proposes an 8 per cent pay rise for teachers and principals, and 4 per cent for education support staff, on April 1, 2026, and 3 per cent each year across the following three years.
The AEU is pushing for a 35 per cent pay increase over three years to bring Victorian teachers in line with their NSW counterparts.
In October 2026, experienced public school teachers in NSW will be more than 13 per cent ahead of those in Victoria, with NSW graduate teachers more than 16 per cent ahead.
Victorian branch president Justin Mullaly said the pay offer does not deliver pay increases that properly value the work of school staff and would increase excessive workloads and exacerbate the more than 12 hours of unpaid overtime public school employees do each week.
He called it “completely unacceptable” and said it will do nothing to fix the staffing shortage crisis in Victoria’s public schools.
“How can Education Minister Ben Carroll call Victoria ‘the education state’ while teachers, principals and education support staff are overworked, underpaid, and already leaving the profession in droves?” Mullaly said.
A recent AEU survey showed only 30 per cent of staff plan to stay working in public schools long-term, while more than 80 per cent say their workloads have increased due to inadequate support.
“An offer like this does not go far enough to keep experienced teachers in the system nor attract the next generation who are the future of the profession,” Mullaly said.
“This offer is completely unacceptable to hardworking teachers, principals and education support staff.
“I don’t think the Premier and Education Minister could in good conscience look Victorian parents in the eye and say they are doing their best to support the workforce who teach their children.”
In January 2025, Premier Jacinta Allan announced her Government had reached an agreement with the Commonwealth to deliver full and fair funding for Victorian public schools.
But in May it was revealed that instead of delivering this funding, the State Government had, in the words of the AEU “acted to rip $2.4 billion of funding” from public schools.
State governments in Western Australia, Tasmania, NSW and South Australia already provide their schools with 75 per cent or more of Gonski funding, as do the NT and ACT.
Victoria remains the only jurisdiction without a plan to fully fund the Gonski reforms. This means government schools will this year receive just 70.4 per cent from the state and 20 per cent from the Commonwealth, according to The Age, meaning a funding gap of $1.39 billion for Victoria’s students.
