Granting teachers flexible work arrangements, three extra pupil-free days at the start of each term and a $1000 cost-of-living payment – if inflation rises to above 4.5 per cent – the agreement comes following months of negotiation with the State Government.

The deal also includes a minimum pay increase of three per cent for the next three years.

NSWTF president Henry Rajendra said the changes finally reflected “a genuine sense of respect” from the employer.

“The working conditions of our profession were very, very difficult,” he told reporters.

“…Noting the gendered nature of the teaching profession, where 80 per cent of the workforce are women, we’ve got significant improvements in terms of leave and working conditions,” he added.

The new flexible working arrangements involve opportunities for teachers to job-share, take up part-time employment, as well as full-time and part-time leave without pay where requested.

Regular after-school meetings will be capped at one hour a week to maximise teaching time, while all after-school events will be planned in consultation with teachers, with reasonable notice given.

The deal follows the ‘once-in-a-generation’ pay rise given to NSW teachers last year, which saw starting salaries lift from $75,791 to $85,000 and top of the scale teacher salaries increase from $113.042 to $122,100.

Rajendra indicated the agreement would begin to chip away at teachers’ unmanageable workloads – a factor which had hiked teacher resignation rates above retirement rates and fuelled the widespread staffing shortfall.

NSW Minister for Education Prue Car said the Government’s view was that “pay is a function of a respect”.

“The things we’ve been able to collaborate on, we’re seeing results on,” she told reporters.

In a separate statement, Car noted that teacher vacancies had fallen by 24 per cent year on year in NSW, and that the Government was “committed to continuing our work addressing the teacher shortage crisis we inherited from the former government.”

“Having teachers in front of classrooms, providing high-quality learning to students is the key to improving learning outcomes in the state.

“Offering better conditions and work-life balance will help us to attract new teachers and ensure those already teaching will stay on board,” she said.

Schools started late yesterday morning as tens of thousands of teachers engaged in the stop-work meeting to vote on the agreement.

Secondary teacher Alice Leung, a NSWTF representative and recently-announced winner of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools, shared a scene from a packed meeting on X.

Ahead of Monday’s vote, Activist Teachers Network NSW, a NSWTF rank and file group, urged teachers to vote ‘no’ to the deal arguing one-hour capped meetings per week was “nice, but it doesn’t address core workload issues”.

“Workload is crushing teachers. 2hrs reduced face-to-face teaching has been our key workload claim,” they noted.

The group also claim the pay offer doesn’t keep pace with inflation.

“NSW nurses have just struck for a 15 per cent pay rise. Victorian nurses just won a 28.4 per cent pay rise over 4 years – that’s 7.1 per cent per year. Building workers won a four-year deal of 7 per cent, 5 per cent, 5 per cent, 5 per cent. We shouldn’t settle for less”.

Yet experts have come out in support of the deal. Dr Meghan Stacey, senior lecturer at UNSW, told MCERA the announcement was a “step in the right direction”. 

“...Teachers teach because they love it, but goodwill can only take them so far,” she added. 

“Supporting teachers with pay increases – and perhaps more so, the invaluable resource of planning time – is absolutely essential if we’re going to attract future teachers, and keep the ones we already have in the classroom.

“This deal will help teachers to continue to do what they love, and what the public needs them to do: teach well.”

The Minns Government has previously been criticised for abandoning the former government’s Rewarding Excellence policy, which, if fully implemented, would have seen teacher pay rises based on merit rather than tenure.

“That was about finding ways to identify high performing teachers and pay them more, and really incentivise excellence in the classroom,” former Education Minister Sarah Mitchell lamented last year.

Last February, then-premier Dominic Perrottet hailed the policy as a “seismic reform that will modernise the teaching profession”, but some teachers expressed concern that it would divide the profession.