Australian Education Union - History

History

In the 19th century the Colonial governments, which would later form the Commonwealth of Australia as states, established a variety of state schools. These schools were both demanded by the Australian trade union and labour movement, for the free education of the working class, and also used as a way to control the education and free time of the children of the Australian working class. Schools systems were highly stratified, with most children only receiving infants or primary education. Selection for Technical or Academic high school was highly competitive, and biased towards the children of agriculturalists, industrialists, business owners and professionals. Teachers were low-paid government employees and controlled by a series of moral codes that restricted their professional, personal and sexual conduct. Teachers were primarily educated in Technical colleges, fully funded by the governments, and indentured to Government employment in rural or remote districts for a long period. Buildings and teaching materials were notoriously bad, and often resulted in injuries to teachers or children. University educated teachers were a rarity, and tended to go into the private schools system.

The private school system itself was split between two main groups: a British-style system of schools for the elite, and a massively underfunded Catholic church run system. The Catholic education system usually shared the poor working and teaching conditions of the state schools. See the Independent Education Union of Australia for a history of trade unionism in the Australian Catholic education system.

During the 1950s teachers in the state school system became more unionised and better organised. These women and men had received free University education on the condition that they teach in the state school system, or had received University training as a result of their status as Second World War veterans and had chosen to teach. These teachers, and those following them, campaigned to increase teacher's salaries, to transform the structure of Australian education, and to improve the curriculum.

This militancy achieved its peak in the 1970s when teachers won salaries equivalent to state parliament backbenchers, a massive and systemic initiative for building improvements, and massive curriculum reform.

The Australian Teachers Union was established in 1984, and changed its name to the Australian Education Union in 1993.