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sub176

From: kengui

Sent: Monday, 5 December 2005 11:50 AM

To: Family Responsibilities

Subject: RE: Balance impossible with current school hours

Edited version for submission

In all the debate I have heard about work/family balance I have heard nothing about reviewing school hours and weeks despite the fact they appears to have not changed in the 35 years since I started school and probably longer – in fact there is more leave for so-called professional development. How can a woman work with 4 weeks leave and have kids at school which has 12-14 weeks leave – it is clearly impossible. 

The juggle, the struggle of our daily life could be massively improved by a serious rethink and realignment of school and work.  We both work part-time as we have wanted to participate in these precious early years and have realized that school years are actually going to be harder to coordinate.  And then individuals are blamed for family breakdown, and so on.

No wonder so many women retreat or reduce work hours when they would love to make a bigger contribution to the economy – and their own financial independence, and superannuation etc. Many many workplaces have become more flexible – frankly I think schools are actually worse. 

In a time of so called labour shortage I know many women who have just left in despair at the complete disconnect between both the hours and weeks leave.  Women did themselves a terrible disservice not getting school hours reviewed years ago – and I’m not talking increasing funding for sub-par afterschool care (at publicly listed centres whose primary driver is profit). 

What about 4 days school 8-4?  Or any other arrangement?  And professional development in professional hours, not 2-3pm with early closing once a month such as we endure at our school, just to add to parent’s stress. The library is packed with kids whose parents, funnily enough, cannot finish work at 1 or 1.30 pm.  Teachers want to be treated as professionals, paid as professionals but work hours the rest of the workforce would give their eyeteeth for.

Now with the IR changes I worry that for many unskilled women it is only going to get worse. 

Including mandatory physical exercise and homework?  Maybe even school lunches? The sums could be done as to the saving of medical bills down the line in reduction in obesity etc and parents’ sanity now.  The backyard and walking home from school were the norm – this is sadly just not so any more – is it ideal to institutionalize decent eating and exercise? No – but the reality is the consequence of the current set-up is going to be worse than rethinking the role of the school in the child’s life.

 I don’t have all the answers but it is long overdue to really review this.  I cannot tell you how many interactions with the school assume I am sitting at home doing absolutely nothing else.  Again and again we are given 2 days notice for a daytime function, cakestall etc etc – I do not now feel guilty, I think it is downright rude.  From next year kindy duty will cost me $50/$60 a pop as I won’t have a grandma on tap.  This is absurd. Sometimes I may be able to call in a favour, but not always.

I know it’s a states issue but can you get the debate rolling?  Pru Goward is surely as well-placed as anyone to go where no public commentator has dared to go before and say the emperor or the teachers’ unions has no clothes and current arrangements are there to suit them and their own families before children. 

Talk of balance just makes mums choke on their sambos and shake their heads at the structure setting us up to fail either our children or our need to work.

I make the observation that when I worked in a major WA utility for several years, out of hundreds and hundreds of people there ,  I could name on one hand the divorced ones.  I thought this extraordinary – no-one else had ever noticed it.  So why?  Well I speculate that the combination of secure, well paid, interesting jobs with family friendly hours, not a great deal of travel or relocation must surely be some of the ingredients.  They led balanced lives.

What are the intangible benefits to all those families and their children and on and on?  Do we work to live or live to work – a cliché but in our endless pursuit of economic growth I think we have lost many things that did not have a direct economic benefit but did help form the fabric of our community. 

Regards

Shona Guilfoyle