The Australian Education Union state executive met on Monday to “consider next steps and agree on a revised bargaining position” following last Thursday’s  strike and rally which forced more than 170 public schools and preschools to close.

The AUE is now demanding a raise for teachers of 6 per cent in the first year of the deal, 5 per cent in the second year, and 4 per cent in the third.

“The Premier has made it clear that a salary increase of 8.64% is not something they will deliver, so we have revised our position to reach an agreement soon,” union SA/NT president Andrew Gohl said.

“15% over three years would take SA educators from Australia’s lowest paid to a level closer to the national midpoint, which is a reasonable ask of a government that will otherwise continue to lose teachers at an alarming rate.”

The government’s last offer to teachers was worth about $1.4 billion. Before last week’s strike, Education Minister Blair Boyer said he would address the union’s demand for an increase to non-instruction time (NIT) over a seven-year period.

“The Minister has quoted a $1.4 billion cost for their latest offer. If that investment is genuine, there is no reason why teachers shouldn’t be afforded their additional 60 minutes NIT sooner,” Gohl said in a statement today.

“Where a site is unable to provide that time, the teacher should be compensated financially for the work they’re currently doing for free.

“This is a mechanism that already exists and would come at a significantly lower cost to the system than filling shortages with temporary relief teachers, which is the case now. This way, teachers are at least being compensated for their commitment to keep a broken system running.”

Speaking at a press conference after the strike, Boyer said he had “never disagreed with the items that are at the heart of this enterprise bargaining process”.

“Our teachers do need to be paid more. We do need to tackle workload. These are national if not international issues and if we don’t do something about them we will find the job of retaining and attracting teachers harder than it already is,” Boyer said.

“We are not in disagreement around what the challenges of the workforce are, we are just in disagreement really around the speed at which we can roll out that additional non-instructional time and the size and magnitude of the salary increase that we have on the table.

“We have made three offers now in three months, each larger than the first and moved our position a number of times.”

He added that the government and the AEU were “actually closer than it might appear” to a resolution.

“It’s easy to forget today in the face of another day of strike action that we actually were really close, certainly Monday night I thought we might have been exceptionally close,” he said.

“I was surprised to learn that it was rejected. I remain hopeful that we can come to an agreement sooner rather than later.”