The Australian Education Union’s (Victoria), latest VGSA 2026 survey is intended to help shape the next phase of negotiations with the Victorian Government (Department of Education).

Following the rejection of the proposed in-principle Agreement by a majority of Australian Education Union (AEU) sub-branches, the union finds itself in an unusual position. Having negotiated and publicly endorsed the in-principle agreement as an agreement worthy of member consideration, it is now seeking further guidance from members about what should be pursued in a revised offer and what forms of industrial action they would be prepared to support.

On the surface, it appears entirely reasonable. Members are being asked what matters most to them and how willing they are to participate in industrial action if negotiations continue.

However, a closer look reveals a much deeper problem, one that has increasingly emerged throughout education bargaining processes across Australia.

The survey asks members what else they want. It does not meaningfully ask them what they think about the in-principle agreement initially proposed.

The survey asks members to rank aspirations such as smaller class sizes, more planning time, reduced face-to-face teaching, dedicated Disability Inclusion time, paid lunch breaks for Education Support staff, inflation-linked pay rises and flexible work arrangements.

Few education professionals would disagree with any of those priorities. In fact, many have been calling for them for years.

The problem is that the survey is not asking members to evaluate the actual proposed agreement against those aspirations.

Members are not asked whether the proposed wage outcomes are acceptable.

They are not asked whether the proposed four-year agreement term is appropriate.

They are not asked whether new provisions around consultation, workforce planning, ongoing employment, after-hours communication, camp allowances, special school allowances or emerging protections relating to artificial intelligence are valuable.

Instead, members are largely being asked what additional gains they would like to see secured.

That may seem like a subtle difference. It is not.

In practice, it creates an impossible benchmark.

If education professionals are presented with a list of desirable improvements, they will naturally rank those improvements highly. That does not necessarily mean they oppose aspects of the existing offer.

Most teachers would like smaller classes.

Most teachers would like additional planning time.

Most teachers would like less administrative burden.

Most teachers would like higher salaries.

What the survey ultimately measures is aspiration, not satisfaction.

And that is where the union movement will increasingly find itself trapped.

For years, education bargaining has become dominated by a cycle of escalating expectations. Members are encouraged to identify every pressure point in the system and every desired improvement.

Those aspirations then become bargaining objectives.

When an agreement emerges, it is often judged not against the previous agreement but against the full list of desired future improvements.

The result is predictable. No agreement is ever enough.

No gain feels significant and no progress feels worthy of endorsement.

The profession remains locked in a perpetual narrative of dissatisfaction.

Ironically, this occurs even when agreements contain genuine improvements.

The proposed VGSA includes new Education Support allowances, additional professional practice days, strengthened consultation provisions, changes to employment security arrangements, updated allowances and a range of workload-related commitments.

It is difficult to understand why a survey designed to guide future bargaining does not first seek to understand whether members value any of the improvements already proposed.

The consequence is that industrial strategy risks becoming disconnected from member sentiment.

Rather than measuring support for aspects of the in-principle agreement, it measures support for additional claims.

Teachers are increasingly being told that workforce challenges can be solved through bargaining alone. Yet many of the issues appearing in the survey are not industrial issues at all. Student complexity, disability inclusion workload, behaviour support, class sizes and teacher shortages, to name a few, are fundamentally system design challenges.

Industrial agreements can help but they cannot solve them in isolation.

The danger is that education professionals are repeatedly encouraged to believe that the next agreement will finally resolve pressures that are largely the product of broader policy, funding and societal challenges.

When those pressures inevitably remain, frustration grows and the cycle begins again.

Many of the issues members are being asked to prioritise today were priorities during previous bargaining rounds.

In fact many were priorities ten years ago and so they will likely remain priorities in the next agreement as well.

That should prompt a difficult question.

Is the profession failing to win enough at the bargaining table?

Or are we increasingly using industrial negotiations to solve problems that sit far beyond the scope of an industrial agreement?

Victorian teachers deserve better pay and they deserve manageable workloads. They also deserve safer and more sustainable workplaces.

But above all, they deserve an honest conversation about what bargaining can realistically achieve.

The union movement’s role should not simply be to amplify dissatisfaction. It should be to help members understand the trade-offs, progress and limitations inherent in every negotiation while working with governments who are responsible for the systemic reforms that sit beyond the bargaining table.

If there is one lesson from the latest survey, it may be that Victorian education needs a broader conversation about workforce sustainability than bargaining alone can provide.

While industrial agreements remain important, the future of the profession will ultimately be determined by how successfully governments, systems and the profession itself address the challenges that sit beyond them.

Otherwise, we risk repeating the same cycle every bargaining round which is to identify the same problems, make the same claims and ask the same questions, while the underlying causes remain largely untouched.

If these issues are still at the centre of bargaining discussions a decade from now, it will not be the profession that has failed.

It will be a failure of both the Union and the government to undertake the reforms our schools have so desperately needed for years.

By Ben Sacco

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