SHADOW minister for Corrections, Justice and Police Guy Zangari will meet with teaching staff at Bathurst Jail on Thursday who have been sacked as part of the NSW Government’s Better Prisons Reforms.
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More than three quarters of NSW’s prison teaching staff will go under a new education model expected to be rolled early next year.
Bathurst Jail will lose its entire 8.6 teaching staff which will be replaced by four clerks.
The decision to slash teaching staff from 152 full time positions to just 20 across the state was announced the same day as the local council amalgamations.
Mr Zangari claimed it was a ploy by the government to try and ‘bury’ the news.
He said he will meet with teaching staff at Bathurst to hear their stories and how the cutbacks will affect the local community adding the decision to sack the teachers was a disaster which would be felt at many levels in the community.
“To lose 8.6 jobs in a country town is bad enough, but the whole thing is not good for the community.”
He said the teachers provided a critical opportunity for prisoners to learn to read and write which was vital in breaking the cycle of poverty and crime.
“Inmates are already at the rock bottom of education, they often people who have fallen through the cracks in terms of literacy and numeracy.”
“Taking away these teachers will make it harder for inmates to access that second chance of literacy and numeracy, and give them the skills they need for vocational education and training.”
“These inmates need specialists teaching them, taking teachers out of corrections spells disaster, because the inmates won’t get an education, the only thing they will be better at when they get out of jail is a better criminal,”he said.
Mr Zangari said the teachers were shocked to hear the news they had been sacked when the shake-up was announced last month, but said their main concern was for the future of the inmates.
He said there was no plan for industrial action but instead a concern for what would happen with the inmates’ education.
Mr Zangari said the government’s decision was a reflection of it being “hell bent on the bottom line.”
“The government is already struggling to manage corrections, jails are bursting at the seams, and now they want to rip out the teachers,” he said.
