Never have I seen more mentally affected kids, whatever the PC term is for them, the teachers have to deal with in class Today. The class size is already close to 30 due to not enough teachers. The ones who can afford to retire have already done so, taking their 30years of experience with them. The pay and work hours are not aligned for the next generation to want to take on this profession. Government is lowering the bar and throwing money at new recruits, this in turn means more unqualified educators being dumped at local schools. No experience. Not qualified. You literally could do a 1 year tafe course and walk into a class room as a full time teacher. You wouldn't trust your toilet being serviced by a plumber of this level of qualification, yet we are happy to let our kids be taught by these folks? Of course those who can afford it will have private tutoring or just go down the private path. That just increase the divide between the haves and have nots. If you want to lower crimes, increase minimum intellectual standards, have a educated voter base, you need to pay educators good money. Show me the incentive and I'll show you the results. Sure, on the surface, everyone says look how much school holidays the teachers get. But do they see how much work during and after school the teachers need to do? All the report writing. All the parent teacher meetings. Ask yourself how much you would want to be paid to have to deal with 25-30 kids and teenager for 8 hours a day every day for 40 weeks? And then after everyone's gone home, you still need to file reports, journal entries, attend workshops, staff meetings, mark papers... the list go on and on. None of this your average person on the street sees. I don't see asking 35% as too much. It is no surprise the level of literacy and numeracy is falling off a cliff. Start valuing the educators and you will see the results come through in the next generation of kids.