It's un­eth­i­cal that CXC pays ed­u­ca­tors to mark timetabled Jan­u­ary and June CXC ex­ams but does not pay ed­u­ca­tors to mark SBAs. But CXC iden­ti­fies SBAs as copy­right­ed ex­am pa­pers owned by the ex­am syn­di­cate.

Ed­u­ca­tors play a vi­tal ac­tive part in set­ting, mon­i­tor­ing and mark­ing these ex­ams for CXC. CXC ought to lev­el the "pay­ing" field. These SBA ex­ams cut in­to months of teach­ing time. Ed­u­ca­tors get paid to teach. Their scope of work doesn't in­clude mak­ing, man­ag­ing and mark­ing ex­ams for out­sourc­ing agen­cies such as CXC.Sad­ly, in­fu­ri­at­ing­ly, teach­ers are their own worst en­e­my when it comes to agree­ing on, co-op­er­at­ing on what spe­cif­ic tasks make up their scope of work.

This co­nun­drum pro­duces the ef­fect of a pub­lic be­lief that ed­u­ca­tors' scope of work is un­lim­it­ed in ex­change for a fixed ra­tion of mon­ey. This per­cep­tion is gross­ly un­true.

Ed­u­ca­tors should have learnt by now that they ought to bill for itemised ser­vices, just as their de­greed col­leagues do in bank­ing, in­sur­ance, law, con­struc­tion, ad­ver­tis­ing, print and broad­cast me­dia, en­ter­tain­ment, sports, med­i­cine, trans­porta­tion, food prepa­ra­tion, hos­pi­tal­i­ty, man­u­fac­tur­ing, en­er­gy and ag­gre­gate min­ing, processed foods, and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals–ir­re­spec­tive of whether the clients are adults or chil­dren.

Billing in these pro­fes­sions is not weighed down by la­bels like "vo­ca­tion," "call­ing," "so­cial du­ty."The ed­u­ca­tion pro­fes­sion should al­so learn by now that it's fool­ish to dis­card their se­nior con­sul­tants when they reach age 60.No oth­er pro­fes­sion­al field dumps their se­nior brains whole­sale be­cause they reach age 60. Ed­u­ca­tion force­ful­ly re­tires their most knowl­edge­able peo­ple out of the pro­fes­sion on the grounds of age.

So who's go­ing to guide the green prac­ti­tion­ers that com­prise the ed­u­ca­tion fra­ter­ni­ty on these mon­ey mat­ters: the union?

Sarah Parks

via e-mail