Mr. Shane Lambert:

If you think about designing a contract for any employment model in the country you start off by establishing what is the level of responsibility. Generally the level of responsibility is dictated on the level of competency you need to do the job and everything else stems from that. That is how you design a contract of any type of role. It really is putting the cart before the horse. What we seek is to reflect the current practice that is already in existence. There is not a school in the country that does not seek to hire the best qualified staff that they can in a recruitment process, and no one could fault them. They are doing that year in year out at levels far above the current minimum qualification.

This needs to be tied up and rectified. Then we can look at issues such as a contract review. There is no need for it to be linked to a contract review. It is a separate stand-alone issue. We are looking to reflect current practice with employers at present.