The Yukon's teachers' union and the government are preparing to enter into two days of mediation beginning Jan. 10 in the hopes of reaching a new collective agreement.

Talks between the Yukon Teachers' Association (YTA) and the Public Service Commission reached an impasse last September over wage demands and classroom composition.

"We want to continue the talks and we want collective bargaining to continue,” YTA president Katherine Mackwood said today. "We have two days scheduled so far, so we'll roll up our sleeves and see what we can do going to mediation.”

The 750 educators the YTA represents have been without a collective agreement since last June 30, when the previous three-year deal expired.

Neither Mackwood nor Public Service Commissioner Patricia Daws would speak to where the respective sides are at, preferring to leave that for the bargaining table.

According to the terms of the mediation, all talks are to be confidential.

"There's no report out of mediation,” Liz McKee, director of policy for the commission, told the Star this morning. "It may or may not result in a collective agreement, but there is to be no report of the discussions.”

But this caveat does not guarantee the opposing sides will stick to the public information embargo. In September, Daws accused Mackwood of breaking a previous agreement not to discuss specifics of the negotiations in the press. This was after Mackwood told local media that teachers were seeking a nine-per-cent wage hike over two years.

A day earlier, on Sept. 17, Daws relayed in a press release that the stalemate was over money.

"Since it was clear at the bargaining table that the parties were not in the same settlement zone on monetary matters, the government does not believe that appointing a mediator would be of any assistance,” said Daws.

However, that decision was the YTA's to make and its members opted to go the mediation route, over conciliation or binding arbitration.

Already, Yukon teachers are among the highest-paid in Canada. The starting wage for a teacher in the territory fresh out of teachers' college with no classroom experience is $57,398 annually – nearly $20,000 more than the same person would earn teaching in British Columbia.

For the current 2009-2010 fiscal year, wages paid to teachers, education assistants, tutors, native language instructors and substitute teachers exceeded $61.5 million, which represents a four-per-cent increase over 2008-2009.

On top of salary demands, the teachers' union wants concerns over classroom sizes addressed.

In September, Mackwood told the Star that teachers are often tasked to do too much, and the status quo is contributing to dismal graduation rates Auditor General Sheila Fraser outlined in a January 2009 report.

"If you only have a certain amount of support in that class, i.e., one teacher, the individuals who need the support aren't getting it and neither are the other students ... it's paramount for our students to receive the education that they deserve,” Mackwood said.

Teachers are typically faced with class sizes of 23 to 24 students; upwards of 20 per cent of whom have learning or behaviour disabilities.

But Daws downplayed the union's assertion it was forced to negotiate more manageable classroom scenarios.

"One of the things that's important to us is class contact time – the amount of time that there's teachers with the students – which improves the ultimate results,” Daws said in September, responding to Mackwood's claims.

"One thing I can tell you is Yukon classrooms are among the smallest in Canada, with the average student to teacher ratio of 10-to-one.”

And according to Fraser's report, graduation rates in the Yukon are among the worst in the nation, with only 40 per cent of first nations students earning their Grade 12 diploma and just 58 per cent of all Yukon students achieving that milestone.

Whitehorse-born lawyer and academic Archie Zariski has been appointed to chair the mediation talks to commence next week.