Australian Education Union negotiators and the government will continue their protracted negotiations on Thursday afternoon into a new teachers’ agreement.

AEU Tasmanian manager Roz Madsen said 80 per cent of AEU members had attended recent stop-work meetings across the state to reject the government’s offer on workload and pay.

“Our expectation is that the government comes to the negotiations with detailed, thought through solutions to the urgent and complex workload issues that educators have raised,” Ms Madsen said.

“The depth and breadth of educator concern over workload and unfair pay was clearly on display last week as, in unprecedented numbers, teachers, principals and support staff filled stadiums and meetings halls around the state. We hope the government has listened and will now act.

“Every day the government delays offering up real solutions is a day a child is at risk of receiving the quality education they deserve.”

Ms Madsen said the government had focused on “simplistic ways of dealing with what is a complex issue”.

“We are there at the table, as long as it takes, with an open mind on wages, on conditions, on outcomes for Tasmanian children,” she said.

“The government needs to be offering up solutions on class sizes, giving teachers more time for lesson planning and offering a competitive salary that stops our most experienced teachers being the lowest paid in Australia.

“We’ve been consistent in saying that workload is crippling, it’s affecting children and quality education.”

She said if negotiations failed the AEU was surveying members on further industrial action and bans for 2019.

Teacher and AEU negotiator David Genford said there were eight issues the AEU wanted to discuss.

“We want to actually negotiate and have some meaningful negotiations,” he said. “We want a detailed offer.”

Premier Will Hodgman encouraged the union to be “constructive”.

“We will approach the negotiations in good faith, not withstanding the industrial action taken by unions,” he said.