Demand for teachers is growing in the ACT, but recruitment will be challenging due to the national teacher shortage and COVID-19, according to the Teacher Shortage Taskforce’s final report published this week.
The report reveals that population growth and increases in student enrolment are driving demand for teachers, while the number of teaching graduates declines. Teacher absences are expected to increase due to COVID-19 transmissions, but the pool of relief teachers is diminishing – more than a third are over 60 – and the current casual relief model no longer meets day-to-day staffing requirements.
The Taskforce, comprising members of the ACT Education Directorate and the Australian Education Union ACT Branch (AEU ACT), was set up in September in response to an AEU ACT survey of 1,800 teachers and principals that revealed they were “under-staffed, under-resourced, and under-appreciated”.
- National teacher shortage puts pressure on ACT teaching staff (1 September 2021)
- New taskforce to address under-staffed, under-resourced teachers (30 August 2021)
At the time, more than half of principals surveyed could not fill permanent or temporary teaching positions; almost all teachers worked on average two days unpaid overtime every week; teachers spent $5 million of their own money on classroom resources; one in five experienced violence in the classroom; and most reported that staffing pressures had undermined their mental health. Many – including a third of teachers in their first three years – considered quitting teaching.
This week’s report quotes one “experienced, passionate, and capable” teacher: “I am overworked. I am broken and I am exhausted and ready to leave the profession if something doesn’t change soon. I love teaching; however, the cumulation of the current staffing shortage, massive class sizes from split classes, and missed planning time has got me drowning without a lifeline. Most days I go home crying from the pressure I am under, and my personal life is suffering, as well as my mental and physical health.”
The Education Directorate will develop a five-year plan to attract and retain teachers over the next five years; it will need to recruit 250 to 300 teachers every year. (Nearly 900 teachers have been recruited in the last three years, including 285 in 2020.)
It will also temporarily pay Permit to Teach holders the rate of a trained teacher; conditionally offer employment to third year students; consider incentives for school staff such as school assistants to complete teaching qualifications, and for pre-service teachers to be employed in schools; and support parents and carers to return to the teaching workforce.
Similarly, it will encourage the use of inbuilt relief teachers in all schools; develop incentives for recently retired teachers or teachers on long-term leave to return; and meet and support schools with acute and ongoing teacher shortages.
“The ACT Government strongly values the teaching profession and our teaching workforce,” education minister Yvette Berry said.
“However, we also know a national teacher shortage is impacting all Australian schooling systems, including here in the ACT, and we are committed to ensuring all steps are taken to build and retain our teacher workforce.”
Angela Burroughs, president of the AEU ACT, said the report’s recommendations were “the outcome of constructive collaboration” between the government and the union.
“Together with ongoing action to address teachers’ salaries and demanding workload, these recommendations provide immediate and longer-term practical solutions that will alleviate the teacher shortage.”
To respond to workload shortages, the ACT Government earlier reduced student academic reporting requirements, introduced additional school staff planning days, revised timelines for performance development, and established a central teacher relief pool late last year and earlier this.
Likewise, the Safe@School Taskforce was launched in July, following reports of more than 1,600 incidents of violence in Term 1 alone.
But shadow education minister Jeremy Hanson does not believe the report’s recommendations will solve many of the problems. It was, he said, “full of airy-fairy motherhood statements, and doesn’t really allocate resources”.
“I’m glad the government is finally acknowledging that there is a crisis on our schools in terms of the lack of teachers – I welcome that. But in terms of the report, a lot of the recommendations are for the government to do another report and consider things. There’s no money allocated to it. I don’t see very much in this report that’s going to fix this problem in the short-term.
“Fundamentally, we need more permanent teachers. Plugging the holes with relief teachers is not a good way to go.”
The ACT needs to make sure it’s competitive with NSW and with other jobs in the ACT, such as the public service, Mr Hanson argued. For a start, he believes teachers should be paid adequately. NSW has committed to a tenfold increase in highly accomplished or lead teachers, and will increase pay up to $130,000.
Most teachers in the ACT are women; Mr Hanson believes the government should look at the gender balance, and see why men aren’t entering teaching. Childcare must be available so women can return sooner.
Mr Hanson believes the amount of admin that principals and teachers do (from documenting learning activities to managing school maintenance) should be cut.
According to Mr Hanson, the ACT Government has cut real expenditure per full-time equivalent student in public schools by 3.3 per cent between 2010–11 and 2019–20. (The Productivity Commission Report on Government Services shows that state and territory government expenditure had decreased from $21,221 per full-time equivalent student in 2010–11 to $20,517 in 2019–20.)
“There’s a price to pay for that,” Mr Hanson said. “If you cut funding for public schools, you’re going to see a lack of teachers, a lack of classroom resources. That’s what’s playing out right here, right now in the ACT.”
Besides, he wanted to know, how did the government not know how many teachers it needed? Mr Hanson passed a bill in June for the government to provide a clear plan to recruit and retain teachers, by the first sitting of 2023; and to find out how many full-time teachers the ACT needed now and up to 2028; how many teachers were in the system currently; how many had left; and how many had been recruited this year – planning that, in his view, should have already been done.
“How can they solve the problem in terms of recruiting and retaining sufficient teachers … if the government didn’t know what the requirement was?”
