Anonymous #200

Submitter information

Name

Anonymous #200

Where are you located?

Victoria

What type of area do you live in?

Metropolitan

Are you an education professional?
(e.g. teacher, school leader, learning support assistant, teacher’s aide)

Yes

Which sector do you work in?

Secondary

What is your occupation?

Teacher

Elevating the profession

The actions proposed recognise the value teachers bring to students, communities and the economy.

Strongly disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

1. As part of this campaign, Ministers, education stakeholders, and the media will actively promote teachers’ excellent work and the value of their contribution to society.
Is this not already the role of ministers, if not why not?
The Australian Government will provide $10 million towards this national campaign.
That money could help reduce class sizes or fund 125 FTE teachers.
2,3. Teacher of the year and OA are a total waste of time and do nothing - no one cares!
4.Does HALT = increased pay?
5. More targeted uni- good.
6. great way to undermine existing teachers' experience.
7. Reduce class sizes to maximum of 20 students in every setting. Increase pay at least in line with inflation. Face-to-face time reduced to 18 hours.

Improving teacher supply

The actions proposed will be effective in increasing the number of students entering ITE, number of students completing ITE and the number of teachers staying in and/or returning to the profession.

Strongly disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

8. Trial new ways of attracting and keeping teachers in the schools that need them most. What are you going to trial, just reduce class sizes, increase pay, reduce FTF time to 18 hours.
9. O/S teachers don't have the same curriculum experience and can struggle with the language etc. We have an Australian Curriculum, we should have one federal registration body for all teachers and teachers should be able to move around the country and work where needed or where they want to.
At this point in the draft $313.5 million dollars has been allocated to do literally nothing that will actually retain or attract teachers. It is all gift wrapping and fluff. It's NATO - no action talk only.

Teachers are leaving because societal expectations and cost of living increases have meant kids go into free childcare from an early age, they aren't being raised by the parents and the educators are having to be the parents to many more children without the time and in some cases the skills to do this.

If you want to get more teachers back or attract more get rid of Hattie's rubbish and reduce class sizes - look at what many "elite" schools do and we wonder why they get the results. A tired, stressed, overwhelmed teacher can be revitalised when they know they are going to be able to manage a small class, get to know each individual and not be smashed by the assessment and reporting workload.

Strengthening Initial Teacher Education (ITE)

The actions proposed will ensure initial teacher education supports teacher supply and quality.

Somewhat disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

New teachers lack the skills necessary to do all the other stuff apart from teach a class content. They lack classroom management skills and this leads to early leaving. They underestimate the time it takes to prepare classes. They seriously underestimate the amount of time corrections and reporting takes and are disheartened and overwhelmed in the first few years at the amount of extra overtime hours that this takes. Then they see the pay of their peers doing business or finance or a trade and wonder if the holidays are worth it. Teaching pay caps out at $110,000. 25 years of experience, the last 15 at the top. You shouldn't have to leave teaching and go into a leadership position to make more money - all that does is remove the best teachers from the actual classroom and then we wonder why results aren't improving - all the best teachers are having to manage schools or staff or faculties when they should be in the classroom teaching. HALT does nothing to address this, it's just more hoops to jump through which again leads to teachers being out of the classroom.

LANTITE - great - let's get anyone who nominates for any position in government from local to federal to sit it too before they get to have a vote cast for them.

Maximising the time to teach

The actions proposed will improve retention and free up teachers to focus on teaching and collaboration.

Strongly disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

$25 million - put that towards reducing class sizes and FTF time. Another waste of taxpayer money that will do nothing.
We have an Australian Curriculum V9 - make it the deal that for states to get the funding they need to follow it. What a tremendous waste of time and effort it is to have a national curriculum and then some states go and do their own thing. It wastes resources, the textbooks need to be different. The senior curriculum should also be nationalised - we are a small country population wise and we need to be efficient and provide a level playing field for all participants - how can NSW HSC chemistry be different to VCE but they all get an ATAR and can apply nationally for university?

Many roles in a school; timetabling, daily organising; operations etc could be done by non-teachers or teachers who have left the classroom but have a deep understanding of school operations.

Better understanding future teacher workforce needs

How effective are the proposed actions in better understanding future teacher workforce needs, including the number of teachers required?

Not effective at all

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

Newsflash, teachers leave because the pay is low compared to other "professions", they get told any poor student results are their fault, and parents/carers are abusive and don't understand their responsibilities as primary caregivers. The workload has risen as more and more students present with more diverse learning needs and requires more individualised learning plans which in turn requires more research and planning time. Many students presenting with additional needs are not having the out-of-school intensive interventions required to assist their development of language, listening, writing, reading and numeracy. Parents and schools expect a classroom teacher to fix the extremely impactful effects of poor motor skills, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and phonological delays in a few hours a week. We had a child with these and spent many, many hours getting external support and a lot of time in the home reinforcing the occupational therapy and speech therapy but I have students who just get a diagnosis and that is it, nothing further is done outside of the school to address it.
If you are good at maths, why would teach when finance jobs are so much better renumerated?
Post covid, fewer students are choosing the "hard" subjects, they don't see the point and just try to get through Years 11 and 12 with the least amount of stress.
The number of unscored VCE students is frankly embarrassing this year and unless the Universities make changes the trend will continue.
Again in this section of the draft, there should be a national register and country-wide flexibility to move to where you are needed, having to do different registrations and some don't recognise working with children checks from one state to the next, this is just bureaucratic rubbish.

Better career pathways to support and retain teachers in the profession

The proposed actions will improve career pathways, including through streamlining the process for Highly Accomplished and Lead Teacher (HALT) accreditation, and providing better professional support for teachers to retain them in the profession.

Strongly disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

You have hit $378.5 million and yet it will just be the same result - not enough new teachers and current ones will continue to leave the profession. We were recently told it was still a vocation, so the free work we do is expected. We were told at the largest school in the country, with some of the highest fees that having a homeroom (25 minutes a day and a 60-minute assembly per week, none counted as face-to-face time) was a privilege.

HALT, LEAP, QTR are all great acronyms but do nothing to address the underlying causes of the teaching professions issues.