Anonymous #252

Submitter information

Name

Anonymous #252

Where are you located?

Victoria

What type of area do you live in?

Regional or rural

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?

We already know that workload, stress and student behaviour are the reasons teachers leave. These actions are not aimed at what we already know reduces those factors: smaller class sizes and less face to face time.

Higher pay or retention bonus might (but might not) work in the meantime to retain experienced teachers while the transition takes place. It should be noted that many teachers who say they intend to leave have already started building the resources and action plans they need, and are going to actually leave sooner than you think.

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.

Neither agree nor disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

Students who drop out of ITE usually do so because of the stress and workload of placement. These actions will help attract people to the courses, but will not help with short term retention at all, and will only help with long term retention in a very small way.

Strengthening Initial Teacher Education (ITE)

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

Strongly disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

Moving the lantite/literacy and numeracy testing to the beginning of the degree is a good idea, and it's ridiculous it hasn't happened earlier.

Regarding plans already underway, dig into them more before endorsing them. The face to face reduction in Victoria - in particular the provision of Time in Lieu - is broken, because while it requires that teachers be paid for work they do outside of normal hours (like camps and excursions), the Department of Education has not provided funds to schools to pay for such work. Schools are now scrambling to either reduce teaching and learning programs in order to fund camps, or to cancel or reduce camps available.

Maximising the time to teach

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

Somewhat disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

None of it seems like a bad idea, but unless one of these pilots really takes off there aren't going to be groundbreaking successes.

What would maximise time to teach would be more supports such as doctors, psychologists, counsellors, therapists, social workers etc. to take wellbeing out of the hands of teachers and let us do what we're there for: educate.

More admin staff would also help immensely to take some paperwork off our hands.

More classroom aides would be great too, to be able to give individual attention to twice as many students.

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?

Slightly effective

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

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.

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?