Anonymous #277

Submitter information

Name

Anonymous #277

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?

These are low effort non-investments. Instead of *telling* the public that teachers' work is valuable and giving out pats on the head to a select few, governments need to *repay* some of that value by ensuring that our salaries reflect our expertise and that our working conditions enable us to exercise that expertise effectively.

Inadequate pay and impossible conditions undermine any pretense that our work is valued.

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?

Short-term fixes. You can trick people into a deeply broken profession, but until pay and conditions improve, you won't be able to retain them. The best and brightest might be glad of a scholarship to help them get qualified, but they aren't going to stick around for crippling workloads and real pay cuts.

Strengthening Initial Teacher Education (ITE)

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

Neither agree nor disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

Item 10 makes it sound an awful lot like boosting graduation rates is going to be the real measure of "success" here, and that sounds likely antithetical to the other "broad" aims outlined.

RE: Item 13, if LANTITE is going to be mandatory, it needs to be mandatory *before* teaching students commence their studies, not optional.

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?

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?

Governments need to spend less time gathering data that can be massaged to deliver what they want to hear and more time listening to what teachers are telling them loudly and clearly.

1. Workloads can't be meaningfully reduced until we have more teachers.

2. We won't have more teachers till teaching is made an attractive and sustainable career path.

3. If you can't make teaching an attractive and sustainable career path by meaningfully reducing workloads (which, per point 1, you can't), then you have to meaningfully improve pay.

We are haemorrhaging teachers right not (esp. experienced ones), and governments are delivering real pay cuts. There are no magical "high quality" teachers out there who can take on the workload of three or four teachers for the diminishing salary of one so long as you give them a scholarship.

You are are all just going to have to spend some real money.

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?