Anonymous #434

Submitter information

Name

Anonymous #434

Where are you located?

New South Wales

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.

Neither agree nor disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

As an educator, it is lovely to see one of the core focus of this plan to improve the standing of teachers in the wider community. However, I fear the notion of creating an Australian Teacher of the Year and Order of Australia, whilst are great ideas, it does not acknowledge the team effort that comes to teaching and it provides a sense that there is an 'ideal' type of teacher, which is simply not true and would not inspire the collective. Instead, more needs to be done to recognise the expertise of teachers across the whole schooling context.

It would be more beneficial if the $10 million dollars of ad campaigns were placed into helping teachers move into the HALT system and provide them with the appropriate guidelines. As it currently stands, the process to reach HALT is long and the reward in terms of pay is a fraction of the teachers effort to achieve and maintain. I would love to see the draft to use this money to finance supervising teachers more fairly when helping student teachers on placement. If we can retain quality teachers or perhaps experienced teachers, there will be occupational know-how that can be shared.

This additional funds can also be used to develop quality workshops to assist in further professional learning of experienced teachers or for beginning teachers/their mentor.

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.

Somewhat disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

While I do believe HECs support is crucial with increase the supply of teachers, there needs to be conditions applied to ensure they are retained and gain the relevant experiences. For HECs support, I believe for every year of service that the teacher has been teaching at a school, they should be allowed a discounted repayment on their HECs loan for that particular financial year.

For example, if the teacher has taught 1 year, then they should be given a discount on the repayment of their first year tuition fees accumulated at University; second year of teaching then applies to their second year of study. This will ensure that teachers are committed to the profession and continue to seek long term employment in the profession.

If the subject area is in high demand, for example, Physics or Mathematics, then the teacher should be allowed to have their HECs loan to be waived for the relevant years of service. If a math teacher has worked for 2 years, then the HEC fees accumulated in their first 2 years at University should be waived by the government.

Whilst supply is important, if there is a continual decrease in experienced teachers, any strategy to encourage more teachers into the profession will be ineffective. Hence, the government's best strategy to increase teacher supply is to retain the experienced teachers already in the system. An experienced teacher can offer their content knowledge skills and behavioural management skills to an inexperienced teacher. This will ensure the quality of knowledge is passed on and effective teaching can continue. The current plans that have been drafted does not address the issue of teachers leaving. The teacher's salary must increase or significantly increase the contributions of super such as the universities at 17%, this will provide the teacher's the mindset that teaching can be a long term career. Workload must be reduced; this not only includes administration work, but also direct teaching times; this will allow for more planning and collaboration.

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?

This is the main component of this draft that I strongly disagree with, as many of these strategies have been trailed before.

The initial education for beginning teachers should be to increase their classroom observations, and interactions with both teachers and students. The main focus of this draft plan still appears to attract more teachers into the profession; however, it does not educate them in becoming an effective educator.

The draft plan should include greater connections between beginning teachers and a range of schools that they can observe regular and help as assistants. Experienced teachers should be able to offer their services by supervising and planning lessons with beginning teachers (e.g. period allowances to act as the mentor). Furthermore, placements from university for student teachers are poorly coordinated. For example, a student teacher in NSW does not have a DET email address, thus, during their placement, they are unable to access the internet at the school to plan their lessons or use particular materials to teach with. The supervisor can offer their detail; however, that would go against the code of conduct and therefore should not be done.

For the supervising teacher helping student teachers, they are not provided with enough information on how they should support the student teacher. This leads to inconsistency in the advice and care provided by each supervisor which can inhibited the progress of the student teacher. Further, the supervising teacher is not reimbursed enough financially by the universities for the effort of work. $34 a day, is not a true reflection of the amount of detailed feedback and co-planning supervising teachers provided. This payment should be increased and should reflect the level of experience of the student teacher, as the less experienced they are, the greater the time it takes the supervising teacher to assist them and therefore, they should be fairly compensated.

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?

Action 15, the assumption that the current work being done to reduce administration work by the state and territory government is a poor assumption. According to the quality time program in NSW, the 20% reduction is not observable as an active teaching staff, hence, it would be hopefully that further plans can effective address administration work of teachers.

If the schools should be allowed a higher quota of permanent staff in their schools. This will allow more teachers to be timetabled and effectively 'freeing up' the teaching load of other teachers. This benefit collaboration as teachers have extra time to organise effective lesson plans and programs to help their students.

When it comes to draft programs and resources to help teachers, the department should encourage current teachers to participate in developing these resources. This allows the teachers to demonstrate their expertise and furthermore, these workshops and contributions made by these teachers should link them towards HALT.

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?

Moderately effective

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

The department should have an annual review into teacher's attitudes and needs. This is to encourage teachers to share their opinions and directions of the need of the current workforce.

There should be an increase in teacher pay besides the notion of increasing support for HALT.

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.

Somewhat agree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

The programs for HALT accreditation needs to be further reduced in the workload to achieve; the current timeline for a teacher to start and complete the accreditation process is long and in most states and territories, most teacher will not have a wage increase until the process is finished and even when finished the increase is objectively small compared to the amount of work required to process the HALT accreditation.

In the current plan, there has been no plan that highlights how the government intends to increase the annual salary of a classroom teacher. Besides the workload, the salary a teacher is able to get compared to other professions of similar qualifications is very low. Additionally, from the perspective of economics, due to the current teacher shortage across the country, a significant but fair increase in the teacher's salary would indeed encourage high school graduates and mid-career people to consider teaching. Research completed by the NSW teacher federation has demonstrated that high school graduates are more inclined to consider teaching if the annual salary was increased, By increasing salary, this also encourages experienced teachers to remain in the job.

To retain teachers, the current wage of teachers in the graduate, proficient and HALT levels must be significantly increased to match the current economic conditions of high inflation and teaching shortages. Please consider and develop a more thorough plan regarding how the government can improve the wages of their teachers as this will become the main factor of whether the government and schools can retain quality teachers.