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Concord West Public School teachers,from left,Angelique Xenos and Frances Brewer.Credit:Wolter Peeters

So when she finished boarding school in Sydney she enrolled in teachers’ college,eventually getting a job at Walgett Public School.

“I worked for a long time – I’m not going to tell you how many years – but a long time in public education,” says Brewer.

But in 2019,after 16 years as a principal,enough was enough.

“I was probably burnt out at a principal level,” Brewer says.

Her burnout was due to the mammoth workload of a principal,the enormity of which she best describes with an anecdote about the time a management consultant from Deloitte once followed her around on a school day as part of a time-use study by the Department of Education.

“I had somebody come out and shadow me for a day and watch everything I did,” she said.

By the end of the school day the consultant said she had only stopped work for 15 minutes,and Brewer had hours more work to do at home.

Retirement was good. There were a couple of trips overseas. “I’m not really a person to go out for morning teas and lunches all the time,and that’s where I could see myself heading,” she said.

After two years she returned to Concord West Public to work as a classroom teacher.

New figures from the Education Department suggest more experienced teachers such as Brewer are choosing to stay on longer,with the number of those retiring falling to 1014 last year,a 43 per cent drop over 10 years.

Education Minister Prue Car,who awarded public teachers a historic $10,000 pay rise,said she’d restored the reputation of the teaching profession.

“We’ve brought teacher salaries up and teacher vacancies down,and the sharp drop in resignations particularly speaks volumes about the positive impact being felt in classrooms across the state,” she said.

NSW Education Minister Prue Car.Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

“There’s still work to do,but these improvements mean one thing:greater learning outcomes for our students,which is at the centre of everything we do.”

The resignation rate for first-year teachers also dropped,while the percentage of public school teachers resigning fell to 1779,down from 2050 the previous year.

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