Peter Fowler,the chief executive of the Anglican Schools Corporation,said his schools were also receiving few applications for advertised vacancies,especially if they were for temporary positions such as maternity leave replacements.
“It is real,” he said of the teacher shortage. “In areas where there’s never been shortages before,we’re finding a lack of applicants. In primary and PDHPE (personal development,health and physical education).”
Vanessa Cheng,CEO of the Australian Association of Christian Schools,said her schools were also struggling to find teachers. “It’s not unique to the state system,” she said. “It’s something our schools are looking for and aware of.”
The principal of Reddam House,Dave Pitcairn,said finding temporary teachers was difficult. “If a teacher leaves the profession or goes on maternity leave there are far fewer applicants available and put forward by recruitment agencies,” he said. “All subjects are equally affected,but in my experience maths appears the worst.”
Craig Petersen,the head of the Secondary Principals Council,said there had long been shortages in science and maths but recruitment problems were beginning to emerge in other disciplines,such as PE and English.
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About 10 years ago,there was an oversupply of PE teachers,so some universities stopped training them. PE teachers were particularly useful as they were versatile and tended to be willing to teach other subjects. “Now we can’t get PE teachers to teach PE,which is a problem,” he said.
“We’ve also now got schools not just in regional areas that can’t get English teachers,and what’s really alarming about that is that in terms of secondary teachers English are among the cheapest to train.”
Public schools say they are struggling to find qualified Technological and Applied Studies (TAS) teachers,which is a specialty now only taught at one university. TAS teachers cover subjects such as agriculture,design and technology,and wood and metal work.
One bureaucrat with knowledge of the issue,speaking anonymously because they were not authorised to comment,said systems still lacked workforce plans that would enable them to tell universities how many teachers they expected to need in each subject. “The problem is profound,” he said.
There is little difference between award rates for mid-career public and private school teachers. Under the public award,a band 3 teacher was paid $114,720 last year;under the private schools’ multi-enterprise award,band 3 teachers are paid $114,921.
The author of the Monash University study,Fiona Longmuir,said researchers identified two key factors that could stop teachers from leaving the profession;a meaningful reduction in workload,and an increased understanding of the complexity of teachers’ work.
“Teachers don’t mind hard work,but they do feel overwhelmed by the ever-increasing administration and standardisation being thrust upon them,which is arguably not benefiting students,and is,in fact,taking teachers away from their core business of actually teaching,” said Dr Longmuir.
A spokesman for the NSW Department of Education said the department had appointed more than 26,000 teachers since 2017,and so far this year,3100 positions had been filled.
As of May 31,there had been more than 4500 expressions of interest from overseas teachers and 210 applications.
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