Time-poor teachers struggling to prepare effective lessons for students

Most teachers are struggling to prepare effective lessons for their students as they juggle an ever-expanding workload,with new research underscoring the risk of burnout facing the profession following two chaotic years of the pandemic.

The research by the Grattan Institute,a think tank,found 92 per cent of more than 5400 primary and secondary teachers across the country felt they did not have enough time to prepare for their core teaching duties,including lesson planning,reviewing students’ work and supporting struggling learners.

Primary school teacher Nathaniel Swain has noticed an increase in the scope of teachers’ responsibilities and the number of administrative tasks they are required to do.

Primary school teacher Nathaniel Swain has noticed an increase in the scope of teachers’ responsibilities and the number of administrative tasks they are required to do.Scott McNaughton

The report,which centres on the institute’s survey of teachers and school leaders from public and non-government schools in 2021,found teachers could get back an average of two hours a week if they were relieved of extra-curricular duties such as yard duty and supervising sports or debating,with responsibility handed to specialist and support staff.

Almost 90 per cent of teachers reported they could save a further three hours each week by having access to high-quality curriculum and lesson planning materials,rather than “re-inventing the wheel” by devising their own units plans,assessments and classroom resources.

Nathaniel Swain,a teacher at Brandon Park Primary in Melbourne,said he’d noticed an increase in recent years in the scope of teachers’ responsibilities and the number of administrative tasks they were required to do,with the stress driving some out of the profession.

“There are two kinds of people who can put up with that pressure – those who love it so much that they can justify all the out-of-hours time they are required to put in,or those who just do the very bare minimum and maybe haven’t been able to move onto something different,” he said.

He said his school was in the process of implementing a plan to tackle burnout by creating shared resources and curriculum materials,which would be ready by the end of the year.

“That means that we don’t have to create a new lesson every single week,” Mr Swain said. “It also means we are able to use those same materials again,in a similar sequence the following year with just a few tweaks."

“In many schools,it’s very much a case of every year you completely start from scratch and you throw everything out from the previous year.”

Dr Jordana Hunter,the Grattan Institute’s education program director and the report’s co-author,said the findings were a “cry for help” from Australia’s teachers.

“Teachers should be able to get the core parts of their job done in a standard working week,” she said.

“We know at the moment in schools teachers are being asked to do a whole lot of things that don’t actually require teaching expertise,particularly around the supervision of extracurricular activities. We need to ask ourselves if that is the best use of teachers time?”

The Grattan report noted the remit of schools had expanded to dealing with issues such as childhood obesity,swimming safety,mental health challenges,cyberbullying,and consent in personal relationships,with a vast majority of teachers reporting they had insufficient downtime to re-charge.

Glenn Fahey,an education researcher at the Centre for Independent Studies,said there was a consensus view in the sector that the burden of non-teaching tasks was a problem affecting student learning.

“Any teacher in any school would recognise this is a problem,” Mr Fahey said.

“When you look at teachers’ time use and how it relates to student achievement,what makes the biggest positive difference is the amount of time they spend providing written,detailed feedback to students. Those who spend more time on that,have higher-performing students.

“Those who spend more time on administration and non-teaching tasks tend to have lower-performing students.”

Data from the 2018 OECD teaching and learning survey showed Australia was below the OECD average in terms of teaching hours but had comparatively long work weeks,with activities including administration,professional development,counselling students and communicating with parents adding to the workload.

To address the problem,the Grattan Institute recommended governments look to the example of the UK,which has conducted systematic evaluations of the role of teachers and support staff in classrooms and managing workload. It proposed the federal,state,and territory governments invest $60 million on pilot studies on ways to improve teacher time-use,such as examining the option of using support staff to lighten the load of teachers,or whether it was feasible for schools to run larger class sizes to free up more preparation time.

Andrew Pierpoint,president of the Australian Secondary Principals Association,said the stress on teachers and school leaders to help students with mental health concerns in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic would be one of the biggest ongoing challenges for schools.

“Teachers are the ones who have to pick up that stress because if we’re going to educate kids,we’ve got to make sure that they’re in a mental state to be educated. So we’re going to have to do this ‘pre-learning’ work.” he said.

“There’s going to be a multi-year lag in getting students caught up and back to the level keel where they were prior to the pandemic,” he said.

Lisa Visentin is the federal political correspondent for The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age.

Most Viewed in Politics