Free uni for secondary school teachers not enough

Teachers are calling on the government to take further action to improve working conditions and address the teacher shortage.

Teachers are calling on the government to take further action to improve working conditions and remedy the teacher shortage.

Students are being shuffled around classrooms as the region struggles with a teacher shortage, the education union claims.

Deputy president of the Australian Education Union’s Victorian Branch, Justin Mullaly, said some students were being regularly moved to other classrooms because they did not have a permanent teacher and said immediate support was needed to address the crisis.

Northern Bay College primary school teacher Tony Foster said the workload for all teachers was enormous.

This week the state government announced studying to become a teacher in secondary schools in Victoria would be free in a bid to address the state’s teacher shortage.

While Mr Foster welcomed the scheme, he said he could not understand why it did not include primary schools.

According to the Australian Education Union, advertised vacancies in Victorian public schools have reached unprecedented levels, with daily advertised jobs reaching 2600 earlier this month.

Fiona Taylor, principal at Western Heights College in Geelong, said removing some of the financial barriers to teacher training could encourage people to make a career change.

“The impact of the current teacher shortage on students is significant, particularly for our school leaders in rural and remote schools,” Ms Taylor said.

Mr Foster said the government should be engaging with the Australian Education Union.

He said while Northern Bay College was a great place to work with “really good supportive leaders,” other teachers were not so lucky.

He said he found it sad that enormous workloads imposed on teachers caused graduates and experienced teachers to burn out and leave the profession.

“They’re the people the government should be listening to because they have the answers, they have the data and they talk to the people who are at the coalface, so to speak,” said Mr Foster.

“The writing’s been on the wall for ages,” he said.

“Governments haven’t done anything about it, and now, it appears it’s a bit of a patchwork job.”

Mr Mullaly said the government needed to provide greater immediate support to address the teacher shortage.

“While recently announced measures by the state government to provide scholarships to secondary teaching students, commencing in 2024, is a positive step forward, as is more support for teachers in their first year in the job, more needs to be done right now to keep existing school staff, especially in hard to staff schools in regional and remote Victoria.” Mr Mullaly said.

Originally published as Free uni for secondary school teachers not enough