Former teacher opens up about culture at Barossa High School

A former teacher at an embattled Barossa Valley high school has opened up about facing mental health challenges due to their working environment.

A former teacher at a Barossa Valley high school has said an environment of stress has left the person contemplating taking their own life.

The teacher of more than a decade at Nuriootpa High School, but now works elsewhere and wished to remain anonymous, said there had been multiple members of staff who expressed suicidal ideation due to their working conditions.

“If I hadn’t gotten out of the school when I did, it could have led to the end of my life,” the educator said. “I was one of the lucky ones, I got out.”

They said staff were micromanaged and staff concerns were not taken seriously enough. “They (staff) are just so stressed outland they feel trapped,” they said.

“You feel like a piece of crap and that you can’t be trusted.”

The teacher said morale at the school was “so low” and about 60 teachers had left in the past five years.

Nuriootpa High School. Nuriootpa South Australia. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

They said “some chose to retire early or not to renew short term contracts”.

The teacher said the school of about 1300 students “needs to be cut in half” to become manageable for staff and has called for new leadership.

“When I started my career, it was a school that everyone wanted to be at and it was as close as you could get to a private school in the public sector,” they said.

Now, relief teachers avoid Nuriootpa High School.

“Staff get verbally abused, told to get f***ed, called pedos and all sorts (by students) and nothing happens,” the teachersaid. “The lack of morale meant schoolyard incidents went unnoticed.

“Some of the staff are so apathetic towards everything, including life, that they can’t bring themselves to go onto yard dutyor they do it late.

“Others are so fearful and don’t want to approach groups because of the pack mentality of kids.

“You look at people out on yard duty, they drag their feet because in some cases they’ve just had a terrible lesson and they’reliterally sat at their desk crying.”

In a 2023 student wellbeing survey at Nuriootpa High School, seen by The Advertiser, just 11 per cent of students were satisfiedwith the school climate and 18 per cent felt a sense of school belonging.

Of the respondents, 37 per cent of students reported being happy at school.

Education Department chief executive professor Martin Westwell said Nuriootpa High School has been identified as needing “extrasupport while they work on the issues being raised”.

“A number of measures are being immediately implemented at the school and an independent review of the school and student behaviour will be conducted by the Department for Education,” Prof Westwell said.

He added that “the level of staff turnover at this school is in line with what we would expect for its size and location”.

It comes after The Advertiser revealed that bullying towards a student with autism at the school escalated to a level where he has continuously been called a “rapist, pedophile”, and told to “kill himself” since he enrolled.

In a separate incident captured on a video, seen by The Advertiser, believed to have been filmed on April 9, Year 8 student Hendrix Mortimer is depicted being grabbed and shoved to the ground, before his head is stomped on.