$50k bonus for teachers to switch to private schools

NSW’s chronic public school teacher shortage is being exacerbated by huge sign-on bonuses offered by private schools to desirable candidates — who sometimes don’t even need to apply for roles. SEE WHAT PRINCIPALS SAY

Principals are reporting that teachers they are attempting to recruit are declining to due lucrative sign-up bonuses with private schools.

Teachers are being offered as much as $50,000 to leave the public school system for the private sector.

The huge sign on bonuses are contributing to a teacher vacancy crisis across NSW.

NSW Education Department documents confirm bureaucrats have “limited insight” on just how bad the staff vacancy situation is.

A department briefing note blamed the problem on the department’s data collection system, declaring: “The Department’s systems provide us with limited insight into the supply challenges being faced at a local school level”.

It comes as a damning NSW Secondary Principals’ Council staff survey conducted in mid-December last year and repeated in early March found about 80 per cent of principals who participated had “unfilled vacancies” at their school.

The survey contained testimonials from desperate principals unable to find teachers to fill vacancies, one advertising a position over two years without success.

The principals raised a “concerning trend” of staff leaving the public sector for a private school, with some of those teachers having been “poached”, the survey said.

“There have been offers of $20,000, $30,000 and $50,000 extra for classroom teachers to take up positions in private schools,” one principal quoted in the survey said. “How can we possibly compete with this?”

Another principal wrote how one staff member was offered a position at a non-government school on pay equivalent to “a head teacher” with “no application required.”

NSW Education Minister, and Deputy Premier, Prue Car. Picture: Damian Shaw

“Other temporary teachers have also been offered additional pay to move to the non-government sector,” the principal wrote.

Another principal wrote: “It’s only a matter of time before parents see teachers being paid more as an indication that they must have ‘better’ teachers in the private system”.

The survey found chronic teacher shortages in all areas, but especially in maths, TAS and science, where principals spoke of how it was “impossible” to find temporary teachers to plug the gaps.

Just eight per cent of principals described their staffing situation as being “better than anticipated” when they first participated in the survey while more than one-third declared it to be “worse”.

It is understood the education department is hoping the state government will work to upgrade its internal data systems to improve its visibility over staffing shortages.

NSW Secondary Principals’ Council president Craig Petersen said the survey painted a concerning picture.

“There have been reports of staff being offered significant financial bonuses to accept positions in the private system, so the issue of teacher salaries in the public system really needs to be addressed,” he said.

“We have outstanding teachers in our public schools and we must make sure we retain them. Addressing teacher shortages must be a priority for our political leaders.”