Chris Minns pledges five hours less admin work for teachers each week

Teachers will have five hours less of administrative tasks during the week under a Labor plan designed to stop the exodus of staff who are sick of drowning in paperwork.

Teachers will have five hours less of administrative tasks during the week under a Labor plan designed to stop the exodus of staff who are sick of drowning in paperwork.

Labor leader Chris Minns will pledge to cull or streamline more than 200 Education Department policy documents to refocus staff on teaching.

We can reveal the Labor state election commitment will form the centrepiece of Mr Minns’ speech to the NSW Teacher Federation state council on Saturday, where it is expected to receive an overwhelmingly positive response.

Both Labor and the union have been campaigning against the volume of “red tape” teachers must deal with.

The state government policy library lists 219 individual documents that principals and teachers must adhere to, including policies addressing school uniforms, attendance, excursions and sun safety. Both the public and private school sectors have been campaigning for years for the state government to reduce the administrative burden on staff.

Excessive administrative workload has been blamed for teachers leaving the profession.

The December 2021 Australian Teacher Workforce Data report showed that “on average” the full-time teaching workforce in NSW who were paid to work 36-40 hours per week reported working 60.1 hours per week, or 150 per cent of their paid hours.

A separate NSW parliament survey found 92 per cent of teachers believed the best solution to address the teacher shortages was to reduce the administration workload.

To try to address the problem, the government in 2020 announced a special “quality time” program to save teachers one hour per week, or 40 hours per year. In March this year, it revealed that by the end of 2021, it had saved 29 hours of administrative tasks per year – or less than 44 minutes per school week.

Should Labor win government in March, Mr Minns said the education department will be ordered to deliver a reduction of five hours of administrative work per week.

The reduction in hours will be achieved via a line-by-line audit of all the bureaucratic tasks teachers are required to do, with work that added no benefit to student outcomes to be “culled”.

Other tasks not culled would be simplified or digitised.

“Teachers shouldn’t have to spend more time documenting a lesson than teaching it,” Mr Minns said.

“We will go line-by-line over every piece of admin teachers are required to do and make sure that time will instead be spent on improving student outcomes.”

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