High school classes being taught by teachers without qualifications in the subject area

Thousands of high school students are being taught by teachers who do not have the appropriate qualifications in the subject area with new figures showing geography, history and maths classes to be the worst.

Thousands of high school students are being taught by teachers who do not have the appropriate qualifications in the subject area with new figures showing geography, history and maths classes to be the worst.

While all teachers are qualified to teach, those who hold a university major or minor in the subject they teach are deemed as “infield” teachers, or experts in their subject area.

With the state gripped by a critical teachers shortage, schools have had no option but to hire “out of field” teachers as evidenced by the most recent government job advertisements where schools have sought PE teachers also willing to teach Year 7-12 science.

The NSW Department of Education figures for last year show more than 44 per cent of teachers giving geography lessons were out-of-field teachers.

In the case of history, just under 25 per cent were out-of-field teachers.

Year 7-10 maths students were also being frequently taught by out-of-field teachers with the figures showing 22 per cent were giving lessons despite not being experts in the field.

While out-of-field teachers were more commonly found fronting Year 7-10 classes, the data showed even senior students were being impacted.

More than 8 per cent of Year 11-12 science students were taught by out-of-field teachers last year, with just under 7 per cent teaching year 11-12 maths.

Just under 12 per cent of high school English teachers were also out-of-field.

NSW Teachers Federation deputy president Henry Rajendra

NSW Teachers Federation deputy president Henry Rajendra said the figures were a reflection of the acute teacher shortages in both public and private schools across the state.

He blamed the former Coalition government for failing to address the shortages which had come about through unsustainable workloads and uncompetitive salaries.

“It is not just one or two secondary subject areas that are affected, it is across the board,” Mr Rajendra said.

“We have record numbers of teachers leaving the profession and a steep decline in the number of people studying to become a teacher.

“The Coalition left NSW with a teacher recruitment and retention crisis and no one should underestimate the size of the investment it is going to take to fix this.”

The education department job feed this week showed a school advertising for a PE teacher and a food technology teacher, both of whom had “a willingness to teach science Years 7-12”.

The school also was looking for an English teacher who was also able to teach human society and environment.

A confidential 2020 department report about the teacher shortage discussed the “high proportion” of out-of-field teachers in NSW public schools, which it acknowledged “impacted student outcomes” such as in science where “infield teaching is associated with higher average HSC scores” except in biology.

The Minns government has pledged to scrap the wages cap while reducing the administration workloads of teachers.