South Coast teachers from Berry to Bermagui join historic school walk-off
For only the second time in history, South Coast public and Catholic school teachers have walked off the job together in an historical industrial action that has shuttered school campuses across the state.
The South Coast News
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More than 250 South Coast school teachers from campuses from Berry to Bermagui have walked off the job in a historic industrial action demanding better pay and staff conditions amid widespread teacher shortages and stagnating wage growth.
Teachers from more than 20 Catholic and public schools from across the region rallied in Batemans Bay on Thursday, marking only the second time in history that the two schooling streams have joined in industrial action, and the first time in more than two decades.
For young teachers like Narooma High School’s visual arts teacher Kalithea Barcala and Josie Strachan, the current crisis in education is unsustainable, and has left early-career educators like themselves exhausted, mentally weathered, and reconsidering their future in teaching.
“I would like to be able to look forward to my job and have passion for my work,” Ms Barcala said.
“I don’t want to feel like I am being hindered by the system.
“We need things to change for us to keep thriving and providing quality education. We can’t just keep going the way we are. It’s going to break – It’s already breaking. The cracks are already starting to show.”
After studying for more than seven years to become a specialised visual arts educator, Ms Barcala said the current crisis was not only making it hard for teachers, many of whom, like her, have student debts, but it also made it hard for schools to find quality teaching staff,
“We need highly qualified teachers to really guide students,” she said.
“We both went to university for a very long time. We came out with very large debts to be highly qualified teachers, and we feel like we need to be looking to a long profession and not feeling like we might need to leave the profession because of the stress we’re under.
“That’s the reality for a lot of young teachers: 50 per cent of them leave in the first five years, which is pretty bleak.
“We’d love to have a brighter, more positive future to look forward to.”
The situation isn’t much better at Catholic schools, where the Independent Education Union’s secretary for NSW and the ACT Pat Smith said not only the government, but the Canberra and Goulburn region Catholic Archdiocese is failing educators.
“They are failing to negotiate with the union to address the issues of pay, conditions, workloads, and valuing the profession,” she said.
“Catholic schools cannot get sufficient casuals, they can’t fill long-term permanent or temporary positions.”
Ms Smith said she had spoken with a Catholic primary school principal who unlike public school heads is prohibited from attending the rally by their contract. That principal told her she had been taking classes all week because their teachers had been off sick with Covid or the flu.
“If she teaches all week because she cannot get casuals, it means her administrative duties and dealing with parents who care and support for families and for staff, all of that has to be largely put on hold,” Ms Smith said.
Four public school principals did join Thursday’s rally, including from Moruya Primary School and Ulladulla High School.
They joined teachers from a range of South Coast schools, including:
- Carrol College Broulee
- St Mary’s Primary School – Moruya
- St Bernard’s Primary School - Batehaven
- St Bedes Primary School - Braidwood
- Batemans Bay High School
- Batemans Bay Public School
- Budawang SSP
- Berry Public School
- OCCA
- Ulladulla High School
- Ulladulla Public School
- Tathra Primary School
- Sussex Inlet Public School
- Sunshine Bay Public School
- Narooma Public School
- Narooma High School
- Moruya High School
- Moruya Public School
- Bermagui Public School
- Broulee Public School
- Bodalla Public School
For the NSW Teacher’s Federation Queanbeyan and South Coast secretary, Waine Donovan, the NSW Government was operating under the “misguided” belief that students were able to teach themselves, with many relegated to the library by staff shortages.
“We have a lot of Year 12 students sitting in our libraries unsupervised, not being taught, and being told to go on with the work that they are given,” he said.
“They need a teacher in front of them so that they can finish their HSC in a successful manner. This is unfair to our students. It is unfair to the state, it is unfair to our future.”
While he acknowledged the staffing crisis wasn’t going to change overnight, Mr Donovan said the first step the state government should take would to be to offer teachers a competitive wage.
“Teachers that are working on average 60 hours a week,” he said.
“They are not having time with their own families, they’re not getting time during the school day to help prepare for their lessons.
“The state government has offered nothing to ease that workload. In fact, the offered 3 per cent salary cap, when it’s a 5 per cent inflation rate, is actually a pay cut. Teachers deserve to be paid for what they do, and they deserve to be paid for the qualifications that they have.”
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