Teachers to protest against staff shortages at Parliament House — but no mass staff walkouts

Teachers and principals will protest on the steps of parliament, calling out the state government’s failure to tackle the teacher shortage crisis.

One of the Premier’s most loyal electoral allies, the Australian Education Union, has turned on the government and will protest teacher shortages on the steps of Parliament House on Friday.

The protest is expected to include education officials and some teachers, although there will not be a mass walkout of teachers from schools.

Advertised vacancies in public schools have reached unprecedented levels, with daily advertised jobs reaching 2600 last week, prompting public school principals, teachers, and

education support staff to demand immediate action.

Some students have had no permanent teacher all year, and others are continually split between other grades due to a lack of casual relief teachers, blowing class sizes out to more than 40 pupils.

Senior students are sharing subject teachers, with year 12 students getting only half the time face-to-face with an experienced teacher and a fill-in CRT the rest of the time.

Schools are also staggering the school day, with one state high school getting year seven to nine students to be at school from 8.30am to 2.30pm and years ten to 12 to do 10am to 4pm.

The government is ramping up efforts to attract top graduates to teach in state schools, offering 400 financial packages worth $5650, but one principal says it will take “quite a few more years” to fill more than 2000 statewide vacancies.

As the crisis drags on, teachers say the quality of fill-in teachers is dropping, with one veteran educator saying schools are “scraping the barrel”.

He said his school was forced to hire the “least bad applicant just to make sure there was a teacher in front of the class”.

One of the Premier’s most loyal electoral allies the Australian Education Union has turned on the government. Picture: Supplied

Other teachers are reporting that efforts to get retired teachers to return to the classroom are problematic, with teachers aged up to 75 “finding it hard to get back on the treadmill again”.

“Teaching is a high energy job and it’s hard for them to wind up again,” one teacher said.

Colin Axup, President at Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals, said school leaders “appreciate the Department of Education’s initiatives to recruit and retain teachers; however, there are continuing challenges of staffing”.

“Principals are working with their communities and the department to ensure the best educational outcomes for their students,” he said.

Veteran principal Henry Grossek from Berwick Lodge Primary School, said there was a chronic shortage of relief teachers which was driving class sizes up to 33 children in some cases.

“We’ve had to cancel specialist programs and split grades – that all happens quite regularly because we can’t get a replacement for a teacher who is off,” he said.

Mr Grossek said it would be “quite a few more years” before the issues are resolved.

Australian Education Union president Victorian Branch said despite the union’s early warnings to the state government, they had failed to take the significant steps needed and make the required investment to address the lack of teachers across public schools.

Specialist programs have been cancelled and grades split amid the teacher shortage.

“It is the students who bear the brunt of this crisis, as too many classrooms across the state

remain without qualified permanent teachers, impacting on student learning,” she said.

“Class sizes are increasing, and staff are shouldering unsustainable workloads in a daily

effort to fill the gaps in our classrooms, to ensure our students receive the best education

possible despite the circumstances.

“We’ve repeatedly asked for bold and urgent action from Premier Andrews and offered a

comprehensive list of solutions to stem the shortage in the AEU’s Ten Year Plan, such as

retention payments for existing staff to keep them in our schools, comprehensive targeted

support for harder to staff schools, paid placements for pre-service teachers so they

complete their teacher training, and expanded scholarships and studentships to attract the

next generation of teachers.”