Schools offer $50,000 bonus to keep teachers

Short-staffed schools are offering $50,000 cash bonuses and recruitment kickbacks to hire teachers, as they fend off poaching from rivals interstate and overseas.

One in seven teachers plans to quit the profession this year, new data shows.

Short-staffed schools are offering $50,000 cash bonuses and recruitment kickbacks to hire teachers, as they fend off poaching from rivals interstate and overseas.

As British schools launch a recruitment drive in Australia, data reveals one in seven Australian teachers plans to quit this year.

The looming brain drain of teachers is revealed in fresh data from the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership.

Half of Australia’s teachers plan to leave the profession within five years, the data shows.

Australia’s biggest schooling system, the NSW Education Department, is offering $20,000 bonuses for teachers to work in schools across western Sydney, including maths specialists for Merrylands High School and Cambridge Park High School.

The bonus lifts the top salary for teachers in NSW to $140,000 a year, yet the Education Department was trying to fill 2172 permanent teaching positions in NSW public schools in February.

Catholic schools are offering existing staff a $500 recruitment kickback “if they successfully refer outstanding talent’’ to work in the Broken Bay diocese, which includes schools on Sydney’s north shore.

Teachers are also being lured with a 25 per cent discount if they enrol their own children in a Catholic school.

AITSL deputy CEO Edmund Misson said that workload was the main reason teachers wanted to leave, based on AITSL’s survey of 38,000 teachers last year.

“(They told us) the workload is too heavy, it’s too stressful and they want a better work-life balance,” he said.

Pay and public image of the profession was the second-most common reason cited. Large classes and unruly students were the third-most common reason.

As Australian schools struggle to find staff, British schools are now targeting Australian teachers to work overseas, advertising on the local jobs website Seek. Recruitment firm Edwin Education is seeking Australian teachers for schools across London.

Australian Secondary Principals’ Association president Andrew Pierpoint said he had heard of private schools offering $50,000 bonuses for specialist teachers: “There are systems – government, independent and Catholic – offering teachers relocation expenses and procurement payments to teach in their area.”

He said schools in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and north shore were having trouble finding staff because teachers could not afford to buy or rent a home within commuting distance.

University of NSW Professor of Educational Leadership Scott Eacott has calculated that housing is unaffordable for junior teachers, who earn $76,999 a year, in 675 NSW schools.

Mr Pierpoint said many teachers were abandoning the profession, or moving to higher-paid teaching jobs in the private sector.

He said mining companies were poaching teachers to instruct workers, and some principals were having to return to classroom teaching to fill staff shortages, or were combining classes or axing subjects.

The AITSL data reveals a worsening shortage across the nation, with between one-third and a half of all teachers intending to quit before retirement age.

Teachers in Melbourne are the most likely to stay in the profession, even though half plan to quit early. Regions most likely to lose teachers are the North Coast of NSW, Central Queensland, the West Australian outback, Shepparton in Victoria, and southeast Tasmania.

Two out of three teachers in Coffs Harbour and Grafton, Mackay and the Whitsundays, and Central Queensland have plans to quit, either retiring early or switching to new careers.

The federal and state governments are trying to stem teacher shortages by fast-tracking workers from other professions, such as law, science or engineering, into teaching, and have also agreed to try to reduce paperwork and red tape for classroom teachers.