SA teacher strike: Hundreds quit the profession last year and three reveal why they quit

Helicopter parents. Violent kids. Too much admin. No respect. As their ex-colleagues strike, three former SA teachers explain what drove them to quit their dream job.

Former teachers Annie Harvey, Josh Armstrong and Libby Trainor Parker share their reasons for leaving education. Picture: Supplied / The Advertiser

It was Annie Harvey’s “dream” to become a teacher.

But just 18 months after starting her career in teaching at a South Australian Catholic school, she quit after a confronting and violent incident with a student.

“I had to move 26 kids in a class sometimes twice a day to protect them from another student who was having a screaming tantrum,” Ms Harvey said.

“That’s when I left and that was the final trigger for me.”

She is not alone in her expressing her disappointment with the industry with teachers across the state striking on Thursday.

It comes as the Australian Education Union rejecting the South Australian Government’s offer of a compounding 4 per cent wage increase over the first year, followed by 3 per cent in the second year and 2.5 per cent in year three.

The strike action has forced 172 public schools and preschools to close while 201 are offering a modified program during Year 12 SACE exam.

In her time as a teacher, Ms Harvey felt “a general lack of respect” from parents and students at the school, which she declined to name.

Former teacher Annie Harvey now teachers others how to reduce stress and anxiety in the industry. Picture: Supplied

Parents were “looking for errors” in her teaching and the Hove woman would receive emails at all hours of night and day from “helicopter parents that would want to be involved in every aspect of a child’s day”.

And when children had difficulties learning or misbehaved in class, Ms Harvey said “parents would blame teachers”.

“Teachers have to wear many hats now, you’re parenting them and you’re counselling them,” she said.

Ms Harvey, now 57, left teaching in 2010 and has since worked as a private tutor, in addition to running seminars for teachers on how to manage the stress of the role.

Her story is not unique however, as SA Education Department statistics reveal, 266 teachers resigned and 311 retired between June 2022 and June 2023.

These statistics represent about 3 per cent of the department’s “teaching workforce”.

The number of resignations has doubled from 128 in the 2020-21 financial year and 139 in 2021-22.

Whereas resignations have fallen from 336 and 530 in the same periods.

Personal trainer Josh Armstrong quit teaching after his first year working full time at Salisbury East High School due to the “emotional toll” of the job.

“It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be,” Mr Armstrong said of his year teaching in 2022.

Personal trainer and former full-time teacher Josh Armstrong. Picture: Ben Clark

He is still working two days a week as a relief teacher “for the extra income” but his issues with the education system left him wanting to change profession.

The 26-year-old found it difficult to watch as “they kept suspending the kids over and over and over but (poor behaviour) just kept happening”.

“There was a lot of really bad behaviours that it didn’t seem like there was any long-term solution for,” he said.

Mr Armstrong also spent hours after work, on weekends and in school holidays developing personalised learning plans for troubled students.

“There’s a lot of weekends and holiday work,” he said.

“If you’ve got nine or 10 (troubled) kids in a class and you’ve got four classes, that’s 40 extra learning plans.”

From teaching to comedy

Libby Trainor Parker was teaching as recently as late last year but decided to make a clean break from the profession due to stress and a chronic health condition.

“I was teaching year 12s and I guess that was a good reminder of how stressful it can be,” the former teacher, most recently at Thebarton Senior College, said.

Libby Trainor Parker left teaching due to stress and is now running Prompt Creative Centre on Pirie St. Picture Dean Martin

Ms Trainor Parker, who is now an author, performer and venue owner, first tried to quit teaching in 2011 after she “had a bit of a meltdown”.

The 45-year-old said teaching became “exhausting” as she was often working more than 60 hours per week. The issue exacerbated by an endometriosis diagnosis at 36.

“Bad behaviour can be difficult and the admin is huge,” she said.

“It’s so ridiculous that most of what you do is not teaching children in the classroom.”

In 2020 she wrote a comedy cabaret show for the Adelaide Fringe called Extra Curricular, about “all the stuff which (teachers) get stressed about”.

“One of the jokes that I make in my comedy cabaret is that I love teaching, I try to do it as often as I can around all the other admin,” she said.

The city resident highlighted data reporting and developing tailored learning plans for individual students as reasons for teachers wanting to quit.

“I have huge respect for what teachers do but I wouldn’t do it again,” Ms Trainer Parker said.

Teachers who quit early ‘lost forever’

In late 2022, a report from the state branch of the Australian Education Union in collaboration with the University of South Australia, revealed almost one in two SA teachers surveyed intended to leave the industry within five years.

State branch president Andrew Gohl said teachers in their first five years in the industry were most at risk of quitting.

“They’re lost forever, it’s alarming,” Mr Gohl said earlier this year.

“There’s a teacher shortage because the joy of teaching has gone and the amount of admin has gone up.

“We need more non-instruction time (to complete admin tasks).”

He advocated for formalised mentoring for new teachers “to sit down with an experienced teacher and refine their approach to teaching”.

President of the SA Primary Principals Association Tobias O’Connor echoed these sentiments and said losing early-career teachers was “often due to workload”.

“They’re thinking, ‘maybe this isn’t the career I signed up for’,” Mr O’Connor said.

The issue not confined to the public system, as Catholic Education SA executive director Neil McGoran said the teacher shortage was affecting its schools.

Dr McGoran said Catholic Education was “working closely with pre-service teachers and early-career teachers” to support their start in teaching.

“Mentoring is particularly important in regional and remote schools, which may have higher numbers of early-career teachers,” he said.

In late July, the union encouraged teachers to stop tasks such as working through meal breaks or sending parent newsletters to put pressure on the state government to address the workload.

It comes as it continues to negotiate a new enterprise bargaining agreement with the state government, a process that began at the start of the year.

Earlier this year SA Education Minister Blair Boyer said the department was “acutely aware” of workload issues.

“The state government is committed to addressing them as part of the negotiation for a new enterprise agreement for South Australian teachers as quickly as possible,” Mr Boyer said.

He said that “teacher shortages are an issue across the country”.

“We must be actively working in this space – which is why we’re prioritising workload reductions.”

Originally published as SA teacher strike: Hundreds quit the profession last year and three reveal why they quit