Australian Education Union tells SA teachers to drop tasks to pressure government

Teachers will drop non-teaching tasks from Monday in a union bid to put pressure on the state government to fix a “broken system” that sees them working 50 hours a week.

Teachers will stop tasks like sending parent newsletters or working through meal breaks in a bid to put pressure on the state government to address “excessive workloads”.

From tomorrow, the teachers union is encouraging staff in public schools to “stop doing tasks that do not directly relate to the teaching and learning of students”.

The Australian Education Union has been negotiating a new enterprise bargaining agreement with the government since the start of the year and SA branch president Andrew Gohl said a key issue was escalating workloads.

“Parents probably don’t realise their child’s teacher is working 50 hours to keep a broken system running, working late into the night and on weekends to fulfil data and admin requirements,” he said.

“Educators are papering over the cracks with their unpaid goodwill and the government is taking advantage of it.

“If the government expects these tasks, they can provide adequate time and resources for them to be done. Until then, we’re asking educators to stop doing them.”

Australian Education Union SA branch president Andrew Gohl. Picture: LinkedIn

Education Minister Blair Boyer. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

Examples could include reducing parent communication, such as newsletters, not collecting or reporting certain data or not attending extra staff meetings.

Education Minister Blair Boyer the government was “yet to receive the specific enterprise terms from the SA Branch of the AEU”.

“This has made negotiations difficult and has dramatically limited the ability to make an offer,” Mr Boyer said.

He said the department was “acutely aware of the increased complexity of classrooms and issues of workload, and we are committed to addressing them in this enterprise agreement”.

The government has committed $50m for 100 additional mental health and learning support staff and $28m for autism inclusion teachers.

Research commissioned by the AEU revealed last year that many teachers were working 50-plus hours a week but only spending 20 hours teaching.

The UniSA survey of 1600 SA teachers found the number who said they felt stressed had doubled since 2018 and most were dissatisfied with their salaries.

Teachers widely complained about the amount of administrative work they were required to undertake rather than spending time with their students, especially those with complex needs.

During the last round of enterprise bargaining negotiations between the AEU and government teachers took industrial action including strikes which shut down hundreds of schools, or forced them to operate with limited programs.

Those negotiations began in May 2018 and were not agreed on until February 2020.

Union members took other actions including not writing comments on student report cards and holding Christmas concerts in the daytime.

The eventual agreement delivered pay rises of 2.35 per cent for teachers and 3.35 per cent for principals and preschool directors.

There were also incentives for teachers to work in country schools, reduced face-to-face teaching time for principals in small schools, and an extra $15m a year to help schools cope with growing numbers of children with special needs.

Originally published as Australian Education Union tells SA teachers to drop tasks to pressure government