By Holly Thompson
Many West Australian public school teachers have reached breaking point and intend to leave the profession in the next four years, a damning independent review into the state’s public schools has revealed.
The Facing the Facts report was commissioned by the State School Teachers’ Union WA and chaired by Dr Carmen Lawrence, who was WA’s education minister in the late 80s before becoming premier.
The report was chaired by eminent WA education academic and former premier Dr Carmen Lawrence.Credit: CCWA
“The teaching profession is calling for immediate and sustainable change to the public school system,” the report reads.
“The profession is at breaking point and requires immediate steps to support improved education delivery and morale.”
It made 46 key recommendations on ways to improve the system, covering a wide range of issues from teacher workload and burnout to retention challenges and growing student complexity.
Union President Matt Jarman said the state was “at a crossroads” with public education.
“Ranges of complex needs in classrooms makes it extremely challenging to manage classroom behaviour.”
Primary teacher, rural
“This inquiry is vital to paving a way forward for education … I don’t think there’s an aspect of our public education system, which it hasn’t touched on,” he said.
“Teacher shortages, excessive workloads and violence in schools are just some of the day-to-day problems, and with the public system educating the majority of WA children, they deserve the very best from a quality education environment.
“For too long we have seen public education ignored as an election issue at both state and federal level, even though it consistently rates as one of the topics the community is most concerned about.”
Jarman said around 6000 teachers had retired or resigned from public schools in the past three years, largely down to workload pressure.
“If a student wrecks the room, attacks the staff, disrupts the learning – the child returns to school the next day to repeat the process.”
Primary teacher, city
The report revealed 86 per cent of teachers were considering leaving within four years.
Lawrence said the panel received around 130 submissions from parents and teachers.
“Too often in education, people propose things that need to be done, make recommendations, then it sits in the bottom drawer somewhere gathering dust,” she said.
“We hope to engage … with the government and policymakers because these are all achievable objectives.”
Lawrence criticised the “steady stream of reforms” that had only served to increase the workloads on teachers without improving outcomes.
She said the most significant of these was the Independent Schools Program, which gave principals more power over how the school operated at a local level, including hiring decisions.
“There were a lot of downsides with that and we found that there were no tangible benefits,” Lawrence said.
She also said the report found NAPLAN was “flatlining at best.”
The report states it had “not resulted in any sustained improvements in aggregate educational outcomes or in reducing educational inequality.”
The findings will be officially handed down Monday afternoon to around 120 of the state’s major education figures including Education Minister Tony Buti.
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