Classroom resignations are rising. But they’re not the full story

Of the frontline workforces the state government employs (think nurses, police, paramedics), it’s teachers and teacher aides that are hired in greater numbers than any other in Queensland.

Regardless of how you count them – more on that later – there are at least 58,000. Like any other workforce, some quit or retire. And it’s the size of this group that has driven headlines this week.

Then-premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, picture in 2019 at Spring Mountain State School near Springfield, pledged to hire 6190 teachers and 1139 aides if her government won the 2020 election.Credit: Jack Tran

“Labor’s failing grade on teacher numbers” read the statement from the LNP opposition’s education spokesperson, Christian Rowan, on Monday. The Katter’s Australian Party echoed the line.

Both landed after a day of media coverage for a response Rowan received from his Labor counterpart on Friday, after asking about annual resignation numbers since 2020.

In it, Education Minister Di Farmer released figures which showed more teachers and aides leaving each year. A total of 6962 and 3092, respectively, across 2021, 2022, and 2023.

But this is not the full picture. As Farmer and the Queensland Teachers’ Union have noted, annual retention, or how much of the workforce stick around, has kept steady at about 95 per cent for years.

(It’s a figure which is pretty middle-of-the-road for state departments, and which both say is among the better for education providers nationwide).

In other words, while more and more teachers and aides have been leaving, they’ve been leaving from a bigger pool. But just how big is that pool?

Cabinet minister Meaghan Scanlon told journalists on Sunday the government has hired 5900 teachers and 2300 aides since the October 2020 election, and is on track for its campaign pledge.

That promise to hire 6190 teachers and 1139 aides over the four-year term, made by then-premier Annastacia Palaszczuk before the poll, includes replacing any who might leave.

(Such election-era staffing commitments for police, on the other hand, do not – and have the government in a trickier spot).

More than 55,000 teachers and 19,000 aides were on the department’s books, Farmer said in her response to Rowan’s parliamentary question on notice.

There’s no distinction here between full-time, part-time and casual, however. Which is how you can get a much smaller full-time equivalent figure of 58,822 teachers and aides as of March last year.

Contained in the government’s twice-yearly public sector workforce profile, published in March and September, we’re yet to see an updated figure – another point by Rowan, claiming a “cover-up”.

This, he suggests, is because the education department fell short of its targets for the proportion of students meeting NAPLAN minimum standards.

But full-time equivalent teachers and aides have climbed from 57,389 in September 2019 – a 2.5 per cent increase. Over a similar period, student enrolment numbers have risen 1.6 per cent to 570,259.

Leah Olsson, vice president of the teachers’ union that has criticised a new government bill seeking to change disciplinary processes, tells me keeping existing educators was as important as hiring new ones.

The sector’s ageing workforce, and mostly mid-career cohort graduating to fill the gaps, also means a need to ensure jobs can support staff more likely to have families than younger graduates might.

Olsson points to similar workforce issues facing the education sector in other states, but also police and nurses and many other workforces nationwide.

“We have to start doing things differently,” she says. “We need to have a look, and it’s really good that the conversation is happening, because for so long ... schools, and state schools especially, have gone chronically underfunded, and this is one of the symptoms of chronic underfunding that’s [been] happening for more than a decade now.”

Workloads are a big issue. So is the ability for teachers and schools to cater to kids with more complex needs, with alternate learning centres, guidance officers and allied health professionals.

It all comes as Queensland, and most other states, continue to push the federal government to lift its share of the public school funding pie from 20 per cent to its Coalition-era 25 per cent.

Having more money to pay teachers is one thing. Being able to convince enough people to take up the job, and stay there, is another.