Key Points
- A study showed more than half of Australian teachers plan on quitting.
- A NSW parliamentary inquiry is examining the causes of the teacher shortage.
NSW teachers say a chronic staff shortage has led to unmanageable workloads due to a lack of better pay, and career and financial incentives.
NSW Teachers Federation president Angelos Gavrielatos says the unfolding crisis is putting the state's education future at risk with some 3,800 teachers needed by 2027 to keep the profession afloat.
"The crisis in which we find ourselves today is worsening," he told a parliamentary inquiry into the teacher shortage on Thursday.
There were 1,657 teacher vacancies across the state as of June, he said.
"The government has failed the students of NSW," Mr Gavrielatos said.
"Thousands of students every day ... are being denied their right to learning. They're being denied their future."
The probe comes about a month after thousands of NSW public and Catholic school teachers walked off the job for a protest in Sydney's CBD demanding better pay and conditions.
The teachers' unions want a pay rise of five to seven per cent but the NSW government is offering three per cent.
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell has defended the government's public sector wages policy, calling it the most generous in the country.
Mr Gavrielatos said, "fundamental change" was needed with regard to cumbersome, administrative-focused workloads, with primary school teachers only given two hours of class preparation a week.
He noted that the figure has not changed since the 1980s.
"This is a monumental policy failure that has brought us to this, you know it's astounding.
"This stuff is personal for us. Because it's about our kids, our neighbours' kids, your kids," Mr Gavrielatos added.
An online survey commissioned by the committee found over 92 per cent of respondents want to see a reduction in the admin workload for teachers.
Of nearly 11,300 teachers and administrators surveyed in NSW, about 60 per cent said they would leave the profession in the next five years.
Inquiry committee member and Labor MP Courtney Houssos said deeply entrenched problems in the education sector were affecting the future of schoolchildren.
"After 12 years of this NSW Liberal-National government, we have the fastest-falling education outcomes in the world," she said.
"Yet the NSW government is failing to even acknowledge the chronic teacher shortages that are plaguing our schools."
A Monash University report published in June found more than half of Australian teachers surveyed were planning to quit the profession, with some describing their workload as excessive and unsustainable.
The study surveyed 2,444 Australian primary and secondary school teachers across the country.
Fiona Longmuir, one of the report's researchers, recommended reducing teacher workloads and increasing awareness of the complexity of set tasks to help stem the brain drain.
"Teachers don't mind hard work," she said.
"But they do feel overwhelmed by the ever-increasing administration and standardisation being thrust upon them, which is arguably not benefiting students."
