The Crisis facing NSW School’s
There has been much fanfare on the oversupply of graduate teachers by universities in the press recently. However the press normally only looks at one thing, and as has been the case, it’s been the amount of people qualified to become a teacher. However they have missed a very big issue that I feel needs to be exposed, which is….. The retiree and baby boomer crisis that is about to hit NSW schools in the coming years.
Vital Statistics
Over the next 5 years 27% of teachers are eligible for retirement. Source 56% of all teachers in NSW are 45+.
Of all the teachers in NSW DET Teachers, there are only 18.6% male primary teachers, and a more balanced 42% of male secondary teachers within the system. Source
As of March 2015 there were 47,000 that’s right! 47,000 people that were listed on the NSW DET database wanting to become permanent teachers. However I think it would be extremely interesting for them to do a clean out of their database looking at how many are actually still looking in the field. This list however does include all new graduates that register with the department straight out of university. Source
Permanent Teachers — 49,948
Temporary Teachers — 13,151
Casual Teacher Active — 10,969
The Problem
There are many facets to this problem and I’m going to try and be fair and balanced to all of it. Here are some of the issues I can see at the moment.
Permanent Jobs availability Vs Temporary teaching blocks
In the past week couple of weeks; I’ll take the 27th January NSW Job feed as my example. There were close to 30 temporary positions available, and 6 permanent.
The way new graduates are being introduced to the hierarchy of NSW teaching is simple. They are told, the usual way to get a position is that you casual teach for x amount of time. Hopefully you’re lucky enough to jag a temporary position, and then you’re in a temporary position for quite a while. The odds of getting a permanent position as a NSW teacher is very rare, in my cohort there were 3 of 248 who were targeted graduates that achieved permanent employment.
If you are willing to move, to uplift your entire family and move to a town in the middle of nowhere, you might think you may be able to get your permanent job that way. No! I know many teachers that up and left their life in suburban Sydney and have moved to the middle of nowhere, and have taught for a couple of years but are still temporary teachers.
Special Codes
To become a permanent teacher, there are special codes that go along with your name. Usually of what you can or have taught or done in extra-curricular activities i.e. have you taught dance or choir and had a principal sign off on those codes? You will be higher on the list for the permanent position if they are looking for a dance teacher or choir teacher.
Retirement
Within the next 5 years 27% of teachers within the NSW Department of Education will be eligible for retirement. This includes many teachers who are on old awards that I’ll explain later. However no matter which way you look at it, that is a scary amount of people to retire over 5 years, in which schools will have minimal control over when people would like to retire.
Another issue with this is that when people retire, more than likely they have long service leave, holidays etc. still owed to them. So therefore there are cases that I’ve heard of where teachers have retired, but before they can retire they need to use all their long service leave, and leave up before they retire (to get the best for them, which I don’t blame them for). Therefore if they had a position that was permanent, a principal would be able to fill that teaching position with a temporary position until that position was then available. More about this is the old award section.
Old Awards
Many years ago, the teaching union was extremely strong. It was able to strong arm the government, and department into some award conditions that in this day and age would be outrageous.
Apart from the above mentioned retirement permanent to temporary positions, there are a few conditions that have existed over the years and still do which in any other industry would seem downright nuts.
Here are a few that I’ve heard of.
If you are female and become pregnant and have a permanent position at a school, you are able to have time off until your child is at school age. This means that if you have a permanent position, you have a child, take maternity leave and then leave without pay; your position at your school is guaranteed until your child is of school age. I’ve heard of one or two schools being stuck in the position of having someone on staff for 20 years but they haven’t taught there for 19!
I’m sure there are others that I can’t think of right now, I’m sure the age of retirement will be another aspect but I can’t quite put my finger on it now.
Accreditation
All teachers throughout NSW 2017 will now need to be accredited, and although this means there is even more paper work with being a teacher, it means that the older teachers now need to go through the accreditation process and log each one of their professional development hours. They need to log over 200 hours to be labelled a proficient teacher. So yes that’s just to say that yes you can teach.
Ratio of male to female teachers in the primary setting.
Look I’m not going to sugar coat this; more men need to be employed in the primary setting. Men are often a role model for many of the male students in the school situation. There are many studies on whether males in schools are of a benefit, some say yes, some say no. What I don’t think you can argue with is this. In the modern day, there are many broken families, where mum and dad live in separate houses, they may not talk much and well the children will only see dad once a week if they are lucky. Having male role models in a school allows students to experience what a male role model should be, as they may not get that experience at home.
Male teachers in executive settings.
I often heard that there are lots of male teachers in executive settings and I’ve got a simple explanation. Whilst some female teachers take time off to have children and raise their family i.e. may come back part time. Male teachers are still at school working, and moving up the ladder at the same rate as the female teachers would have, had they not had time of to be with their families. Look I know that this could be seen as a sexist, or controversial, but you know what; this seems to be the logical reason. So I wonder, out of the 20% of men how many are in the executive. I would guess probably about 15%….
Conclusion
There seems to be many issues with the workforce supply and demand of public school teachers within NSW. There seems to be three main issues, a distinct lack of male teachers in the classroom. Upcoming retirement of 27% of the workforce within the next few years, and the availability of temporary vs permanent positions.
References
http://www.dec.nsw.gov.au/about-us/plans-reports-and-statistics/key-statistics-and-reports
http://www.dec.nsw.gov.au/documents/15060385/15385042/gender-analysis-school-teacher.pdf — Gender
https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/media/downloads/about-us/plans-reports-and-statistics/key-statistics-and-report/Age-profiles-fact-sheet-2015.pdf — Age
https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/media/downloads/about-us/statistics-and-research/key-statistics-and-reports/TeachingWorkforceSuppyAndDemandSep15.pdf — Supply vs Demand
