By CAITLIN CROWLEY | EXCLUSIVE
SOLVING Australia’s worsening teacher shortage requires a similar community response to the collaboration seen in the aftermath of natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic, according to one regional Queensland academic.
Associate Professor Peter Cook heads up the School of Education at the University of Southern Queensland, where enrolments in education degrees have increased this year, partly thanks to state government measures designed to fast-track the flow of people from other professions into teaching.
Cook said while fixing the national shortage of educators was “top of the agenda” amongst Deans of Education across the country, and state and federal governments, change could also be driven at a local level.
“If we accept the fact that the school is part of a community we need to actually activate all of the elements of that community to enforce this change,” Cook said.
“We centre schools so nicely in our communities, but then we’ve also got to take the responsibilities as well.
“Just recently we’ve seen those floods that have just happened and communities come together to support each other in that way – I think it needs that sort of similar approach.
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“I think there needs to be a greater connectivity between all of the key stakeholders to come together to understand what their element is in the solution, not just in the problem.
“So that means universities working with schools, working with local governments, working with departments of education and other system leaders and we’re doing it – we just need to keep going and extend it.”
Cook expressed concerns that media reports around teaching tended to “focus on dysfunction over function”, contributing to negative attitudes and perceptions of the profession in the community.
“I think there’s a lot to be said around the way the community perceives teachers and advocates for or against them,” Cook said.
“I think there should be a little more understanding and generosity of understanding, of what teachers are doing.”
South Queensland organiser for the Queensland Teachers’ Union (QTU) Zeb Sugden said there was no doubt public perceptions of teachers had a significant impact on staff.
“The value that society places on the profession directly correlates with those that want to enter the profession,” he said.
“But it’s easy to talk it down when staff aren’t getting the basic working conditions due to the teacher shortage.”
“There is a small, toxic element and it often occurs online – we’re seeing it more prevalent, where someone will say something online that they won’t say face to face. And we would welcome the opportunity to address any issue face to face.
“So while we have people degrading and talking down the profession, whether it be ourselves as educators, whether it be parents, we are not going to inspire professionals to enter our profession.
Students only returned to classrooms across the state three weeks ago, but already the QTU has received reports of teachers missing meal breaks, coming to work when unwell or forgoing professional development and non-contact prep time because there are simply not enough staff available.
“To a large extent the issues are felt more prominently in rural and regional locations, however my colleagues in Brisbane report that classes in Brisbane, classes in Toowoomba, where they can’t get supply teachers to take classes,” Zeb Sugden said.
“Our school administrators are having to combine classes or take students into halls for example and provide supervision rather than instruction, learning and delivering the curriculum.
“What we have is teachers teaching outside their subject areas which is never good for students – we have thousands of teachers across the state today who are teaching outside their subject area.
“This is not a surprise to the Queensland Teachers’ Union – we have been banging on about this issue since pre-COVID. We are most disappointed with the lack of progress from the Department of Education.”
Queensland’s Department of Education employs 55,000 teachers and as of January the department had a vacancy rate of approximately 2 percent of the teaching workforce.
A spokesperson for the Department of Education responded to the Caller’s request for comment with 14 measures to support teacher attraction and retention, including financial initiatives to “support high achieving preservice and graduate teachers to commence their career in priority Queensland locations.”
But the QTU described the measures as band-aid solutions.
“When we talk to members, they say ‘money talks,” Zeb Sugden said.
“Money is the solution and we want to see greater incentives for our rural and remote teachers.
“That could encompass free housing, it could encompass increasing attraction payments, it could also include, long-term, having university degrees paid for.”