A national road trip involving principals, teachers, parents and community members is being launched on World Teachers’ Day today to help secure full funding for public schools.
AEU Federal President Correna Haythorpe said the road trip is being undertaken as part of the For Every Child campaign. Starting in Darwin, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Hobart, branded vehicles will travel through city, regional and remote areas.
“World Teachers’ Day is a great opportunity to recognise the extraordinary efforts and achievements of Australia’s teachers and we are marking the occasion by stepping up our national campaign calling on the Government to put an end to the chronic underfunding of public schools,” Ms Haythorpe said.
“On this road trip we will be holding meetings and events with teachers, principals, education support staff, parents, and community members and asking them to sign postcards to the PM calling for him to deliver full funding for public schools by 2028.
“The road trip will culminate with the delivery of thousands of postcards to Parliament House in Canberra in late November.”
The launch of the road trip comes as new research reveals alarming gaps for teachers on wages and workloads.
Released ahead of World Teachers’ Day, the report is the first comprehensive analysis of information collected from over 380,000 public and private school teachers across Australia as part of the 2021 ABS Census.
The report by senior researcher Barbara Preston found:
School teachers work “extraordinarily long hours” compared with workers in comparable professions. On average, 48% of fulltime teachers worked 45 hours or more a week in 2021 compared to 31% of those working fulltime in other professions with a bachelor’s degree or above qualifications.
At the same time, public school teachers earn less than those in comparable professions at the start of their career and the gap widens with age. At age 60-64, the average annual salary of public school classroom teachers in 2021 was $109,466, compared to $153,293 for solicitors.
Reflecting the current inequity in school resourcing, 56% of private school teachers aged 45-49 earned more than $104,000 a year in 2021 compared to 46% of public school teachers.
Private schools employ smaller proportions of early career teachers, leaving public school systems disproportionately bearing the cost of supporting and developing new graduates – something that should be factored into the funding of schools.
The number of teachers aged in their sixties was far higher in 2021 than in any previous Census with over 44,000 recorded. But the numbers of people completing teaching degrees decreased by 15% between 2011 and 2020.Only 84% of recent graduates with school teaching qualifications were working in schools in 2021 and that dropped to 71% for those aged around 35.
Ms Haythorpe says the report findings should be a wake-up call for politicians to address the deteriorating conditions for teachers.
“Addressing unsustainable workloads and uncompetitive salaries is critical to attracting and retaining the teachers we need. Principals, teachers, and education support staff are delivering a great education for our children and young people in our public schools, but they are being asked to do too much with too little.
“Only 1.3% of public schools are funded at the Schooling Resource Standard – the minimum amount governments agreed a decade ago was necessary to meet the needs of all students.
AEU Victorian Branch President Meredith Peace said full funding and the immediate introduction of a staff retention payment would help schools retain more teachers and go some way to acknowledge their significant contribution.
“The Preston report demonstrates the urgent need to reduce the workload and improve the pay of public school teachers, principals, and education support staff, sending a clear message that they are highly valued and respected, and acknowledging the increasingly complex work they do supporting student learning and well-being.
“A commitment to delivering at least 100 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard funding would make an crucial difference to public education provision in Victoria by enabling schools to better provide the individual support and programs students need, as well as appropriately recognising the critical work undertaken by teachers and other staff,” said Ms Peace.
"Governments cannot properly support student learning and well-being without attracting, retaining, and supporting school staff first – not least when our schools are faced with a teacher shortage crisis.
“During our road trip, we’ll continue to engage with communities across Victoria to spread awareness of these issues and build support for fully-funded public schools to ensure every child has the opportunity to achieve to their full potential,” she said.
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