Victoria has been accused of having one of the country’s worst public school hiring systems — with more than half its graduate teachers on fixed-term contracts — which fails to keep new teachers in its ageing workforce.
The claim comes as the Education Department in South Australia finalises its plans to reduce temporary employment in the teaching sector and generate more ongoing jobs for its teachers.
A review by the Victoria Auditor-General showed the majority of Victorian teachers would reach retirement age by 2018, with 36% over 50 years old in 2008.
Meanwhile, education lobbyists say the profession’s growing lack of job stability or incentives have caused new teachers to lose faith in the industry and explore different career paths. “It certainly says to newer people to the profession that you are, to some extent, expendable,” Victoria Education Union spokesperson James Rankin said.
In Victoria, a survey on more than 1000 new teachers found 52% planned to stay in public schools for 10 years or less, with 34.1% expecting to change professions.
After failing to appease unions on a promised increase to teachers’ wages, Victoria’s state government has been accused of cutting corners by neglecting to address the growing number of fixed-term contracts — allowing schools to dodge annual wage increases.
“The situation is probably worse in Victoria,” South Australia’s Education Union vice-president David Smith said. “We’ve just had some success with a conversion to permanency rather than temporary employment so things are on the mend here.”
The Education Department in South Australia said it would increase ongoing teaching jobs by scrapping its 10-year rotation policy and allowing schools to select their teachers and decide upon the form of employment.
But in NSW, the Teachers Federation feared a “devolution” of decision making to schools to meet state budget cuts would cause limited tenure contracts to soar. “Devolution is used to introduce local ‘hire and fire’ of teachers and replace permanency in teacher employment with limited tenure individual contracts,” the federation said in a statement last August.
Rankin accused schools of wasting money by training teachers who they plan on letting go after a short period.
“They’re actually spending a very large amount of money training people who aren’t going to stay as teachers because the employment arrangements aren’t satisfactory enough to keep them there,” he said.
The Australian Education Union survey found 58% of new teachers were on fixed-term contracts, with 70.3% saying their employment status had a negative effect on their teaching. Cessation rates among teachers in their mid to late 20s dropped when offered ongoing conditions of employment, according to a study by Victoria’s Department of Education and Training.
“Teachers must be offered permanent positions early in their career,” Centralian College’s Don Zoellner wrote in a submission to the Department of Education in 2003. “One reason so many leave early is that they are on medium-to-short-term contracts with little job security.”
While furthering the standard quality of teaching, investing in teachers’ professional development played a major part in retention, a report by the Ministerial Council for Education revealed.
But Rankin says short-term employment impacted on teachers’ performances and skills development. He says teachers’ abilities to develop effective relationships with young people, or implement and assess quality teaching programs were compromised.
“The process of teaching children requires someone to develop a deeper understanding with the young people that they’re working with,” he said. “That can’t be done in a term.”
Children with learning difficulties or experiencing psychological or behavioural problems were hit hardest by the nature of transient educators, he says. English teacher Michael Vona says jumping from one short-term contract to another also weighes heavily on new teachers’ morale.
“You invest so much time and effort into a school, getting along with the kids and the staff and building new learning models,” he said. “To be told there’s no job at the end of your contract and all that hard work hasn’t paid off is just crushing. You just pack up and start all over again at a different school, and so the cycle goes.”
After being on four 3-6 month contracts over the past three years, the 28-year-old has chosen to complete an education masters to enhance his employability. “Even after I finish my masters, I’ll still be competing for the same jobs the same salaries as before,” he said. “Only, I’ll have a bigger HECS debt to pay off. It’s ridiculous.”
Victoria’s Education Department was unable to comment as it said fixed-term teachers were part of its current negotiations with the union.
Most Victorian schools can find their own staff although principals of schools in Hopetoun and Rutherglen have complained that they have difficulty attracting quality candidates in part because their remoteness from Melbourne and proximity to other states with better pay and conditions.
States spread over larger areas will find more remote schools have severe staffing difficulties if they follow the Victorian model.
In Vicco it is all part Baillieu’s class war. Wind back public school spending by $481M including the abolition of VCAL programs which support the most marginal students in the state whilst promising private schools an additional $240M over 4 years.
Public schools respond with cost cutting including short term contracts. A friend of mine is unemployed each December and January.
Compare decrepit public school buildings which are falling apart with massive sports stadiums or $20M music wings at private schools. That they charge up to $30K P.A and get Govt funding is a disgrace.
How many of the politicians kids go to public schools?
The overall investment in education in Australia has become ridiculous, there are many poor developing countries that invest much more as a percentage of their GDP.
Such extreme focus on short-term cost versus long term savings and investment is more myopic ideological dogma, than any real concern on finances, budgets or actual outcomes.
The same symptoms are only too obvious in early childhood teaching, TAFE funding, entry to university available to paying students, and let’s not forget the disgraceful state of Indigenous education and retention rates.
Private providers, foreign students education and universities over-reliance on their fees merits a whole book.
Education IS NOT a business. And even smart businesses invest long term in their workforce.
Australia’s educational quality is suffering, youth unemployment and skills shortages are another obvious consequence. There is no coherence to decisions, nor federal leadership while Australia’s education overall reputation has already been hammered.
Just like the Health system, State politics, blame shifting, short term focus and a fake ideological obsession with profits and costs are only symptoms of a much greater disease…
Please Crikey! keep on reporting on all these topics, they go way beyond the states affected. The consequences will definitely last and affect us all for a long long time.