NSW teachers return to work today
I will drop in to The Mine for partly social partly business reasons, and to confirm the boss’s suspicion that I turn up whenever I know free food is to be had! The Rabbit begins his second year Way Out West with, he tells me, a broken foot…
Meanwhile the Sydney Morning Herald reports something we have all known but the NSW government has not highlighted: in a few years time many of the current lot of teachers will not be working any more. Where their replacements will come from is as yet unknown, because it seems likely that the numbers of twenty-somethings in the pipeline will not match the numbers departing.
The NSW Teachers Federation said 40 per cent of teachers were due to retire in the next six years. The president of the Australian Education Union, Angelo Gavrielatos, said the staff shortages were being masked by teachers working outside their subject areas. Mr Gavrielatos called on the Federal Government to increase annual funding to public schools by $2.9 billion to combat increased class sizes, and to improve teacher salaries.
The president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Maree O’Halloran, said: “There is no doubt that a significant teacher shortage looms in some curriculum areas and in some parts of the state. Forty per cent of teachers are eligible to retire in the next six years. On top of that we find many young people who enter the profession leave after a few years.”
Ms O’Halloran wants the State Government to provide better job security, pay and working conditions for teachers.
On the other hand promotion prospects for those remaining will be better than they have been for years.
