The NSW state government, and Education Minister Sarah Mitchell, have repeatedly downplayed teacher shortages across the state, the minister herself labelling the issue a “beat up” full of “misinformation”, despite her own government’s data showing the severity of the crisis over the past decade.
Teachers and the union representing them, aswell as Labor, claim there are shortages and now they have budding politician Annette Turner, the Nationals’ candidate for Barwon, backing them up.
Effectively the candidate and White Cliffs resident has gone against the Coalition party line by saying she believes there is a teacher shortage issue in NSW and action is needed.
“I would say there’s a there is a teacher shortage, but I think that the [state] government, they realise this and they’ve been proactive in trying to address the issue,” Ms Turner told us.
“It’s great that she has acknowledged that there is a teacher shortage,” says Josh Roberts-Garnsey who is Labor’s candidate for Barwon and who is also a teacher.
“But it’s all well and great that she acknowledges that there is a teacher shortage but if she acknowledges there is, then she should be advocating for a solution to that problem. It’s all well and good to acknowledge a problem, but there needs to be some sort of advocacy for a solution.”
Ms Turner says that is exactly what she is doing.
“I will be constantly and consistency lobbying for the people of Barwon. I’m not removed from education,” says the Nationals’ candidate.
“It’s important and I will be lobbying consistently for changes and for improvements.”
Minister Mitchell’s comments in the past few months even appear to contradict her own department, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) who have produced data showing teacher vacancies tripling since 2011.
Minister Mitchell said in November, “the claim that there is some kind of shortage of thousands and thousands of teachers is just not true”. At the time, official figures showed as of October 10 last year (the start of Term 4), there were more than 2450 vacant full-time equivalent positions in NSW, compared to less than 1000 vacancies in 2011.
According to the NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF), in November last year, of the 3311 permanent teacher vacancies across the state, regional and rural NSW made up 55% (1819).
Across Rural South and West NSW – which includes our region – in November there were 439 vacancies, accounting for 13% of all vacancies in NSW, according to government figures.
In Broken Hill, the October dataset from the Parliament of NSW showed just under 14 vacancies across five of 10 schools in town which had vacant positions.
The NSWTF has been running hot on the issue, pressing Ms Mitchell on her claims.
In a radio interview in 2021, Ms Mitchell said “it’s not something that I’m overly concerned about… this is not a new issue”, adding in the same interview, of the union’s claims she and her department had lost control of staffing, “I just think it’s a bit of a beat up”. In a separate interview later that year, she said discussions with the union were “becoming increasingly difficult as they continue to push misinformation”.
According to the official government data, the teacher turnover rate in NSW sits at 4.0% compared to 2.7% in 2011, with the rate of teachers leaving the profession increasing by 48% since 2011. The ABS reported a net decline of 128 teachers in NSW in the past year – the only state to experience a decrease, other than Western Australia.
And net teacher recruitment in NSW over the past 11 years is the slowest of all states, other than Tasmania.
Official data also shows the teacher to student ratio in NSW is one teacher for every 14.2 students, whereas as an Australian average, it’s one teacher for every 13.4 students.
Ms Mitchell recently commented that, “based on true numbers, NSW has one teacher for every 11.4 students”.
The Education Department said the ABS schools report released last week did not include casual or temporary positions. However, the Education Department’s annual report from last year said the ratio in NSW was one teacher to every 14.3 students.
“We need to address it properly rather than continuing to put Band-Aids on the problem,” says Labor’s Mr Roberts-Garnsey.
“We need to make real strategic steps in the right direction and we are clearly seeing that it is an issue and that our current Minister for Education thinks that it isn’t, which it clearly is, as acknowledged by Annette.”
“What I’m given is the correct information, Ms Turner said, “and naturally, we’re going to have inconsistences across the board but I believe that a lack of trying to address them –,“ Ms Turner began to tell us before cutting herself off.
“I know it’ll be a long, slow process. It’s not going to be an immediate fix.
“I think that’s important to encourage people to come to the regional areas and to engage them and keep them there.”
