The NSW government’s latest plan to solve what the Teachers Federation says is a teacher shortage crisis in New South Wales has been slammed by the Federation, who say cutting a year off two-year postgraduate degrees and so allowing students to become teachers sooner is not the answer.
In Broken Hill, according to numbers published in parliamentary papers just before the end of 2022, there are 14 teacher vacancies, and in the electorate of Barwon there are 116 unfilled teacher positions in public schools.
NSW Teachers Federation president, Angelo Gavrielatos, condemned the state government’s plan to cut qualifications and bring in what he says are “unqualified teachers”, saying it was the latest in a succession of damaging and inconsistent policies that ignored the real causes of teacher shortages.
The Perrottet government has proposed a cut from two years to one year for postgraduate degrees.
“The way to stop teacher shortages and creating a sustainable supply of teachers is to address the fundamental problems which are turning people off teaching – unsustainable workloads, uncompetitive salaries and insecure work,” Mr Gavrielatos said.
“The Federal Government’s Quality Initial Teacher Education Review found that substantially increasing the pay of beginning and senior teachers was the number one way to get more mid-career people into teaching and was far more attractive than a condensed one-year qualification.
“There were 3300 vacant permanent positions in schools in November and this is a crisis the government is incapable of fixing,” he said.
Barrier Teachers Association representative, Maureen Clark, told the Barrier Truth the state government move was nothing more than a blatant attempt at a quick fix.
“Lowering professional standards is not the answer,” Ms Clark said.
“You cannot make these quick fixes and expect results. It just won’t work.”
PICTURE: Teacher’s striking in October last year. NOEL FISHER
