Spotlight On: Education Policy

25 November 2022

BY MS ELIZABETH STONE

This article first appeared in Queenwood Weekly News on Friday 25 November, 2022

At the beginning of 2005, I changed careers – leaving the law and plunging into life as a Maths teacher. In that first week of my teaching career, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article warning of a ‘looming teacher shortage’ – an issue that was not new even then. For a little while, such predictions were contested but by 2010 it was clear that 50% of teachers would reach retirement age  within six years. Back then, the problem was one which lay in the future, although the first symptoms were being felt in the classroom through the lack of specialist teachers, especially for Maths. At that stage the lucky schools – with suitable resources and attractive conditions – could avoid the problems that were emerging elsewhere. But for anyone paying attention, the signs were ominous.

Nearly twenty years later, in March 2022,  the Sydney Morning Herald featured the Headmaster of Knox Grammar describing his school’s ‘significant difficulties finding teachers’. The report described schools all over the country, including top Sydney schools which had hitherto escaped these trends, racing to secure teachers amidst an unprecedented shortage and the lowest unemployment in decades. The crunch had finally come.

So what’s going on? Voluminous reports are available from many sources but I will attempt to summarise some of the issues here (with apologies for some inevitable oversimplification).

Student numbers are increasing
Australia’s student population has grown significantly – by 4.7% in just four years from 2017 to 2021 – and is projected to increase in NSW by 20% over the next 15 years. If student numbers increase, so must the number of teachers.

Teacher numbers are not keeping up
This is for several reasons.

First, the workforce is ageing. To sustain teacher numbers, we need young teachers to enter the profession at roughly the same rate of those retiring. Unfortunately the reverse is happening – fewer young people are coming into the profession, and increasing numbers are approaching retirement age. On top of the uneven age distribution, it is likely that retirements have accelerated recently due to pandemic exhaustion (although the data is not yet available).

Second, for decades there has been a pattern of qualified teachers leaving the profession, particularly in the first five years. There is some debate around this issue. Surveys of teachers over many years have consistently shown high numbers considering leaving the profession but it’s not always clear to what degree such thoughts translate into attrition. Some point to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics which show that the rate of attrition has remained steady at around 4-5%. Either way, it would be better if teacher attrition were lower.
In addition, teachers from overseas have strengthened our workforce for years but since COVID border closures and recent changes to visa rules, this source has essentially dried up. In a school like Queenwood, where we have typically recruited one or two teachers each year from overseas, this has had a significant impact.

But by far the most significant cause is the massive drop in the numbers training as teachers. From 2014 to 2019, enrolments in teacher training courses dropped by 29%. The position is bad across Australia and stark in NSW, where the numbers entering a teaching degree peaked in 2017 and then fell precipitously. Given that the qualifications take 3-5 years to complete, it’s no surprise that the pain is starting to kick in now. To make matters worse, it’s not just the rate of initial enrolment which is falling; the rate of completion of the qualification has also dropped dramatically.

The reasons behind this drop are not clear. Some have expressed concern that it was an unintended consequence of the pressure applied to universities not to allow entrance into teaching for those with ATARs below 70. The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), however, has argued that it is more likely a result of changes to university funding in 2017, that limited Commonwealth-supported places (which have much lower fees for students). AITSL also notes that the effect on enrolments seems to have been most pronounced in NSW.

So overall we have:

  • more students needing teachers
  • more teachers retiring
  • fewer teachers recruited from overseas
  • fewer teachers entering the teacher training courses
  • more teaching students leaving before entering the workforce, and
  • no improvement in keeping teachers within the profession.

Wider workforce trends
All of the above is specific to education but it comes at a time when every sector in the economy is experiencing labor and skills shortages. In my conversations with leaders from many different sectors over the last year, we have shared our concerns about the same themes – whether in law or business or medicine or hospitality or entertainment or manufacturing or just about anything else. Education may not be alone but the numbers are eye-popping: a Centre for Independent Studies report noted recently that there has been “a spike in school job vacancies, up 84 per cent since pre-COVID.”
I was interested to read analysis today that one of the key recruitment techniques of employers right now is to offer the option of working from home. No doubt this is a wide and long-term phenomenon but one that will be difficult to enact in schools.

What’s happening on the ground
The quality of the data for schools is not great.
A recent survey by the Association of Heads of Independent Schools Australia (AHISA) had responses from 145 schools across Australia. It is a small data set and skewed in many ways (including by the fact that the ICSEA scores of those surveyed were above the average) so we need a few caveats on any conclusions. Their data, however, showed that from 2019 to 2021, the turnover rate in the schools surveyed had increased by 50%; that the rate of staff turnover was highest in New South Wales; and that secondary teachers are turning over at a rate 50% higher than that for primary teachers.

These trends are being felt everywhere and are a hot topic of conversation amongst school leaders. We are not helped by some structural issues: for example, our terms of employment are governed by a multi-enterprise award which requires only four weeks’ notice. Schools can do nothing about this. Professional conventions have also wilted in the heat of the job market and perhaps due to generational changes in work culture. For instance, it was previously almost unheard of for a teacher to leave mid-year, especially if they were teaching a Year 12 class – but those days are gone. Nor do we have the same pool of experienced, recently retired teachers to draw on to cover gaps when they arise. The wider shortages mean that they have been snapped up or deployed in tutoring programs to remedy pandemic learning deficits.

There is no doubt that we are feeling the effects of all this at Queenwood – and I can only be grateful that we are in a much better position than most. Some girls will have been largely unaffected by these issues (especially in the Junior School) but, depending on their particular combination of teachers, some will have had several changes of teacher in the last year or so. Staff turnover causes unwelcome disruption for students, particularly for those in senior years, and it adds significantly to workload for teachers overall. Queenwood is not, however, immune to trends which are not just state-wide or Australia-wide but global, and we simply have to meet this challenge.

Fortunately, while our staff turnover has increased noticeably over the last year or two, we continue to recruit excellent and highly qualified staff from excellent schools. For both recruitment and retention, we are carefully reviewing our employee value proposition to make sure that we are competitive in the market. This encompasses not just salaries and entitlements (although these are important) but career development, staff wellbeing, generous resourcing, flexible pathways into teaching (eg for career changers or international teachers), professional learning, staff scholarships, vibrant expression of our values within school life and an inclusive and supportive culture – all of which must be underpinned by high-quality leadership.

How can parents help? You already support your daughter’s education in many ways but, now more than ever, you will support her by supporting her teachers. The vast majority of parents show their support primarily by trusting the School and allowing teachers to do their job. That is indeed helpful, although we also need and welcome your feedback and concerns. Simple things make a difference: a thank you note goes a long, long way, whether at the end of the year or simply on the way through when something good happens. Relationships can be difficult at times and whilst we will never eliminate those moments entirely, kindness from the majority can go a long way in making Queenwood not just an employer of choice but a supportive community of choice with a common goal – providing the best possible education for our girls and young women.

In the longer term, our nation’s future depends on reversing these trends, not just for the benefit of Queenwood students but for all our young people. So, if you haven’t been tempted hitherto to tune into the debates about education policy, now is a great time to start.