2.0 Address the teacher shortage
The teacher shortage crisis continues to impact upon every aspect of the profession. The decade-long failure to develop proactive teacher recruitment and retention strategies has led to catastrophic teacher shortages across the state. This stems from a general lack of respect for the profession, more broadly and within the political realm. An inability to look beyond the current employment practices and teaching conditions and develop innovative ways to reward and remunerate teachers for their service to the public education system is exacerbating the issue. In addition, the failure to resource schools effectively and equitably has created immense and ever-increasing workloads for teachers and education leaders.
A lack of teachers results in fewer subjects on offer to students, oversized classes, and many teachers teaching out of their subject area. It results in an inability for teachers to access leave as there are not enough relief teachers to cover leave arrangements, and leaves principals, deputy principals and heads of department unable to undertake their normal duties as they are required to manage day-to-day teaching for classes that do not have a teacher. Teacher burnout is at an all-time high, and many teachers and school leaders are choosing to leave the profession “before their time” as they no longer wish to remain in a pressured and under-staffed work environment. New teachers enter this environment without adequate mentoring and support, and without a systemic mentoring program available to them. Many leave the profession too early in their careers due to a lack of support and guidance.
What is needed is:
- appropriately targeted resourcing to meet the needs of the many and varied types of schools across the state
- a differentiated and significantly increased staffing model that addresses the complex needs of many school communities
- remuneration strategies that recognise that incentives are needed to keep educators teaching across this diverse state.
The QTU’s 2022 Teacher Shortage Survey showed 65.5 per cent of school leaders were experiencing difficulty staffing year levels or subjects. Figure 1 highlights this staffing difficulty.
Many of the issues and recommendations outlined below align to the December 2022 National Teacher Workforce Action Plan, which indicates that elevating the profession, retaining current teachers, and understanding and meeting the needs of the workforce are key to addressing the teacher shortage (https://www.education.gov.au/teaching-and-school-leadership/resources/national-teacher-workforce-action-plan).
The QTU believes that the attraction and retention of high-quality teachers can best be achieved through the
following:
2.1 Attracting new entrants to the profession
- Negotiate beginning teacher salaries that are the highest in the country.
- Work with federal government to implement strategies that improve graduation rates for teaching
- students, as outlined in the ‘Next Steps’ ITE review report (https://www.education.gov.au/qualityinitial-
- teacher-education-review/resources/next-steps-report-quality-initial-teacher-educationreview)
- Provide free university placements for those studying to be teachers.
- Develop long-term paid internship programs that provide clear pathways to teaching for diverse
- candidates from other professional fields.
- Provide resourcing that ensures ongoing supervision and support for internship programs.
- Work with teacher registration bodies, universities, federal agencies, and unions to review and
- redevelop ITE programs to ensure graduates are “classroom confident” when entering the profession.
- Work with teacher registration bodies and universities to ensure that recognition of prior learning
- and study, work experience, and skills are appropriately accommodated within ITE programs for
- graduation purposes.
- Actively urge the federal government to remove the Non-Academic Requirement for Teacher
- Education (NARTE) and the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE)
- requirements for teacher graduation.
- Work with the federal government to expedite visas for appropriately qualified overseas-trained
- teachers, including expatriate teachers, to work in Queensland.
- Develop strategies and pilot programs that attract and retain more First Nations teachers to the
- profession.
2.2 Supporting new and beginning teachers
- Provide dedicated resourcing, allocated to each beginning teacher, for three years from the
- commencement of their careers, via the resourcing model for mentoring and support.
- Develop a state of the art, high-quality, and evidence-based mentoring and beginning teacher (MBT)
- program that beginning teachers engage in at the school level.
- Provide dedicated resourcing for release time to enable mentors to appropriately support beginning
- teachers.
- Determine that the online mentoring support program is to be used as a “back up” to school-based
- programs.
- Establish a centrally-funded, dedicated beginning teacher support team to assist new teachers and
- guide teacher mentors, with resources, guidance, professional development (PD), and professional
- assistance.
- Develop and resource an appropriate statewide, consistently applied induction program for
- beginning teachers.
- Negotiate differentiated working conditions and remuneration packages for teachers who begin
- their careers under “Permission to Teach” (PTT) registration provisions, to ensure their work and study
- commitments can be managed. This should include reduced workloads, targeted mentoring, and
- salary continuance while undertaking the professional experience (PEx) component of their studies.
- Negotiate a new tax arrangement with the federal government that results in $5,000 - $10,000 per
- year reduction in HELP debts for all teachers that currently have them. The level of reduction in debt
- should be determined by school location. This measure supports new teachers and is an effective
- retention tool.
2.3 Retention of experienced teachers and education leaders
- Develop budgetary responses to manage the complexities of 21st Century schooling that arise out of the allocative methodology review. This includes funding increased staffing, increased salaries, and improved resourcing and support.
- Implement a “workload reduction fund”, as per the National Teacher Action Plan, used to proactively and practically reduce workload for educators (see section 3).
- Provide significant improvements to funding of professional support for curriculum development, pedagogy, capability development, planning and preparation, and professional development for teachers in all stages and phases of their careers (see section 4).
- Provide a simplified pathway to access highly accomplished and lead teacher classifications and pay the application fee for participants.
2.4 Improved salaries and conditions
- Negotiate an increase in the number of steps in the teacher classification stream and significant salary increases.
- Ensure all employees are employed in a permanent capacity with a reduction of casualised and temporary teaching staff.
- Support a simplified highly accomplished (HAT) and lead teacher certification process, as recommended in the recent National Teacher Workforce Action Plan, and commit to significantly higher remuneration for these classifications.
- Negotiate significant improvements to the salary classifications of education leader streams and support the recommendations that arise out of the Comprehensive Review of School Resourcing (CRoSR).
- Provide the support and resources needed to reduce workload matters as outlined in section 3.0.
2.5 Attraction of staff to rural, remote and difficult-to-staff locations
- Use the review of the state schools resourcing model to determine a differentiated staffing and resourcing model that supports the management of inclusive classroom practices and supports learning in the most disadvantaged communities.
- Develop differentiated attraction and retention packages for rural and remote locations, i.e higher salaries and incentives, elimination of Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) and Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) debts (see above).
- Improve the provision of subsidised teacher accommodation in hard-to-staff locations, including access to subsidised private rental properties in locations where there is no teacher housing available (see section 6.1)
- Improve recruitment to the ‘Rapid Response Team’ to immediately address the teacher shortage crisis.
- Improve allowances for Recognition of Rural and Remote Service (RoRRS) (see section 6.2).
2.6 Address the gender pay gap
- Actively encourage access to part-time leadership roles.
- Develop a platform that allows people in leadership positions to make known where and when they are seeking to work in a part time capacity, to enable them to actively seek out and link with others who may wish to job-share for a period of time. This is particularly important if they are managing family and other responsibilities.
- Increase paid parental leave to 26 weeks in the first year following a child’s birth, and allow for this entitlement to be shared between both parents.
- Include unpaid parental leave in superannuation guarantee payments, allowing new parents an uninterrupted accumulation of superannuation savings and reducing the gap upon retirement.
2.7 Develop respect for the profession
- Respect the profession by resourcing schools in line with the CRoSR report and ensure that significant increases are provided to the education budget to enable teachers to teach and education leaders to guide them.
- Replace the compliance and corporate “accountability” approach to education with one that values and respects the expertise, commitment and capability of the profession.
- Build trust and support educators via autonomy for decision-making and removing unnecessary bureaucratic “oversight”.
- Respect the decisions of school leaders when managing matters related to student absences and appropriately fund the resources needed to manage such matters.
- Meaningfully undertake the work outlined in sections 3.0 and 4.0 to reduce workload and to invest in professional learning and curriculum support.
RECOMMENDATIONS
5. Ensure that world-class salaries and conditions attract new entrants to teaching from a variety of backgrounds, including “career-change” teachers.
6. Provide free initial teacher education (ITE) courses to preservice teachers committed to working in Queensland’s state school system in regional, remote and rural locations.
7. Negotiate altered tax arrangements with the federal government that result in $5,000 - $10,000 per year reduction in HELP debts for all teachers with current debts. The level of reduction in debt should be determined by their school location. This should be in addition to the current reduction in HELP debt arrangements put in place for very remote locations. In addition, these new arrangements must include the removal of the indexing component of HELP debts. These measure supports new teachers and are an effective attraction and retention tool.
8. Expand effective internship programs and ensure that these are “paid” professional experience (Pex), via paid leave or salary continuance for PTTs, prevents financial disadvantage for participants.
9. Implement the recommendations of the ITE review.
10. Provide well designed mentoring and induction support for new graduates.
11. Recognise that complex school contexts require considerable resourcing responses.
12. Reduce unsustainable workload demands and ever-changing professional responsibilities.
13. Fully fund a new state school resourcing model to improve the retention of experienced teachers and education leaders through the adoption of a differentiated staffing and resourcing model, particularly for regional, remote, rural and hard-to-staff locations.
14. Significantly increase salaries and conditions to ensure that the Queensland state education system attracts and retains the best teachers.
15. Address the gender pay gap with improvements to parental leave and the superannuation guarantee.
16. Widely publicise that leadership roles can be undertaken in a part-time capacity and actively encourage access to these leadership roles, to ensure that women continue to apply for and work in leadership positions, particularly when they might be managing family and other responsibilities.
17. Develop responses and policies that represent and foster genuine respect for the profession, and
value the vital work undertaken by teachers and education leaders.
QTU State Budget Submission 2024-25