EduResearch Matters

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This budget wreaks havoc on education – with one miraculous exception

Budget analysis, , , ,

There were zero mentions of universities, schools or teachers in the 30-minute federal budget speech made by Treasurer Jim Chalmers Tuesday night.

This set the trend for a disappointing 2023-24 federal budget for much of the education sector. Chalmers, via his words and actions, refused to fund schools and universities in a way that made them a defining policy for the early years of the Albanese government. Universities, schools, and teachers might have expected more given the Labor Party delivered a budget surplus of $4.2 billion (the first in 15 years) and the mounting challenges facing higher education and schooling now and into the future. Chalmers and Education Minister Jason Clare will argue there are currently ongoing national reviews throughout this year into early childhood education, school education, teacher education (again) and the higher education sector and that before any large-scale funding reform can begin, these processes will need to be completed. Chalmers would also point to his strong support for the TAFE and foundation skills sectors in both his speech and budget from 2024 onwards. 

That may well be the case but I ask: can overworked and under-resourced staff across the education sector wait that long for adequate resourcing and support to do their jobs? The teacher shortage in many schools has reached a crisis level, infrastructure and maintenance issues continue in many – mostly public schools – and the cost of living is hitting education sector workers hard. Yet Chalmers could not manage to mention any of these education issues in his almost 4000 words to parliament. The budget itself followed a similar path although there were some positives. Chalmers’ speech and budget policy concerning schooling in particular is a stark contrast to the last time the federal ALP came to power in 2007 promising an ‘education revolution’, and this raises concerns for what is to come later this year and through 2024 and beyond.

So what is in the budget for universities and TAFEs?

New announcements for the higher education sector were few and far between on Tuesday night. This was not necessarily unexpected given the ongoing Australian Universities Accord review into the higher education sector. That said, the alarming and dark trend of no new support for university research continues—although the ALP did manage to find $159 million over four years for politicians’ electoral staff. 

As Universities Australia point out: funding for university research has now fallen to its lowest level measured against gross domestic product (GDP). Furthermore, there was no new funding from the federal government to support university sector employees. This speaks to the importance of the work the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) is doing and has done (with those who have a deal in place) with universities nationwide to reach fair Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBA). Elsewhere, and unfortunately for our students, indexation on university Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) loans will rise to 7.1 per cent in June 2023, adding to the debt burden students will have to repay in an already formidable economic context marred by high inflation and a housing and rental crisis. 

On a more positive note, the budget provides $128.5 million to deliver 4,000 new Commonwealth Supported Places to universities in 2023 and 2024 that focus on STEM disciplines (nothing new). There is also a welcome $17.7 million over four years for the Disability Support Program to assist universities to better enable students with disability to access, participate and succeed in higher education. And there is an overdue increase in income support payments for university students struggling with financial pressures although they needed to go further than the 15% increase in rent assistance and a $40 increase per fortnight for AusStudy and AbStudy. The review into the higher education sector led by Professor Mary O’Kane will provide its interim report in June and its final report in December of this year. The focus, therefore, on university funding and reform will ramp up in the second half of this year and into 2024. 

The TAFE and foundation skills sectors received strong support in the budget. Chalmers even mentioned them directly in his speech to the nation. There was an additional $3.7 billion for the five-year National Skills Agreement, which is set to begin in January 2024, pending the ongoing negotiations with the states and territories. Under this agreement, there will be 300,000 new fee-free TAFE and VET places available. There is also $436 million to improve foundational language, numeracy, and digital skills of Australians aged over 15. The budget also provides $25.1 million to extend the existing Women in STEM Cadetships and Advanced Apprenticeships program through to 2026-27. 

Skills and training are clearly a policy priority for the Albanese government given Chalmers’ comments on budget evening and the fact they will spend $12.8 billion over five years from 2024—subject to the agreement of the new National Skills Agreement. The contrast in the government’s public and policy approach to skills and training to that of the universities and schools may be a sign of things to come. 

What does the budget do for schools and early childhood education?  

Schools and early childhood education received some useful support—although much more comprehensive assistance was required. The budget provides an additional $9.3 million to help attract, train and retain school teachers as part of the implementation of the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan announced in the October 2022 budget. A further $72.4 million is available to support the skills and training of workers in the early childhood education and care sector aswell as $18 million in funding for grants to establish new centre based long day care or family day care services. There is also $92.8 million to support First Nations education programs over the next four years. While this support for First Nation students is important, Dr. Tracy Woodroffe emphasises the need to concentrate on improving the education system as a whole. For central Australian schools, the federal government delivers $40.4 million over the next two financial years to improve school attendance, engagement and learning outcomes for students.

A deep dive into the Department of Education’s budget statements shows the Albanese Government plans to allocate $17.4 billion to non-government schools, which enrol 34% of all Australian students, in the upcoming financial year. In contrast, public schools, which enrol 66% of all Australian students, will receive just $10.8 billion in recurrent funding for the same period. This is the result of the current funding arrangement in which the federal government provides 80% of all recurrent funding to non-government schools and 20% to public schools. The imbalance in the federal funding of the school sectors highlights one of many structural issues facing the Australian education system that must be a focus of the next National School Reform Agreement to be signed in 2024. Interestingly, the Department for Education budget papers flag a focus on strengthening the policy and financial assurance and compliance of non-government schools to ensure they are using funding appropriately for school education. It will be interesting to follow the trajectory of this new policy in the coming months and years.

Since the budget was released on Tuesday night, I have had discussions with school leaders from challenging public school contexts. They have emphasised to me the urgent need for significantly more funding to attract and retain teachers, upgrade and maintain infrastructure, and compensate pre-service teachers for their professional placements, which are currently unpaid. Although the budget provided some additional funding to address the teacher shortage, it ignored the other two concerns. On top of this, the funding allocated for the former was deemed insufficient given the size and immediacy of the challenge. The current Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System led by Dr Lisa O’Brien provides the opportunity to again raise these concerns with the Albanese government in time for the next National School Reform Agreement in 2024.   

Verdict 

The 2023-24 budget could have done more for universities and schools. Money has flowed into the federal government treasury at unexpected speed compared to budget forecasts, thanks to increased mining commodity prices, high taxes, and low unemployment.

In contrast, the education sector’s employees have never had it tougher with increased workloads, staff shortages, high inflation, and the cost of living, just to name a few of the challenges.

Chalmers and his team could have supported the education sector more holistically by:

  • Increasing funding for university-based education research.
  • Matching the 15% pay increase for aged-care workers for all education employees
  • Adding significantly more funding on top of what has already been allocated to train, attract, and retain teachers in public schools that face staffing challenges.
  • Delivering much-needed increases in funding for infrastructure and maintenance in public schools that lack private fundraising capability.
  • Providing funding for paid placements for pre-service teachers in public schools facing staffing shortages
  • Delivering a larger increase in the cost-of-living payments for university students.

 Looking ahead

Looking ahead, next year’s federal budget looms as a defining one for the education sector and the Albanese government. The National School Reform Agreement will be signed off in 2024 and the four national reviews underway will have handed down their recommendations and reports to the government. Watch this space.  

Dr. Matthew P. Sinclair is a lecturer of education policy at Curtin University’s School of Education in Western Australia. His research and teaching focuses on education policy, school funding, globalisation, education futures, and equity in schooling.

Will strange omissions from Chicago appear in Naarm this year?

anti-colonialism, anti-racism, , , ,

We were so lucky to be sent to Chicago. So lucky. Each year AARE is invited to send a representative symposium to the American Educational Research Association (AERA) to showcase the quality of our research.

We were back at an international conference “in person” and ready to mobilise our digital research, reimagine academic networks IRL and expand thinking within the latest studies and ideas from the field that had seemed to become smaller and more in focus during the lockdowns in Melbourne.   

We, Kate and Sarah, are two academics who have worked in the field of anti-colonisation and anti-racism for years through art and design education, initial teacher education and through methodological practice of speculative a/r/tography. We are not people of colour but we hope our own contribution makes some difference to the work we do with The Science Gallery in Melbourne, Bengaluru and Atlanta, and within the ‘Learning with the Land’ research project. This SSHRC funded partnership (with Professor Rita Irwin, UBC) responds to the urgent need for innovative models of learning, teaching, and scholarship that create and examine human-land relationships as collective expression grounded in movement of thought (theory) and body (practices) by drawing on a transnational coalition of scholars, students, artists, and writers in education. And what we learned in the US at AERA is that Australia is in a very different place on race and colonialism.

Which is not to say we are perfect – or even getting there. But this conference revealed the deep race divides in the US as well as the need for explicit acknowledgement of the ‘very alive’ colonial project in education.

Let us set the scene. At every public event in Australia, academic or otherwise, we are welcomed to Country or we hear an Acknowledgement of Country. This ‘event’ invites us to acknowledge and respect the lands we meet upon through introducing and placing Peoples, places, cultures, histories and scapes that have continuously held knowledges in that Country. They are so rare in the US. AERA has a traditional acknowledgement of the Indigenous land but on this occasion it was followed by what American academics say was the first simultaneous land and cultural acknowledgement at the Opening Plenary performed by the Muntu Dance Company; an invitation to rethink learning with both land and culture through time, pointing a way to anti-colonial and anti-racist education. A good place to begin (Un)Learning Our Truths.

That was the title of the panel which continued – Dreaming Out Loud: Black, Asian American, and Pacific Islander Communities in Teaching and Teacher Education. In this session we saw Dr Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz’s ‘Archaeology of Self’ in action, an approach that resonates with our own speculative a/r/t/ographic work (Coleman & MacDonald, 2020; MacDonald et al, 2022) in teacher education. 

This panel invited us into dialogue with Asian and Black solidarity in teacher education, through querying the place of truth and the danger of the single story in the colonial project. The educators asked us to dream out loud with them in teacher education, and ask; how do we prepare teachers for teaching racial literacy in this world, especially if living in two worlds?

What was said was as telling as what remained unsaid. 

As Australian educational researchers, we were particularly struck by how we felt race and Indigenous scholarship were done so very differently in the American context. With race centred, we wondered why Indigeneity felt so marginalised in the questions we heard from the audience. 

‘What about me’ questions were hard to hear and made us uncomfortable, these must have hit the panelists like weapons. But, as Dr Cornel West pointed out, if racially marginalised academics are continuously auditioning for a place in academia, then perhaps it is difficult to know when and how to let others speak, particularly Indigenous academics.  

Coming into AARE 2023 and turning towards the theme of Truth, Voice, Place: Critical junctures for educational research, we want to draw your attention to the consequential questions to come out of this conference: Whose truth matters? Whose facts matter? Whose crises matter? 

This blog can only be a series of impressions of a conference of nearly 15000 delegates and 75+ concurrent sessions. We chose to curate our sessions by searching for those considering the future.  As Professor Emerita Gloria Ladson-Billings most noted for her work on critical race theory and culturally relevant pedagogy noted, “Dream-sharing and dreaming in public can be a dangerous thing to do”.

We were invited to take “Dreams for Digital Spaces” to the AERA conference, so we explored the conference through the keyword search of “dream*”. This curation of the program offered a place to locate our practice alongside other dreamers and change makers.  

In the discussion with Dr Cornel West, AERA President Rich Milner described “the attacks on education and democracy that we face in our nation and world”. This concern was parsed through scholarly inquiry that emphasised race, social justice, post truth politics and/or mental health. It was through this lens we curated each day of our conference.

Dr Cornel West, a progressive activist educator and Black scholar gave the first  AERA Lateral Learning Lecture for Equity and Justice. His oration of power was at once performative, introspective and a call to action. He centered justice and equity and planted the seeds for the week. It provided a platform for educational researchers to shift their lens, confront their racial bias and query the power of whiteness in and across the conference rooms and of course in education. To hear Dr West the overflow rooms were overflowing with colleagues working hard to get into positions that would  allow Dr West’s words to embrace us and land all around us. 

Gun ‘silence’ at AERA 

On an evening of networking and dinner meetings we found ourselves close to gun violence while being confronted by how close we were in the normalcy of the daily coverage of shootings. Hearing  “There’s an active shooter in the park” and being asked to turn around and leave an area was a reminder of the strict gun laws we often take for granted in Australia. Not widely reported in the media, we assume this was partly because it was storied as ‘youth riots’. We rang home to let our families know we were ok, and they couldn’t even find a mention of it on the news. The insignificance of black and brown young people’s lives drives home the racialised injustices of gun violence – providing a case in point of why race is at the fore of consequential educational research in pursuit of truth in America. While there was a session dedicated to the Uvalde school shooting at AERA, the general absence of conversation concerned with this aspect of growing up in America was striking. 

“Don’t defunk the odour of catastrophe” (Dr Cornel West, Opening Plenary, AERA 2023). Our somewhat controversial impression of our time in America is that its emphasis on anti-racism in relation to the significant impact of Black Lives Matter has sidelined the radical impact of colonialism in education across the globe. Arguably, we experience colonialism as an ongoing catastrophe that is alive and well across the colonies and America. Without acknowledgement of the colonial project at its critical juncture with racism, Indigeneity will continue to be pushed to the side. The inadequacy of current conceptualisations of race, racialisation, and the entwinement with colonialism is in need of attention – perhaps by Australian scholars who are at critical junctures of research that reckons with Indigeneity, race, whiteness, settler-colonialism, land, violence and justice in very different ways to America.

Whatever path we chart, we need to “not reduce the catastrophic to the problematic because once you think it’s just a problem, you think that your professionalism can come and manage the problem” (Dr Cornel West, Opening Plenary, AERA 2023).

Associate Professor Kate Coleman is co-lead of SWISP Lab with Dr Sarah Healy. Kate is the AARE co-convenor of the Arts Education Practice Research SIG, and CI on ‘The Learning with the Land’, SSHRC project at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Kate is an Academic Convenor for the University of Melbourne, Petascale Campus. Her research and teaching is positioned in the intersection of art, design, digital, practice, culture and data.

Dr Sarah Healy is co-lead of SWISP Lab with Dr Kate Coleman. She is an inaugural Melbourne Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne. Best known for her contributions to the fields of critical affect studies, digital methods and the posthumanities, Sarah’s interdisciplinary program of research involves research collaborations with academics, artists, practitioners and educators from around the world.

Header image is of Chicago from an image by Jrbarc! 

The government must fix the childcare desert now

Early Childhood, Early childhood education and care, , , , , , ,

Marg Rogers, Navjot Bhullar and Laura K Doan ask: How far will the Budget’s funds stretch to fix educator professional development and ‘childcare desert’ communities?

The Federal Government’s Budget announcement of $18 million of funding to be available as grants for providers is welcome. Providers will be able to apply for up to $900,000 to build more services in ‘childcare desert’ areas. These are normally in regional, rural and remote areas, and exacerbate disadvantage because children in the area miss out on early learning, and their parents miss out on working. However, this is not going to go very far since the problem is so great.

The Government has promised to support 6000 existing educators to upskill and support them to backfill positions that are vacant. It has also pledged $72.4 million over 5 years to support up to 75,000 educators’ professional development for those in regional and remote communities is welcome. 

Educators in these areas often act as more than educators, and face increased pressures. They often plug the gaps for other services that are missing in these communities, such as mental health services, family support and early intervention. Sometimes they are unable to attend further professional development because they do not have the casual staff to cover their teaching load.

Throughout the sector, many early childhood services are scrambling to run effectively. The sector has chronic staff shortages and high levels of burnout.

This has led to alarming rates of staff absenteeism due to increased workload and stress. The impact of this level of disruption and stress on children’s wellbeing and learning is still unfolding.

Despite welcome reforms to reduce the cost of early childhood education for families, staff shortages have increased during COVID as educator burnout has increased. Currently, there are over 6800 advertised positions for educators in Australia, double since the pandemic began. So, how did we get into such a mess?

To find out more about the challenges educators face, our international study explored educators’ work in five different countries. We also wanted to learn from other countries to improve policies and practices.

Australian educators’ experiences

In Australia, 51 surveyed educators told us about their experiences working in a sector in crisis. Additional data were collected from publicly available forums related to the publication of these findings. Predictably, most roads lead to gender. 

Women make up 92% of this workforce. As part of the feminised care sector, it features: 

–financial abuse

“Educators were pushed to provide high quality … with minimal budget. I spent over $4,000 of my own money – not one cent reimbursed”.

“Book week, pirate day, Halloween – …centres force this onto staff. They want photo ops to market themselves on Facebook but expect staff to pay for …costumes. Unpaid overtime setting the rooms up”.

–extremely low pay

“One day I found one of them (educators) crying in the other room… she told me …she works double shifts and so tired but gets paid #%!@ all”.

–low status

“Traditionally ‘women’s work’ so it’s undervalued”.

“Quality education begins with quality educators…(who) are valued”.

–invisibility

“There is a lot of pressure on educators to meet the needs of others resulting in their own health being overlooked”.

-never being good enough

“Early childhood teacher’s and educator’s… qualifications are far less valued”.

–unpaid hours

“Too much work ‘from the love of your heart’”.

-chronic overwork

“So stressful due to the admin and recording”.

“Obscene documentation requirement from the government”.

-high stress

“It can be stressful to try and achieve all the goals and outcomes … in these frameworks”.

“All of us have stressful days… managing behavioural issues, parent’s demands and a lot of routine tasks”.

-poor staff morale

“Very low, strained and tired”.

-forced to conform to others’ ideals

“Educators … are … pressured to conform early education to one box”.

What could we learn from Canada?

Clearly, our highly privatised Australian system needs urgent reform. In the meantime, to support educators’ wellbeing, we might be able to learn from other countries.

Up to 50% of educators in British Columbia were leaving the sector in their first five years. To address this, an evaluated, funded peer support program is nurturing the wellbeing of educators. Unsurprisingly, this is reducing attrition.

Potentially, this research-based Peer Mentoring Program (PMP) could be adapted for Australia. It involves peer-mentoring within Community of Practice (CoP) groups.

Why is it so effective?

The program works because it:

-Gives educators a voice

The groups create a safe space for educators to discuss their professional and private lives without judgement or recrimination. An educator in the program said:

“It’s creating a safe place for vulnerability”.

-Supports educator health and wellbeing (self-care)

This is a major focus for the individual groups as educators explore ways to sustain their practice.  

“Our time together ‘filled my cup’, each sip of tea warming my insides … I felt refreshed mentally”.

-Creates a nurturing, connected community

The groups build a sense of belonging with like minded individuals, with mentoring from experienced educators. 

“I would describe the PMP program as going home, being with a group of people who … allow you to be the best version of yourself…”.

-Addresses invisibility

The program focuses on educators’ needs, not the needs of children and families.

“I’m educated … experienced … fulltime … as a woman, why is it okay that I’m at poverty level”?

“We have nothing to give if our OWN cups are empty”.

Post-pandemic bread and butter budget

So, how do we convince governments to fund such a program?

Now, Australian governments and early childhood services are spending a lot to attract, train and induct educators. Some of this money could be better spent supporting the wellbeing of educators in our existing workforce so we can retain them.

What Australia needs to change to keep educators

To reform the sector, Australians and our Government need to take a long hard look at the following: 

Do we value young children’s education and care during the critical first five years? Do we value those in the feminised care sectors enough to give them a fair go? If so, let’s address this crisis by making the necessary policy reforms to nurture, value and keep our educators. The 2023 Budget only partially addresses this.

Dr Marg Rogers is a senior lecturer in early childhood education at the University of New England. Professor Navjot Bhullar is a research-focused professor of Psychology (wellbeing focus) at Edith Cowan University. She is in the top 250 most cited researchers in Australia. Associate Professor Laura K. Doan is an associate professor of early childhood at Thompson Rivers University in Canada.

Header image from Anne Aly’s Facebook page

Teacher shortages: Is teaching family-friendly now?

teacher shortage, , , ,

Once upon a time, teaching was seen as a favourable job, especially for women. The public perception was of teaching as a family-friendly profession where teachers could be out the door by 3pm and had school holidays off to spend time with their own families. 

This belief about teachers’ work as family-friendly is part of the lore of teachers’ work. The compatibility of the school calendar, the hours of work with domestic responsibilities especially with child-bearing has been a ‘selling-point’ of teaching for generations of women thinking about teaching careers. In the 1960s, women’s magazines supported teaching as a good profession for women because it was a job that suited women’s interests as well as their responsibilities as wives and mothers.  

Of course, to an extent, the idea that teaching is family-friendly was always a myth and it has often been contested. Even way back in the early 1900s it was ‘definitely not a family-friendly profession’ considering married women were banned from the professional altogether and in many places pregnancy bans remained until the late 1960s. 

Teaching has rarely been a job where you could go home, simply forget about work and relax every night. However, even when the truth of the myth of family-friendly statements are interrogated, there remains public perception that teachers get ‘excessive’ holidays. What some people think of as family-friendly work environments, others criticise, claiming teachers have it too easy. 

Whether teaching is a family-friendly career for women (or indeed for everyone) is directly relevant to understanding the unprecedented teaching shortages we are experiencing in Australia. 

Our Australian Research Council study of the working lives of teachers who remain teaching in high-turnover schools is in its very early stages, but already this issue is raising its head as a largely unexplored topic. Even it was always a partial myth, recruitment of teachers drew heavily on the narrative of teaching as family-friendly. Teach Queensland’s website Why teaching is a rewarding career still recruits teachers, by advertising the career’s balanced lifestyle, claiming 

The teacher lifestyle provides many perks, including flexibility to work close to where you live, guaranteed holidays, and time to spend with your own kids (if and when you have them!). There’s also support for flexible work practices and varied employment options including permanent, temporary and casual roles.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, we are noticing that teaching may have transitioned from at least one of the more family-friendly professions to one of the very least! 

The Australian Bureau of Statistics 2021 Census data shows that of the 12 million people employed on Census day (10 August 2021), more than 20 per cent (2.5 million) worked from home. With the ability to work from home much more common now than at any time in history, teaching has become one of the few professions where such flexibility is much more rarely supported. 

Similarly, where more professions encourage part-time or flexible work, many school leaders actively resist part-time employment or job-sharing arrangements for their staff. Despite this, recent workforce data published by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership shows that 36% of all secondary and 45% of primary teachers are working part-time.  The appetite for more flexible working conditions is clearly there. 

Despite the necessity of teaching online during Covid, very few changes have been made to facilitate ongoing online or even hybrid work environments for teachers. Thus, while their friends and partners may now work from home on a much more regular basis, this is not true of teachers. While some reports, such as Next Steps: Report of the Quality Initial Teacher Education Review – Department of Education, Australian Government recognise how family responsibilities restrict many Preservice Teachers from taking remote or regional placements father from their homes, there is little mention of family work-life balance when it comes to employed teachers. 

As outlined in the Productivity Commission’s Working From Home Research Report (2021) teachers saw the pros and cons of working from home (which wasn’t, on its own, seen as easier or even necessarily more family-friendly). In the Commission’s analysis, teaching is one of the few occupations regarded as not being able to be done from home. Nonetheless, the Australian Education Union’s Victorian Branch recommends that schools provide more flexible employment opportunities, including better access to part-time employment for staff transitioning toward retirement and those returning from leave, such as parental absence.

However, there may have been an opportunity lost such as understanding how some teacher’s work could in fact be done remotely, particularly during non-teaching hours. Chats on Reddit suggest some teachers envy their friends and families who have much more flexible jobs than they do.  

And even if it is the case that ‘good teaching’ can’t really happen remotely, it makes the career less attractive to future teachers who might see such inflexibility within the profession as a deterrent. Teachers report un-family friendly teaching environments as one reason for burn-out which clearly should be added to all the other reasons now understood as leading to teaching shortages.

This makes us wonder whether an increased focus on schools as family-friendly workplaces could be part of the solution to the current teaching shortages. 

Jo Lampert is a professor of teacher education at Monash University. Amy McPherson is senior lecturer in the School of Education at the Australian Catholic University. Bruce Burnett is a professor of education at the Australian Catholic University.

Why you need to spot the invisible elephant

Teacher education, Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

TODAY Thursday April 27: Webinar is 4 pm – 5 pm (AEST). For more information and registration, please visit the Webinar page

Let’s make this very clear, students need to be taught by disciplinary experts. This research into the interdisciplinary expertise of teachers is not about putting the science teacher in the visual arts class.

But what we have discovered in our research is that students benefit from teachers with skills in making connections to different disciplines. That improves student understanding and engagement in other subjects. 

Discussions about what capabilities teachers need and how to prepare them for the profession have commonly concentrated on what knowledge and skills teachers need to be classroom-ready. This is evident in the current debates about the core content that should be prioritised in all initial teacher education programs. The focus of these discussions is effective teaching in specific subjects or curricula priority areas, such as literacy and numeracy. 

Simultaneously, it is well acknowledged that teachers need capabilities not only to teach in specific curriculum areas, but also engage in cross-curricula teaching related to complex contemporary topics, such as environmental, economic, social, and technological challenges. There is a need for developing students’ general capabilities and skill to apply and integrate knowledge from different disciplines and enable their agency to navigate through a complex and uncertain world. To enact these broader education goals, collaborating with colleagues, local community members, plus other organisations and experts is vital. Notably, a growing emphasis upon interdisciplinary research is not matched by university learning and teaching.

How can teachers engage in teaching practices that extend beyond their disciplinary specialisation? 

In this blog we report on key insights from the first stage of the “Developing Teachers’ Interdisciplinary Expertise” project which aims initially to identify the principal capabilities that teachers need when developing their students’ abilities to engage in productive interdisciplinary project work and then to create a framework, including a set of reusable design resources, for integrating the development of teachers’ interdisciplinary expertise in preservice and in-service teacher education. 

Some key insights from our consultation paper and initial findings from our consultation interviews with preservice and in-service teacher educators, and other experts and stakeholders, are outlined below. If you are interested to hear more, please join our webinar (see details further below).

Teachers’ interdisciplinary practices are multifaceted

Teachers’ interdisciplinary practices are multifaceted in terms of their foundation, focus, application, plus fusion with technologies. The interdisciplinary foundations of teaching are wide-ranging in that education as a professional field draws on knowledge from multiple disciplines, such as psychology, neuroscience, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, and others. Significantly, this relates to the understanding that many important topics pertinent in today’s society (e.g., sustainability, health, equity) are cross-curricular and cannot be understood and addressed without engaging with perspectives from multiple disciplinary domains and do not sit comfortably in a separate subject. This multifaceted focus aligns with increased worldwide attention to the development of students’ general capabilities or 21st-century competencies. For example, students’ ability to transfer the disciplinary knowledge that they learn in different subjects and apply it to solving real-world problems in authentic contexts is the ultimate aim of learning within and beyond the classroom. 

These teachers’ practices are interwoven with the increasing fusion of digital and  technologies across many facets of learning environments and educational management systems, which informs a hybrid, online/offline mix of pedagogical practices. The rapid  technological change more broadly across society aligns with the growth of attention to Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Interdisciplinary project-based STEM education is seen as essential for improving students’ interests and achievements in science and mathematics and addressing a growing shortage of professionals in STEM-based industries and services. 

Teachers’ interdisciplinary practices are like an invisible elephant in teacher education: big, important, but not well understood and sufficiently addressed. A clear framework mapping what teachers actually do and what capabilities they need nevertheless is important as it is a starting point for creating opportunities for effective professional learning. 

Existing barriers are both personal and environmental

Existing barriers to developing teachers’ interdisciplinary expertise are both personal and environmental. At the personal level, lack of pre-service and inservice teachers’ motivation, and agency could limit their engagement in learning for interdisciplinary teaching. Similarly, insufficient  teacher educators’ knowledge, skills, confidence or motivation to prepare teachers for interdisciplinary teaching — such as seeing interdisciplinary connections as adds-on to the discipline-focused teacher education — could be an important obstacle.

During the consultation interviews, experts also mentioned that narrow assumptions about interdisciplinarity, a teachers’ role, and schooling, as well as current assessment regimes could also inhibit teachers’ willingness to engage with interdisciplinary teaching practices and professional learning. In contrast, teachers’ attributes identified as key were flexibility, confidence, persistence, creativity, problem solving, and engaging with uncertainty. They also indicated the need to value educator autonomy, creativity, and professionalism — while also recognising the day-to-day pressures which may inhibit and constrain interdisciplinary work. 

At the environmental level, there are a range of stakeholder, organisational, and structural barriers. For instance, various stakeholders of teachers’ education, such as school and university leaders, external partners, and students, may implicitly — or explicitly — inhibit teachers’ interdisciplinary learning activities. In terms of organisational barriers, there are constraints relating to practical arrangements, such as:  the time needed for academics to develop high-quality courses for interdisciplinary teaching; practical constraints about embedding interdisciplinarity into disciplinary pre-service teacher education structure; lack of funds, time, or space for interdisciplinary professional learning; and, challenges associated with establishing sustainable partnerships and continuous professional learning.

During the consultation interviews, experts have shared their views about how existing curriculum constraints often impose boundaries around specific subjects not only in schools, but also teacher education programs — which ignores the underlying connections between disciplines and limits the space and time available to engage with interdisciplinary practices. Experts indicated that technology needs to be purposeful and used appropriately, and that there is an array of useful resources and websites which could be readily utilised for different interdisciplinary  projects in schools and teacher education (e.g. sustainability, astronomy). Furthermore, some participants highlighted barriers such as the increasing administrative burdens that teacher educators face linked to an intensified compliance and reporting culture, plus the realities of systemic pressures relating to teacher recruitment and retention. 

An ecological framework specific to interdisciplinarity is needed

The need to prepare teachers for interdisciplinary practices is well recognised in various policy documents and research literature. However, there have been surprisingly few models or frameworks that articulate what constitutes teachers’ expertise for these interdisciplinary practices (or specifically for interdisciplinary teaching). Some proposed  frameworks address related competencies, such as 21st century knowledge and skills in educator preparation and Integrating education for sustainable development in teacher education  but are not distinct to interdisciplinary teaching and do not discuss how interdisciplinary expertise is different from other expertises. The only existing  framework of Cross-curricular teaching is  focused on individuals and foregrounds teachers’ functional competencies necessary for interdisciplinary teaching.

There is increasing awareness about the need for system, activity-oriented frameworks focused on the outcome and process of learning within a larger system. They describe what teachers overall should be capable of knowing and doing and why but emphasise a holistic vision, principles and processes distributed across the system. For example, while the pedagogical and logistical aspects of learning are important, literature also suggests the value of bringing a focus upon epistemic and relational aspects which can enhance not only teachers’ interdisciplinary dispositions and understandings, but also joint planning and implementation. 

Our literature review shows that many pre-service and in-service teacher education programs for developing teacher capabilities for interdisciplinary education are often project-based and focus on pedagogical and logistical aspects of interdisciplinary curriculum development and implementation. While these elements are necessary, how these interrelate within a broader system and set of practices is often missing. Many consulted stakeholders have highlighted: the importance of the time necessary to authentically engage in interdisciplinary practices; learning from best practice, mentoring, peers, and other experts; the need for school and leadership to support such initiatives; the value of partnerships with external organisations, communities, and experts; plus, the critical need for more ‘hands on’, interactive opportunities to explore, create, and share together ways to leverage teachers’ interdisciplinary expertise. 

Knowledge sharing and adaptable resources are necessary to support this goal

Our consultation paper suggests that developing teachers’ interdisciplinary expertise calls for a multifaceted approach. This requires a framework that articulates the scope of interdisciplinary expertise and enabling conditions that address the barriers. Key suggestions for professional learning include engaging teachers in collaborative professional development with colleagues, interdisciplinary experts and external partnerships who have different disciplinary backgrounds,  including engaging with the voices and ways of knowing of those who have been underrepresented in Western academic knowledge. Significantly, such professional learning cannot be done in one unit or course, and is likely to involve multiple activities and interwoven pathways (most relevant to a specific context, time, and purpose). 

Many consulted experts have also emphasised that there is no recipe, or formula, for developing teachers’ interdisciplinary expertise. However, certain ‘patterns’ are apparent. First, there is a need for places where teacher educators and teachers can find and share resources, plus explore ideas related to interdisciplinary practices and grow a community of practice. Second, approaches to interdisciplinary teaching should be tailored, or adapted, to specific school contexts and spaces. Third, a diverse range of professional learning opportunities for preservice and in-service teachers’ participation is needed, so as to foster interdisciplinary thinking that spans professional goals, practices, and needs. In combination, these patterns have the potential to support a growing community of practice toward developing teachers’ interdisciplinary expertise. 

Hear more, have your say, or get involved

As a part of our consultations, we will host an open webinar in which we will share key findings about what constitutes teachers’ interdisciplinary expertise and how its formation could be facilitated in preservice and in-service teacher education. We welcome everyone interested in teachers’ professional learning, including preservice and in-service teachers’ educators, educational leaders, school principals, head teachers, and innovative in-service and preservice teachers. We would like to hear additional insights and interest in further developing these ideas. 

The forthcoming webinar is 4 pm – 5 pm (AEST), Thursday 27th April 2023. For more information and registration, please visit the Webinar page. 

For any questions about this project, please email teresa.swist@sydney.edu.au 

From left to right: Teresa Swist is a Research Associate at University of Sydney and Queensland University of Technology, plus co-founder of the Education Futures Studio. She is on Linkedin and Twitter @teresaswist. Lina Markauskaite is a Professor of Learning Sciences and co-leader of the research theme Knowledge Practices and Cultures, the University of Sydney, Australia. She is on Linkedin and Twitter @markauskaite. Peter Goodyear is Emeritus Professor of Education at The University of Sydney and was founding co-director of the University’s Centre for Research on Learning and Innovation. He is on Linkedin and Twitter @petergoodyear. Cara Wrigley is currently Professor of Design Innovation within the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology at The University of Queensland. She is on Linkedin and Twitter @drcarawrigley. Genevieve Mosely is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Queensland. She is on Linkedin and Twitter @genevievemosely.

A frantic year for education. ICYMI – here are our big reads of the year

teacher attrition, Teacher education, Teacher Education Expert Panel (TEEP), teacher recruitment, teacher selection, teaching, teaching workforce

Thank you to our many wonderful readers so far this year – and particularly to our many wonderful contributors who write for EduResearch Matters from across the nation. Taking a brief pause from our regular publishing routine to do a recap of some of our posts you may have missed. Many of you will be having a public holiday on Tuesday so here’s a chance to catch up.

Our entire back catalogue is here. Please browse. Want something to listen to? Try this podcast from Don Carter and Jane Hunter but read about it here first.

Early in the year, we had an overview of the challenges facing education – and those who run our systems -It’s all about the politics and the policies: Education: the five concerns we should debate right now, International Day of Education: why Jason Clare and Sussan Ley must get to class immediately, Universities Accord: Why this urgent deadline is mission (almost) impossible and It’s a watershed report but it’s hidden behind headlines

What’s happening in schools? Teachers now: Why I left and where I’ve gone: a heartbreaking post on why teachers are abandoning the classroom and what they’ve decided to do instead. Also check out Why do teachers have bigger workloads now? and Nightmare so far away: the truth about why teachers can’t live where they work.

What about our students?Trauma in all our classrooms: Here’s how to respond and Screen panic: how much time is too much?

AND A CALL TO ARMS from Jane Kenway:Timid thinking no longer cuts it. Change is needed now

Please read, share and subscribe – and of course, contribute! Write to jenna@aare.edu.au with contributions, queries and suggestions. Only eight months until Christmas.

Timid thinking no longer cuts it. Change is needed now

School funding, stop govt funding of private schools, , , , , , ,

Their buildings are substandard— cheap and poorly ventilated.  Their classrooms are under resourced and uninviting. Their gardens are sparce and bleak.  Their play and sports grounds are inadequate— frequently small and ill equipped. Their students often struggle at school and their families often struggle at home. Money is scarce, employment and housing are insecure and good health care is usually unaffordable. 

Their teachers work harder than most because their students need more help than most. But these teachers don’t receive anywhere near the support and recognition they deserve. Many such schools are government schools. Yet they are left to make do with minimal resources and minimal care from state and federal governments. They have been pretty much abandoned— left to deteriorate, not properly helped prosper. 

Instead, these governments have allowed the private sector of schooling to grow without limit— depleting struggling government schools of the material and human resources they need for their students to flourish rather than flounder. 

These schools and these kids are part of the’ long tail’ of under-achievement that characterises the Australian schooling system. But the tail’s problems can’t be addressed in isolation. They are the tragic effect of much bigger problems. Australia’s schooling system is amongst the most privatised and least equitable in the world. And it underperforms on many indicators. 

New opportunities for equitable, achievement-oriented, change in Australian schooling have arisen in 2023. We now have a progressive national government, an equity-sensitive federal Minister for Education, and the National School Reform Agreement is being renegotiated. 

The time is thus ripe to reconsider and reconfigure the fateful intersections between school funding, equity, and achievement. This requires a critical examination of the vexed relationships between the public and private sector and federal and state governments. On Monday, the Melbourne Graduate School of Education hosted a policy symposium and public forum, called Funding, Equity and Achievement, which interrogated these intersections and vexed relationships.

The symposium room was packed with 75 experienced education policy analysts, members of key stake-holder groups and people from state and federal governments. Ten eminent thinkers, including speakers Professor Barry McGaw, The Hon Dr Carmen Lawrence AO and The Hon Verity Firth AM, shared their views and the public forum attracted over 250 participants off and online. And Melbourne University’s Twitter feed had over 3000 views. 

The Gonski Report of 2011 was a touchstone for discussion at this event. All agreed that its funding solutions to the problems of equity and achievement have since been seriously watered down.  

Some argued that the political timidity of the national Labor government, the power of the private school lobby and the sectional interests of the states were ultimately responsible.  

‘Gonski lite’ was the result. Yes, ‘needs-based’ recurrent funding arrangements were a result and the focus on needs was welcome. But ultimately, as many policy experts at the Symposium showed, greed replaced need. Gonski was always in the lite side, others insisted.   It was constrained from the outset by an invented funding architecture involving state, Catholic and Independent school systems.  This architecture, they argued, is a policy construction and convenience. Yet is treated as immovable and untouchable. The implicit message to the Gonski review team was don’t mess with the private schools. 

Historians in the room shared examples of the formidable power of private schools’ backlash-politics – and of their serious electoral consequences.  

State schools abandoned by governments 

So began an unjustifiable pattern of school funding. This is known as the 80/20 split. The wealthier federal government provides 80 per cent funding to private schools and 20 per cent of funding to state schools. The poorer states and territories do the reverse.  And here is the kicker. The Federal government meets its funding obligations to private schools and constantly provides them with lavish top ups. In contrast, the states and territories seldom meet their funding obligations to state schools. 

Speakers at the Sympisoum provided an avalanche of carefully researched numbers which left no doubt about the serious funding inequities. Slide after power-point slide showed how private schools have been consistently over-funded and how state schools have been consistently underfunded.  

A vicious funding circle was identified. The more resources the private sector gets, the more it grows. The more it grows, the greater its market dominance and share of allocated resources. Along with this is a sense of entitlement to automatic funding. In turn, this has led to the private school sector opening new schools and upgrading and expanding existing ones at will. 

This sector has thus enjoyed unfettered growth – becoming ever bigger, more middle class and more segregated from wider Australia. Few people in the room agreed with the funding split that has allowed this to happen. Many firmly believed the Commonwealth should more equally share its funding benevolence with state schools.  

And for this to happen they thought, a National Schools Resourcing Body as proposed by Gonski should be established. This would over-see funding for both public and private schools— together. The relationships between the sectors would be in plain sight. 

Public funding to private schools is untied. They are not required by law to provide any wider public benefit. They do as they please despite the copious amounts of public money they receive. The Symposium audience was shown how the wealthiest private schools draw on their funding excesses to fund their infrastructure excesses. We wondered if such overabundance could be justified in educational terms.  We agreed it was more about market signalling than student learning. So why fund it? 

Other questions arose. Should public money be conditional on private schools democratising their fee structures, entry policies and governance practices? Yes. 

What can stop them from draining the state school sector of money, reputation and the ‘best’ teachers, students and parents? Cap their growth for a start. Properly fund all state schools so that they can be the best they can be. 

The policy symposium provided unequivocal evidence that increases in private school funding have been at the expense of funding for public schools especially for struggling schools in struggling locations. 

Such underfunding, we agreed, leads to under achievement. Indigenous kids, country kids, kids with disabilities and kids from low-income families under-achieve because they are under-supported. They are under supported because they are under-funded. 

Struggling schools in struggling locations have less money to spend on the bare necessities. Additional resources are necessary to allow them to meet their complex needs in the best ways possible. Distinct and distinctive interventions are required.  

Ken Boston, a member of the Gonski Committee and former Director-General of the NSW Education Department, said as much, back in 2017: “They need smaller class sizes, specialist personnel to deliver the appropriate tiered interventions, speech therapists, counsellors, school/family liaison officers including interpreters, and a range of other support. And that support requires money. You can’t deliver education as a genuine public good without strategically differentiated public funding directed at areas of need. That’s what Gonski sought to achieve.”

Such under-support is sometimes driven by a naive policy mindset. It goes like this, ‘It’s not the money that matters but what you do with it’. Money AND what-you-do-with-it matter. It is not an either/or situation

Serious concerns were expressed that the current federal Labor government might not live up to its policy rhetoric.  People feared it might adopt a target and tinker approach.  Safe, simple and unlikely to make much difference. Time and again people called for systemic change. 

Presenters shared international studies that convincingly show how achieving equity at the systemic level leads to systemic improvements in achievement. Put equity first and achievement follows. 

Further, segregated education systems concentrate disadvantage. This, it was shown, has all sorts of deleterious effects and not just on the schooling of disadvantaged kids. Social cohesion depends on social mixing and where better to learn to mix than at school? The shared case study of Poland’s dramatic rise in school results is attributed to its introduction of comprehensive schools. 

 Many agreed that, despite its limitations, the Gonski review made hope possible. State school supporters united behind the slogan ‘I give a Gonski’.  

Now such supporters must unite again to save state schools from the residualisation caused by private school expansion. And the federal government must be prepared to stand up to the private school lobby which has neither the public interest nor the national interest at heart. 

Timid, standard arrangements and conventional thinking no longer cut it. Change is urgently required. 

Professor Jane Kenway is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia, Emeritus Professor at Monash University and Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her research expertise is in educational sociology.  

Nightmare so far away: the truth about why teachers can’t live where they work

teacher workforce, , , ,

School systems are struggling to find enough teachers to cover classes. Projections indicate that in New South Wales alone there is a need for an additional 13,000 teachers in the next decade to meet student demand. This growth is mainly centred around Greater Sydney. Significantly, much of the growth is in areas not traditionally thought of as hard-to-staff. With such growth comes pressure on housing and concurrently with the teacher shortage, NSW (as with much of Australia) is grappling with a housing affordability crisis. 

What becomes of a school system – and individual schools – if teachers cannot afford to live near, or even within commuting distance of their workplace?

In a recently paper published in the Australian Educational Researcher, I show how 90.8 percent of teaching positions in New South Wales, representing more than 50,000 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) positions, are located in Local Government Areas (LGA) where the median rent and house sales price is severely unaffordable on a top-of-the-scale teacher salary.

The effects are felt most strongly by early career teachers. Using official quarterly sales and rental reports, there are 675 schools or 22,703 FTE teaching positions located in LGAs where the median rent for a one-bedroom place is unaffordable for new graduate teachers. Attracting new members into the profession when housing – even one-bedroom places – are unaffordable is a tough sell.

Not limited to new graduates, there are 70 schools or 2,059 FTE teaching positions located in LGAs where even a top-of-the-scale teacher (non-promotional position) cannot afford a one-bedroom dwelling. The most unaffordable LGAs are Bayside, Canada Bay, Sydney, and Waverley – all located in the inner circle of Greater Sydney (see Figures 5-8 of the paper).

And when it comes to house sales prices, forget about it. Median prices for both strata and non-strata properties are well in excess of the 3:1 ratio of cost to annual salary (ranging up to greater than 11:1). The attached figure displays an updated snapshot of the median non-strata sales price by LGA as a multiple of the top-of-the-scale teacher salary. Put simply, for a single teacher income household, or even a two teacher income household, the median sales price up and down the eastern seaboard is unaffordable. This has major implications for the health of the school system.

Substantial attention has been granted to the idea of the 15 minute city in recent times. While commute times in Australian cities are comparable to similar sized cities elsewhere, for many the daily commute is more likely to be 30 or even 60 minutes in cities like Sydney. In most cases, this is simply because it is too expensive to live any closer to work – but takes a toll on those commuting.

The impact of housing affordability on the teacher shortage has not received too much attention in public debate within Australia. Understandably, issues of workload, behaviour, conditions, salaries, and initial teacher education have dominated the headlines. This has allowed the issue of housing affordability to expand without pressure to intervene.

Housing affordability issues are most likely to impact schools that have traditionally been seen as desirable locations. Schools that have in the past, not had difficulties recruiting and retaining staff. But if nothing changes, they will simply be unaffordable and inaccessible for all but those already living in the area. This is what makes the intersection of housing affordability and the teacher shortage an urgent and timely matter. At the same time, it is a messy policy area. There is no simple fix, and arguably the time for action was 10+ years ago. However, not acting now just amplifies the problem.

The issue is of course not limited to teachers. It is felt by all essential workers. The Government’s shared equity scheme was a step in the right direction. So too is the investment of Aware Super in essential worker developments. These are consistent with interventions overseas where districts and local authorities build housing developments and incentivise educators. But piecemeal policy approaches will not address the issue at scale.   


No one government department or organisational body has ultimate responsibility for housing essential workers, but we all have a stake in it. Work underway at the Gonski Institute is hoping to raise the profile of the issue and engage governments, policy makers, industry representatives, and educators in developing viable options. This initial paper in AER is the first step of many.

Scott Eacott PhD, is deputy director of the Gonski Institute for Education, and professor of education in the School of Education at UNSW Sydney and adjunct professor in the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Saskatchewan.

Teachers now: Why I left and where I’ve gone

21st century teaching, leaving teaching, teacher pay, teacher recruitment, teacher retention, teacher shortage, teacher workforce, , , , , , ,

“When you are a high achieving person, teaching sets you up for failure because you are never enough for everybody.”

The teaching profession is in crisis. By 2025, the federal government estimates a shortfall of more than 4,000 high school teachers across the country. While there is a significant body of research that has tracked the influence of teachers’ work and lives and their retention in the teaching profession, less is known about teachers who have left the profession. 

Research, media reports, and anecdotal evidence report teachers’ intentions to leave the profession within their first five years of teaching at a rate of up to 50% of the workforce, leaving Australian schools with further critical workforce shortages. 

This research addresses this claim. In this nationwide study, 255 respondents/those who have exited the profession have provided insights into why they left, the critical factors that influenced their decision to leave and revealed details about the next phase of their lives. As one ex-teacher said,

As a teacher you have never done enough. You work and work and work, creating, thinking, planning to get the best for each student and it’s still never enough. You still can’t help so many students, you never satisfy the administration load and so much pressure from parents. When you are a high achieving person, teaching sets you up for failure because you are never enough for everybody.

Preliminary results suggest that while all Australian states and territories were represented in this study, half of the respondents were from Victoria, and close to a quarter were from both New South Wales and Queensland. Almost two-thirds of those who left were from metropolitan regions and a third of the respondents were from regional areas. Almost two thirds (60%) were from the State sector, a quarter from the independent sector and almost 20% from the Catholic sector. 

70 percent of those who left the profession were full-time employees.

Who is leaving the teaching profession?

Of the 242 respondents 167 were female, 71 were male and 4 identified as other. Most had been working in metropolitan schools prior to leaving (around 60%) and 60 percent were from the state sector. 70% were teaching in secondary schools at the time of leaving and 30% in primary schools. Most respondents were from Victoria, followed by NSW and Queensland. 

The greatest number of respondents had been teaching for 7-10 years followed by those who had been teaching for 11-15 years. Combined this accounted for almost 40% of those surveyed. Fifteen percent left after 4-6 years. Whilst it is evident that we are losing teachers who are early into their teaching career, the majority of those who are leaving the profession are experienced classroom teachers and leaders in their school. Forty percent of those surveyed were in school leadership positions at the time of leaving.

In response to where participants were working prior to leaving the profession, of the 172 responses, almost 57% (98) were working in metropolitan areas; 35% (59) in regional and 13% (8) in rural areas. 1% (2) – remote or other.

Why are they leaving?

Our study shows that teachers are faced with a range of challenges in the profession, causing them to not only rethink their career as a teacher but significant enough to push them to the point of taking that definitive step and leaving it behind. Participants told us that the work environment, school leadership, dealing with student behaviour, administrative load, and workload more broadly were the big contributors to their decision to leave the profession. These ex-teachers stated that they did not feel respected, and their work had failed to bring about or sustain the level of personal satisfaction they sought from their careers. 

“Until teachers are given more time, respect and support to actually do their jobs, more will continue to leave the profession.”

Significantly, these ex-teachers felt that leaving was the result of not just one of the challenges in isolation; but rather “a culmination of many things over a long period of time” that made their jobs untenable. 

“I was just so anxious, unwell, and unhappy. Every day I felt sick on my way to work. I could never get through my mountain of work, I could never get on top of classroom behaviour, and I could never get to a place where I was able to deal with the unreasonable demands of the school.”

In essence, leaving was based on a long list of issues that, in combination, gave them no choice but to walk away. Their disappointment, frustration, and anger were palpable in their responses, as they reported on a broken system, and a ridiculous workload made all the harder by administrative and extracurricular demands. These ex-teachers also spoke of having to deal with challenging leaders, parents, and students. These challenges were then topped off by “a teaching profession that is misunderstood, disrespected and unappreciated”.

“I became a teacher because I am passionate about equipping the next generation to be their best. The education sector is making this harder and harder from a wellbeing perspective and from an educational perspective. The curriculum is crowded, students are pressured to succeed, teachers are trashed in media…There is little understanding of the complexity of these roles by those outside of schools.”

“Misalignment between my values and those of my colleagues and leadership. Not being equipped/ experienced enough to manage the tension that created. Lack of support from leadership when other teachers or middle leadership were treating me, other colleagues, and students in ways that did not align with my values.”

Where are they going? 

Overwhelmingly most of those who had left teaching after 4-15 years were still working but in different professions (90%). Many of those who had left teaching (36%) are still working in education related areas such as devising education resources, developing education policy, consulting and managing education programs in institutions such as museums and art galleries. A surprising number (20%) have transitioned into work in the Higher Education sector. About 7% had returned to casual teaching in one way or another, some had sought further education through study (4.4%) and only 4.4 % had fully retired.   The remaining ex-teachers were involved in work closely  connected to helping people such as in Social Work, sports coaching, counselling and the well-being industry. 

 The implications of these findings are far reaching as they show that teachers are making a notable contribution to the workforce when they leave. It is clear that they take their highly transferable skills built up through training and experience with them. The findings also suggest the continued commitment of teachers to matters educational leaving teaching but not education.

  • I started my own business in the private disability sector. I now work full-time in this space and employ eight people.
  • Working for a company delivering student wellbeing programs 
  • I am still in education but not in schools
  • I am a learning designer
  • I left the teaching profession in a school context. I remain in education and teaching in an ITE context where I can both contribute and be challenged / developed. 

The small number of teachers (almost 10%) who had completely ‘jumped ship’ to another profession demonstrates a variety of new career directions including working in a cattery, as a truck driver, in animal rescue, in the military, in corporate marketing and as an engineer. 

What is the impact?

Whether we have teachers in the first five years in their mid-careers, or in their later careers leave in critical numbers as they now are, the impact will be far-reaching.  Schools are communities that thrive on having teachers from all career stages. When an early career teacher leaves, the school loses that teacher’s inclination for innovation, new perspectives, and in some instances, a future school leader.  When a more experienced teacher leaves, they take with them their experience and expertise and as a result, both students and early careers teachers miss the opportunity to benefit from their accumulated talent.  

As one of our survey participants explained, “When teachers with my years of experience start leaving in droves then that’s truly a truly catastrophic loss to the system. And that’s what we are seeing…”

“I consider myself to be a highly skilled and educated teacher. I have 3 master’s degrees and felt very confident in the classroom. However, the workload required to prove my worth was unreasonable and unsustainable.”

Previous research has spoken to these impacts, yet our study revealed the cost to these participants as well. Having left the profession, they did feel a sense of relief about getting their lives back, and for some the negative impacts to their health and wellbeing experienced while teaching began to dissipate. Many others, however, continue to experience issues related to their physical and mental wellbeing.  As one ex-teacher out it, 

“I was in complete burn out. There were too many administrative changes and expectations that led to unattainable work pressures. My mental health and family life were suffering, and I needed to make a choice. I love teaching and loved working with the students. I miss it but the expectations placed upon teachers is unrealistic and unsustainable without long term damage.”

For many, it also meant walking away from a vocation they still cared about, and they felt a deep sadness at leaving behind their students.

As another participant put it: “The hardest thing was knowing I was walking away from making a difference in the lives of young people, each and every day.”

Eighty percent of those who have left the profession have maintained their registration and while one third of the participants stated that they would ‘definitely not’ return to the profession, almost half were less definite about their future plans. 

We now know more about the problems in the sector and the narratives provided by the ex-teachers shine a light on the personal, professional, health and emotional impacts of not only leaving the profession but on the anguish that many felt prior to making the ultimate decision to leave. 

Many have left teaching, but not education. Some have used the skills and knowledge they have accumulated to begin new ventures in new professions. They have embraced the change.

However, our research shows that there is an opportunity for all stakeholders to address issues of flexibility, school leadership, progression and pathways, including a commensurate salary – “a living wage” – to halt the exodus from the teaching profession.  

From left to right: Robyn Brandenburg is a professor of education in the Institute of Education, Arts and Community at Federation University Australia. She researches teacher education, reflective practice and feedback and mathematics education and is a past-president of the Australian Teacher Education Association. She is on LinkedIn and Twitter @brandenburgr. Ellen Larsen is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ). Ellen is a member of the Australian Association for Research in Education [AARE] executive and a convenor of the national AARE Teachers’ Work and Lives Special Interest Group. Ellen’s areas of research work include teacher professional learning, early career teachers, mentoring and induction, teacher identity, and education policy.  She is on Twitter @DrEllenLarsen1. Richard Sallis is an Arts education academic in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at The University of Melbourne. He also holds positions with the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) and is a leader in curriculum planning and teacher professional development. His research interests include Initial Teacher Education, teacher professional learning, and diversity and inclusion in schools. He is on LinkedIn. Alyson Simpson is a professor of English and Literacy Education in the Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. Her current research projects focus on building an evidence base of teacher quality, the role of children’s literature in education, and the power of dialogic learning. She is on Twitter @ProfAMSimpson

Scary school stories: from zombie data to systems at war

School funding, talking about teaching, teaching, , , ,

Long-standing challenges in education confront the new Labor government: the teacher shortage; teacher pay and conditions; the equitable funding of schools; student performance in standardised tests; and student behaviour and attendance.

It has become all too common for news outlets to seek the opinions of think-tanks, rather than those who have first-hand experience and who might be able to offer solutions to the problems. So, in attempt to give ‘voice’ to these other views, we talked to six education experts: a former NSW education minister, a former principal and education commentator, the president of the Australian Education Union, a journalist, a maths teacher and a prominent academic. 

One voice often overlooked in education controversies  is that of the classroom teacher. Julie Moon is a recently retired teacher who’s taught in rural NSW and metropolitan Sydney, as well as Papua New Guinea. She was an organiser for the NSW Teachers Federation, involved in many negotiations with the NSW Department of Education. In her conversations with us, Moon highlights significant changes to  her workload –  it’s incessant and relentless data collection requirements, that is, data collection for the “sake of data collection”. She says: “It creates a workload that’s unnecessarily onerous.” As  a teacher she is continually collecting data but this task becomes burdensome when she is required to compile additional documentation that may or may not be read or acted on at other levels of the bureaucracy. 

Ongoing data collection was also raised by former NSW education minister Adrian Piccoli who maintains that although initially worthwhile, data collection has now reached a “kind of tipping point where it becomes a negative”. Piccoli says we’ve reached a point where data collection now “drives teachers nuts”, adding to the constraints on teachers’ time and energies, and therefore limiting the opportunity to exercise their professionalism as classroom practitioners. 

Having worked as education minister (2011-2017), Piccoli is aware of the importance of establishing shared goals between state and federal governments. In fact, and even though he was a member of the NSW Coalition government, Piccoli says that it was “easier and smoother working” with the Federal Labor government and Peter Garrett than with the Federal Coalition government that assumed power  in 2013. Both  Piccoli  and Garrett held bipartisan education goals, promoting the Gonski reforms on school funding, and although there were often differences of opinion, he maintains that tension in education debates can be constructive, allowing for ideas to be “tested and challenged”.  

Realities of equity and school funding are close to the heart of former principal and education commentator, Chris Bonnor whose latest book scrutinises school funding in Australia. Bonnor argues that our education system has never been a ‘level playing field’ despite the best efforts of some governments; and decades-long neglect of key issues has seen the gap in academic achievements widen as the economic gap across the community widens. He also asserts that if a public education system is available to all but has to compete with a private system that has very few obligations: “it’s funding system at war with itself”. Consequently, the question of how the private and the public-school systems co-exist, must arise. 

cool This debate led us into a conversation of how education in schools is covered in the media. To gain some insights, we talked with The Age and Sydney Morning Herald journalist, Jacqueline Maley. While Maley’s writing interests extend beyond education she understands the political dimensions and the many polarising issues, for example, phonics. She is aware that certain topics will attract “blowback”; and as a result, Maley is careful to research her topics and adopt a measured tone and approach. We asked  about advice she might give to school students who are thinking of journalism as a career; her recommendations focused on an inherent “curiosity and an outward looking attitude” as well as a very “strong work ethic and an ability to think laterally when you’re looking at a story”. 

Although not preoccupied with education and the media at present President of the Australian Education Union (AEU), Correna Haythorpe’s most recent work has revolved around campaigning for reduced workload, improved conditions and a rise pay for teachers. She is investigating ways to alleviate the teacher shortage which she says in the latest AEU national survey indicates that the average working week for a classroom teacher is 56 hours, with much of it constituting unpaid work.

Possibly the current challenges in our schools are a ‘perfect storm of neoliberal discourses’ in education from the 1980s onwards. This is a persistent theme in our exchange with renowned education scholar Professor Alan Reid. In his latest book, Reid recounts the introduction of private sector practices – ‘corporate managerialism’ – where education became “awash with key performance indicators, vision and mission statements, strategic plans and intrusive accountability”. The mantra of ‘choice and competition’ became ubiquitous. Parents began selecting schools for their children, in much the same way as one might select an item of clothing from a rack in a department store. The thinking was that the best way to improve quality was to get teachers and schools to compete against one another, with the ‘customer’ being the parent and the school or teacher, the ‘product’. Many ‘big ideas’ in education were lost in the move toward a global education ‘industry’.

While many significant challenges remain for most Australia education systems and their communities, a new podcast series “Talking Teachers” by UTS teacher education academics, Dr Don Carter and Associate Professor Jane Hunter reveals there are many fresh ideas for Federal Education Minister Jason Clare and a newly elected NSW Labor government to draw on.

Dr Don Carter is a senior lecturer in the UTS School of International Studies and Education, he specialises in working with teachers to investigate innovative writing pedagogies to improve student performance and outcomes across the curriculum. Carter is a chief investigator, with Linda Lorenza, on the Emerging Priorities Program research into arts online learning.

Dr Jane Hunter is an associate professor in the UTS School of International Studies and Education, with expertise in pedagogy, curriculum, practitioner inquiry, technology-enhanced learning and teacher professional learning. In 2019 her research was awarded High Impact in the first Engagement and Impact Assessment by the Australian Research Council.