Profession’s increasingly complex work deserves extra time allocation

Overloading teachers with “administrivia” was a disaffecting aspect of the present workplace and not core to the occupation, the Gallop inquiry into valuing the teaching profession has been told.

The inquiry heard from teachers at the coalface on 28 October, including high school principal Christine Cawsey AM, who said established research had shown that teachers “needed to feel a deep sense of work satisfaction to stay in the profession”.

“It’s when you overload them with trivia and ‘administrivia’ and expect each one of them to manage a cost centre … that’s not their work,” she said.

Ms Cawsey told the panel, chaired by former West Australian premier Geoff Gallop, that decision makers often didn’t understand the sophistication of the teaching profession.

“We need to recognise the high quality of the profession, and I don’t think it is,” she said. “There’s been an incredibly negative tone towards schools and teachers and principals, in general, for quite a while now.

“The reality is that overall … because I work with so many schools … there is a very high quality of work being done. It’s very complex work and very different [to what it was].”

On funding cutbacks, Ms Cawsey said: “When you see education as a cost, you want to cost-cut all the time. When you see education as an investment in our country, you want to invest.”

High school teacher-librarian Dr Martin Gray told the panel that the rise of technology meant the role now required students to be taught critical and ethical thinking, so they are able to find reliable information.

In terms of systemic support for teachers and teacher-librarians, he said: “With Local Schools, Local Decisions, a lot of teacher-librarians are being taken out of libraries and are being put in classrooms or being used for other things. The educational research shows there are benefits for students to have a teacher-librarian.”

Non-school based teacher Hayley Dean told the inquiry she could “really empathise with the workload of teachers; they are not given additional time to personalise learning”.

“A new structure is needed; we need to give teachers more time … reduce their face-to-face teaching … build time for teachers to do the things we know make a difference to their practice and student outcomes,” she said.

Public school principal Michael Hepi said the most critical issue facing teachers was a lack of time due to their workload.

“Time is massive and it does contribute to the complexities around workload,” he said. “I think it comes down to being able to provide additional release for all teachers and executive. That would certainly make that basket of important things we are required to put in place in our schools much more achievable.

Mr Hepi’s statement to the inquiry said principals, teachers and office staff were increasingly more accountable to parents, some of whom were often in a “heightened emotional state”.

“I have had to develop new skills in recent years as a principal in order to effectively deal with these situations.”