Teachers ‘unsure’ of their future in the profession

A new study has highlighted uncertainty among Australian teachers about their future in the sector – with many young educators already at risk of leaving the profession.

A report carried out by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), titled National Trends: Teacher Workforce, has presented some rather alarming data on the current state of Australian teachers.

The report delved into trends among the teacher workforce, touching on the employment conditions and the challenges faced by workers in the profession – with one finding being that teachers work an average of 50 hours per week during the school term.

This has led to over a third of teachers and leaders questioning their future in the profession, with Associate Professor Joel Windle at the University of South Australia asserting that better reform efforts are needed to attract and retain workers.

“Despite teacher shortages being at crisis point, this report shows that working conditions have changed little over the past five years,” said Windle.

“Greater reform efforts are needed to attract, support, and retain a high-quality teaching workforce.

“Teachers are most dissatisfied with tasks that are imposed from above and which appear to have little meaning beyond meeting administrative requirements.

“The report shows that the time spent on administrative tasks has not decreased for most teachers. In fact, for some categories of teacher, time spent on administration has increased. More is needed to reduce this burden.

“Teachers are uncertain about remaining in teaching for a variety of reasons, not all of which reflect negatively on the profession.”

Windle affirmed that workload and burnout remain key factors in the lead-up to teachers deserting the profession altogether.

“Workload remains the primary push factor to leave. However, school systems also need to pay greater attention to loss of autonomy,” said Windle.

“Teachers enjoy face-to-face teaching and building positive relationships with students. Centralised mandates to follow a narrow set of teaching methods, often on the basis of a fragile evidence base, undermine teachers’ ability to be responsive to their own students.

“Ultimately, top-down recipes undermine and underestimate teacher professionalism.

“While teachers with ‘alternative registration to teach’ make up a small proportion of the workforce overall, they play an important role in hard-to-staff and remote schools.

“More in-depth investigation is needed of working conditions in different types of schools, which cannot be adequately captured by a survey.”