I and others are desperately trying to raise the awareness in the Narrabri community of the chronic teacher shortage that is currently affecting Narrabri High School.

We keep hitting brick wall after brick wall.

Narrabri High School has been operating with at least four to five teacher vacancies for many months now and the casual teacher pool is almost non-existent.

The reality of this is that our kids now have to regularly endure “minimal supervision” lessons.

This is where they are told to go into the quadrangle or school hall where a staff member just monitors them.

No lessons are taught – nothing. They basically just sit there – for hours on end sometimes.

A conservative estimate from teachers at the school is that this has occurred for 250 hours/lessons in term one alone.

The problem is continuing right up to when the lockdown began.

On Wednesday, August 11, at least 10 classes were not able to be taught as there simply weren’t enough teachers.

I have a daughter in year 7, a son in year 10 and a daughter in year 11.

It has now become a common occurrence where they have lessons where they simply are not being taught.

In some cases the older classes are left unattended as they “can look after themselves”.

The existing staff are at breaking point, they are good people.

They are being asked to do more and more every day.

They barely have time to teach, which means they have even less time to deal with discipline issues so it is a race to the bottom and the whole system is collapsing in on itself.

I am trying not to sound dramatic or exaggerate – but it is so hard to suppress this overwhelming feeling of hopelessness.

My family and I are very normal, very loyal to our home town and very angry.

We just want to educate our children locally without having to send them away to boarding school and the NSW Education Department is currently not providing that capability.

We have met representatives of our local Member Roy Butler and they have been sympathetic and they have raised this in NSW parliament and we are very grateful for their on-going support.

The NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell was in Narrabri recently for an education forum.

Again – we were very grateful, and not dismissive that she was here – but two months have passed and no concrete action has materialised.

This gives me little hope that there will be structural change at the level or speed required to attract more teachers here.

I am sure that if this issue was happening in a metropolitan area it would be fixed immediately. Why should we have to battle so hard for the most basic of services – to have enough teachers for our kids?

It is completely unacceptable.

This issue is so real and so right now and we need immediate help.

It is also important to note that Narrabri is booming at the moment and we are lucky to have very few of the social issues that unfortunately affect other towns.

Narrabri is a centre of agriculture and since the drought broke the farms and the many business that support the industry are well on the road to recovery.

Add to this the mining industry and the Inland Rail and as a result our sporting clubs are thriving and the future is bright.

My point is – although we are only a town of 7500 people we are hardly a struggling little town where no-one wants to live – so our local high school should reflect this.

Narrabri High School has a rich and proud history – and I know that there is a lot of affection for our school in the community.

We need the community to be aware of what is happening to our school.

Please note that I have no intention of aligning myself with any of the political processes that are linked with this.

We just need a spotlight shone on this issue for the sake of our kids.

Denis Harvey, Narrabri

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