Local teachers were joined by senior officers from the NSW Teachers Federation as part of a campaign which the union says addresses a statewide shortage of teachers.
A rally was held in front of the office of state Member for Barwon Roy Butler last week, however, union officials pointed out the location was not in protest of the parliamentarian.
Instead, Teachers Federation president Angelo Gavrielatos said Mr Butler had been making deputations on behalf of his communities in the Barwon electorate in relation to the shortage.
During several weeks, Mr Gavrielatos said the federation intends to cover most of the regional and rural communities across NSW.
“The situation is becoming quite dire,” he said.
Ahead of the rally, the union put the spotlight on government figures released to the NSW Legislative Council.
The union says the figures show that half the schools in the New England and North West region had vacant permanent teaching positions in October.
In the list, Narrabri High is listed as having two vacancies, Narrabri Public has two, Narrabri West Public two, Wee Waa High one, Wee Waa High two, Fairfax Public one, Boggabri Public one, Bellata Public one.
Moree and Gunnedah secondary and primary schools, however, have more vacancies than Narrabri’s local schools.
Gunnedah High School has seven vacancies while Moree’s two high school sites have a combined nine vacancies.
Addressing the broader issue of state-wide shortages, Mr Gavrielatos voiced concern about the dramatic decline in the number of people studying teaching and an ageing workforce.
“We are barely graduating enough teachers now to cover the natural attrition,” he said.
“These vacancies are projected to get much worse.”
When queried about the raft of incentives recently announced by the NSW government, Mr Gavrielatos acknowledged that incentives are a neccessity, however, he said the fundamentals are broken.
“Every parent in country NSW wants to be reassured that in every classroom there will be a teacher with the time and resources to meet their child’s needs,” he said.
In response to the rallies, Minister for Education Sarah Mitchell said the union is currently in an award negotiation with the Department of Education and is actively encouraging its members to agitate and disrupt schools across the state as part of its campaign.
“The campaign is designed to deliberately mislead communities and it’s incredibly disappointing. We all know attracting quality professionals to regional areas can be challenging, and often schools will have individual challenges,” she said.
“However, classing this as a state-wide problem ignores the reality that at any point a school may be hiring for a permanent position or have it filled with a temporary teacher.
“In addition we have recently added over 1500 assistant principal roles in all primary schools to assist with literacy and numeracy which are currently being recruited and will appear as vacant.
“Northwest NSW is on par with the rest of NSW when it comes to vacancy rates, which remain low given the size of our public education system in NSW.
“My ask of the union is to engage in solutions, to understand the individual challenges facing various parts of the state and to work with the government to solve them for the benefit of our students.
“The review of rural and remote incentives is one of these solution focused approaches. For the first time in 100 years, we are completely rebuilding how we support and attract teachers in the regions.”
Ms Mitchell and the NSW government recently unveiled a $125 million Teacher Supply Strategy.
The strategy consists of three main pillars.
It aims to grow the overall supply of teachers, encourage more teachers to upskill and to provide targeted support in areas of need.
Read more about the teacher shortage:
- YOUR SAY: ‘Chronic teacher shortage’ at Narrabri High School a concern
- Teacher shortage hits crisis point
- High School P&C working tirelessly to address shortages, supervision issue
