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The minor party requested the Parliamentary Library crunch the numbers in time for World Teachers Day to shine a light on “the scale of the overwork crisis that’s driving teachers out of the classroom”. “It’s no wonder teachers are leaving the profession in droves,” Greens Primary and Secondary Education spokeswoman Penny Allman-Payne said. “Our teachers are overworked, undervalued and face increasingly difficult and unsafe conditions in the classroom.” Senator Allman-Payne, a former teacher herself, said there was “nothing more demoralising for a teacher than feeling like you’ve failed a student because you didn’t have enough time or enough resources”. “This World Teachers Day, we need Labor to fully fund public schools now and reverse the growing inequality gap that threatens the futures of millions of kids,” she said. The Parliamentary Library, which caveated its finding as “a very broad figure” that “should be used with caution”, based the analysis on hours, workforce and salary data from a handful of government agencies. Noting some differences, Australian Education Union deputy president Meredith Pearce said it broadly stacked up against her own union’s findings. “One of the most significant things is around an administrative what we call administrative and compliance burden – excessive numbers of hours doing administration and data entry, people not having time during their paid working hours to do the preparation and planning for their classrooms,” she told NewsWire. She also said workload was not the sole reason teachers were leaving the profession but was “a significant factor”. “It’s not the only factor, but it is one of the most significant factors driving people out of the profession and deterring new entrants from coming in,” Ms Pearce said, adding that it “hasn’t been well enough addressed by governments”.
