Image: NSW Premier Chris Minns has committed to offering 16,000 permanent contracts to teachers and school staff. Image: Facebook.
By LAUREN FROST
16,000 temporary teachers and school-based support staff will be offered permanent contracts by Term 4 this year if the Minns Labor Government follows through on their commitment to shift casual school staff into permanent positions.
5,463 staff across 982 schools have already accepted this offer since the initiative commenced only a few months ago. The government’s goal is to address the current workforce crisis in NSW public schools.
Alarmingly, last year a record number of 1,854 NSW public school teachers resigned from their position. Further, since 2017 only 63% of public school teachers in NSW held a permanent position.
Now, according to feedback given to the NSW Department of Education, some teachers who were considering resignation are choosing to remain in their position as a direct result of the initiative.
“We want more teachers, in front of the classroom, permanently,” NSW Premier Chris Minns said.
“If the same teacher is teaching students day in, day out, they will get to know that class well to get the best results.”
In order to be eligible for the offer of a permanent contract, staff must have been employed at their current school for at least 3 years.
Those who have accepted the offer prior to the end of May can expect to commence permanent duty at the beginning of Term 3 this year.
As the rollout of offers continues, remaining staff who choose to accept can anticipate their permanent role to commence at the start of the 2024 school year.
The initial success of this initiative comes off the back of the failure of the former Liberal-National Government’s “Local Schools, Local Decisions” policy, introduced in 2012. This policy was designed to give more autonomy to public schools. It gave principals the authority to allocate resources as they saw fit based on local needs.
However, the policy came under fire for primarily being a cost-cutting initiative, and no improvement on student outcomes were evident following its introduction.
Moreover, although the former Liberal-National government committed to converting 10,000 teachers to permanent contracts in October last year, no real progress was made until now.
Henry Rajendra, deputy President of the NSW Teachers Federation, said, “under the Coalition, unsustainable workloads and uncompetitive salaries led to acute teacher shortages across NSW. Teacher shortages mean children miss out and teachers burn out.”
“We can’t fix the teacher shortages problem without fixing the wages and workload problem.”
Action Finally Taken
“In 3 months, 5,500 teachers and admin support staff have accepted offers for permanency,” Premier Minns said.
“This is good for teachers, good for kids and good for our education in NSW.”
The first rollout of offers went to schools supporting some of NSW’s highest needs students and communities, in addition to Aboriginal Education Officers and staff in schools struggling the most under the teacher shortage.
NSW Deputy Premier, Minister for Education and Early Learning Prue Car said, “offering permanency to teachers and support staff shows we value our public education system and the people who work in it.”
“Having a permanent position in a school gives teachers security and peace of mind, allowing them to do their job – which is to teach children.”
“We are getting on with the job of addressing the teacher shortage by improving the conditions of teachers and support staff. Ultimately a stable and secure workforce will lead to better educational outcomes in the classroom,” she continued.
“This is a vote of confidence in our government’s actions which is to restore pride in teaching and stop teachers from leaving the profession.”
So far, the initiative has been a welcome one for teachers across NSW, particularly after the disappointing outcomes from the Coalition.
Rajendra, deputy President of the NSW Teachers Federation, expressed optimism.
“We look forward to negotiating more competitive salaries with the new government and reducing workloads”, he said.
