Thursday 30 June 2022 08:57 AM NSW teachers reveal the real reason for Thursday's strike across Sydney is ... trends now
Teachers in New South Wales have explained the reasons why they're striking after marching on NSW Parliament demanding better wages and working conditions.
Dressed in red shirts emblazoned with the text 'More than Thanks', fired up teachers called on the government to offer them more than a three per cent pay rise on Thursday.
NSW Teachers have gone gone on strike demanding a higher pay rise and more staff to fill shortages in schools
Other teachers on Reddit and social media expressed their view that the workload was the single biggest reason for the strike
The NSW Teachers Federation is asking for a pay rise of between five and seven per cent to keep up with the cost of living.
Tachers on Reddit and social media have cited work load as their main concern.
'I earn $110K. My problem isn't really how much I'm paid,' wrote on teacher on Reddit.
'It's the ridiculous amount of work that has nothing to directly do with teaching and learning. It's the changes in policies that require teachers to support a wider array of students in the same class.'
The same teacher added that schools have 'no idea how to measure workload' and teachers often have to 'parent students'.
Another posted: 'Pay isn't even the problem though - it's workload.'
'My contract says 30 hours a week, but I've easily cleared that by Wednesday because of admin. What I wouldn't give for a PA, just so I could do my job.'
I earn $110K. My problem isn't really how much I'm paid. It's a combination of the following:
'It's the ridiculous amount of work that has nothing to directly do with teaching and learning. It's the changes in policies that require teachers to support a wider array of students in the same class. The dark age level of understanding when it comes to managing teachers' time. Schools have no idea how to measure workload, let alone attempt to manage it.
The fact that parents and the system often require teachers to parent students. It's the push to keep kids out of trades and apprenticeships before they finish year 12 and then ignoring that this may be an issue. It's when schools take teachers away from their administrational lines to provide cover for classes due to no redundant staffing.
—u/furiouscowbell
I earn $78K and I'm a second year teacher in Western Australia. Pay is not the problem; it is workload. Too much admin for the role. Either pay has to increase to cover all of this unpaid labour, or the labour has to decrease.
—u/ModernDemocles
Anytime I see someone say, 'Teachers get 12 weeks off a year,' I immediately know their experience with teachers is entirely from the perspective of a student. If I worked the same amount of hours a teacher worked as a labourer, I'd be making six figures.
Ask any kind of a teacher where they spent after-school hours, their weekends, and their school holidays. We'd be at school by 7 in the morning, and leave for home around 6 at night. Weekends were either programming at home or at the school, holidays spent at school, setting up classes, building curriculum for the term, professional development courses, and research. If your office job is underpaid and overworked with excessive unpaid hours, join your union and document everything.
—u/MrSquiggleKey
One Sydney teacher shared a sign for the strike which read: 'Teacher burnout is why we have this turnout!'
I left teaching at the end of last term after 16 years of teaching. One of the things that really sticks out to me about the state of teaching right now is the amount of teachers choosing to drop down to part time. In fact, it's getting so bad that some schools are now refusing part-time teaching staff, because it's a nightmare for timetabling and student outcomes.
Of course, the underlying issues that are causing the exodus away from full-time teaching aren't being looked at by the governing departments; rather, they're just throwing in new grads in the hope that a few swim rather than sink.
—u/Hurgnation
I'm a state high school teacher in QLD, finishing my fifth year of rural and transferring to metropolitan. Pay is good. Super and salary sacrificing is good. I like that I can structure my life around a pretty consistent schedule. I love teaching. But workload is killing me.
It's not even the classroom stuff (drafting, grading, reporting, the differentiating for students of varying ability); it's the mountains of administrative paperwork that go with it. Teaching and learning plans a term in advance, with all resources created and loaded to a one drive account for possible home learning, records of every adjustment made to every worksheet, assessment, and activity for each kid recorded in OneSchool.
—u/beached_whale
The real issues will only be masked temporarily by better pay. My summary of the real issues is this: Kids are much harder to teach these days. The work environment between teachers and support staff is very toxic. Layers upon layers of 'new' stuff have been introduced to waste teachers' time on the job.
Eventually we will have no teachers because who in their right mind wants to pay for a degree and then wind up in that environment.
—u/we-like-stonk
In addition to the excessive admin workload, one of the biggest issues with attracting and retaining high-quality teachers is the top
